Then that 1 out of 10 case where the model was actually made worse (whether intentionally or by mistake) would actually stand out from the noise floor.

Users are not reliable or consistent model evaluators. Users adapt to models - the moment they get a model that performs better, their expectations rise, their tasks get harder and their prompts get shorter.

"They made the model worse" is PEBKAC in 9 cases out of 10.

Don't think "a smart guy". Think "project Manhattan and CIA put together, all in one server rack".

We're lucky to have "they can hack traditional systems" as an early warning shot. Clearly, it's wasted on many.

That atrocity of a law was a blight upon digital freedom since the day it came to exist. DRM should never have been given any legal protection - and I would push for numerous forms of DRM to be outlawed instead.

Distract from the real issues like, you know. Clean energy projects in the US being throttled on federal level due to lobbying by the oil companies - lobbying that borders on regulatory capture. At the time when the oil prices are rising globally - and the demand for energy in the US is rising too.

Unfortunately, you can't stop an environmentalist from throwing his weight behind the cause that's being promoted the loudest. So influence groups can just push one meaningless "headline cause" after another, and keep them distracted from anything that matters in perpetuity.

A digital copy would exist somewhere, of course. But for us, that only matters if we can buy or download it. And for AI companies, that only matters if they can get a digital copy DRM-free and licensed permissively enough.

You know, piracy online is nice and simple - but it's kind of hard to get physical media without paying what the previous owner considers "a fair amount" to part with it.

What happens to the pages after? No one needs them anymore, so they get mulched and recycled.

That would be the dominant scanning method even if copyright wasn't a thing. But then again - if copyright wasn't a thing, there would be much less need to scan any physical media.

The reason why OpenAI can't just go on Amazon, buy a "digital edition" of a 2018 book and use that is that it would violate the license in ten ways, and then the DMCA laws that forbid breaking DRM on top of it.

Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers.

What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after the books that there's still copyright on. Second, when it comes to books, "old" doesn't mean "valuable" - plenty of libraries destroy old books because there's no demand for them, and storage costs you. This is how those scanning companies get books for so cheap.

If you don't have LaLiga in your country, that doesn't mean everyone is so lucky. Blanket IP range bans, in this day and age? Basically a proclamation of incompetence.

Yes!

And that "yes" holds regardless of whether they use AI or not.

Let's not pretend tech debt accumulation is somehow an AI problem. Some of the world's biggest companies routinely ship code that reeks of years of rot and decay.

There was a couple of times when SpaceX accidentally soft landed a Falcon 9 first stage into the ocean, and had it just float around. They're yet to do that trick with Starship though.

EDIT: Of fucking course.

It's why they have plans to elongate the stack further. If they have this much TWR to go around at liftoff, they can afford to cash in that extra thrust to pack more fuel.