To be fair, Meta is the only US based AI player that open sources their models. Fuck meta in general, but it’s hard to say that they are wholly opposed to open source.

I look forward to Republicans in the House holding hearings to get to the bottom of this. Because Republicans held hearings when they accused social media of censoring conservative opinions. Because Republicans care about free speech. And even though this effects free speech of the other party, Republicans still care about free speech, right? Republicans will hold social media companies accountable for any censorship of political speech, right? Guys? There are going to be hearings right? Well, at least if not journalists are going to press those committee members about the inconsistency, right? Journalists will surely do their jobs. Right guys?

Can’t beat lawnchair Larry

A taste:

Larry planned to sever the anchor and lazily float to a height of about 30 feet above the backyard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. But things didn’t work out quite as Larry planned.

When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawnchair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 45 helium balloons, holding 33 cubic feet of helium each.

He didn’t level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet.

At that height he felt he couldn’t risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where startled Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight.

https://darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid1998-11.html

That page is very well done and interesting, thanks for sharing!

The “Run Up” podcast had an episode following the Working Families Party while they were out knocking on doors for Harris in a poor projects type neighborhood. The first lady they talk to is hesitant to vote for Harris because she’s a prosecutor who jailed black men for weed. While they are talking and the canvasser is trying to convince her, her neighbor jumps in and he says something to the effect of “Harris is a woman and world leaders won’t respect her and get us in a lot of trouble”.

Is sexism/racism the reason Harris lost? No, I personally at this point think it has more to do with the Democratic party’s inability to offer solutions for working families - Dems are the center right party representing corporate interests and the elite while paying lip service to actual regular people, MAGA is viewed as the party of the common man, as bullshit as that is it’s what voters feel. I personally think the only way forward is an actual progressive platform which addresses fundamental economic unfairness in the system, and candidates who can connect to and explain that platform to regular folk of all races and demographics.

But you can’t deny that sexism/racism didn’t play a significant role in the loss.

Just a guess, but it’s probably a combination of two things. First, if we say a self driving car is going to hit an edge case it can’t resolve once in every, say, 100,000 miles, the number of Tesla’s and other self driving cars on the roads now means more miles driven more frequently which means those edge cases are going to occur more frequently. Second, people are becoming over reliant on self driving - they are (incorrectly ) trusting it more and paying less attention, meaning less chance of human intervention when those edge cases occur. So probably the self driving is overall better, but the number of accidents overall is increasing.

“There is international pressure and it’s growing, but particularly when the international pressure rises, we must close ranks, we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war,” he said.

Sorry, why is Isreal not an isolated state at this point? If they won’t respond to international pressure, and indeed are intent on doubling down because of that international pressure, why even include them in international bodies?

We continue to recommend Wyze lighting, since we consider them lower-risk, lower-impact devices—a security breach of a light bulb, for instance, wouldn’t give someone a view of your living room.

Call me paranoid, but I don’t want a company I don’t trust plugged into my network at all.

Another article I read theorized that Threads launching might have increased the awareness of ActivityPub and softened peoples resistance to the “Mastodon is too hard, not worth trying to figure out” messaging in the media. Who knows though, and there’s probably not a single answer anyway.