worik

If it is legal for a human to learn from a book...

True, if the human's access to the book was legal

A great deal of training was on the open web, no one should complain.

But at least Meta and Anthropic were caught red handed taking copyrighted works, illegally, for training

I think international IP laws are too strick and onerous, but they were broken to train these models

We need more news like this.

Congratulations Steve and Doris

This is certainly not a planned marketing stunt

Evidence?

The "Tech Bros" have shown such a lack of moral fiber and ethics the burden of proof is on you

Systems that rely on good people to work...

...are the only systems that are available for free, democratic societies (like what I want to live in) to function

Open AI and Anthropic are in a battle of "scary press release"

The warriors are PR people.

They are desperate to generate as much fear as possible so AI is heavily regulated, so they are protected, from Chinese competition

What a sad state for very cleaver people

Capitalism, hoisted on its own petard

So determined to own the means of production, enormous amounts of money have been poured into building the frontier models

But there is not much special, except for capital density, about those very models

Surely these models should be treated as public utilities? Like power stations or water infrastructure. Absolutely necessary for a modern economy, but indistinguishable from one another

Pass the popcorn

We have been working hard on this in New Zealand, in the South Island

We started in Tekapo (https://www.darkskyproject.co.nz/) which being rural with a very low population density, and mountainous and with existing observatories to protect

In recent years the effort has moved into the cities (https://www.dunedin.govt.nz/council/policies,-plans-and-stra...)

Interestingly people who live on hills, overlooking the suburbs, complain the lovely view of the sparkling streets was going dark!

But not only does it preserve the stars it is much cheaper, so not going back

Point is: this can be done and the nighttime rewards and financial rewards make it worthwhile

The term neoliberalism has no meaning, it's purely used in a pejorative way by leftists.

Wrong

It is used pejorativly but that does not make it devoid of meaning

It refers to the social policies instituted in the 1980s that (attempted to) inserted competition into every facet of human relationships

It was instituted by liberals

It was new (and a dreadful policy that has lead to the discrediting of liberalism generally)

Hence "neo-liberal

You are welcome

China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons,

No. Not even close

China wants its place at the table.

With Erope and USA

People seem to think a developed China is a threat. But they are not staying in rural poverty for ever for our sake. That is not a threat.

They are not trying to "deindustrialise" anybody, just finding a place amongst equals

That is the strangest thing, to me

What horrific distopian future you imagine

Yes. It is useful for the scam artists:

X, Open AI and Anthropic, to name three

Interesting analogy, maybe a house cat?

I think a better analogy is "The EU is like a lumbering elephant. You can steer it, but only if you know how. Otherwise it just keeps on lumbering"

Airbus was a bureaucrats wet dream, and by modern Biz Bro standards should never have got off the ground.

Now it rules the skies. Boeing, having drunk the financial Kool Aid is wilting

Tortoise and the hare?

This is very interesting.

Facebook should be one of the biggest users of AI facing users, given its vast size, the industrial quantities of slop it produces and the tools it offers its users

Because Open AI is so closed, and Anthropic not much better, we know little of what they need that huge compute for.

But tnis hints it is not for user facing services

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/16/business/truth-social-dat...

Yes.

"Closed AI" would be a better name

"Monetization". What a horror.

I pay for some software services. The services I pay for have a billing page (or a donation page) and I pay via the banking system

I rigorously block every ad, every tracker, every thing that does "monetization"

The evil period of trying sneaky ways to generate money is, I am optimistic, coming to an end.

If you want my money, ask me. If you must have my money, demand it. If you are sneaking around "monetization" I will do everything I can to stop you.

If somebody doesn't share the same passion, it's almost impossible for someone to take and carry it forward.

True, five years ago.

The advent of coding agents has changed everything, and often make modifying somebody else's bespoke software practical

great???

That is old news, Theo was harsh, arrogant and rude. He was not always right, but always RIGHT!!

But ten years ago. What is the point now?

In my country (New Zealand) this would be very illegal

You cannot detain someone because you do not like their behavior, in almost all situations. In civilised countries

It is called kidnapping

That entire business sector is a cess pit of SEO slop.

Good riddence

outside the Americas

So very wrong, not "mostly right"

South America is a big place, lots of people live there

because everyone and everywhere was at war during that time.

No, that is incorrect

Which european dictatorship left their country better off?

If monarchs count as dictators, and monarchic states as dictatorship, then almost all economic progress in Europe upto the 1840s

yet we still trust them with our code and data

Who's we, eh?

Meanwhile their software, most software in wide use, continues to be unreliable and insecure

Share holder returns are doing OK tho

Yes

But how important?

The era of building websites solely for Google traffic and monetizing them through ads and affiliate marketing has ended.

Yay!

Quite an assertion, I hope it is true

Interesting

I have noticed this too, but have a different problem

The "flow state" has never been where I want to be, it is where I make my worst mistakes and where the details swamp the bigger picture. A "cannot see the wood for the trees" problem

I am developing a practice for agentic coding, involving plans, reviews and check points. But the "twirling my thumbs" waiting for the agent to do its thing is a related problem for me