If the federal government is about granting rights, does that imply the default state is “no rights”? That seems objectively worse.

This is always the rhetoric in anti-immigration movements. You may find that the definitions of “good” and “bad” vary wildly.

It is their third attempt.

I don’t think it is possible to have absolute knowledge of anything. Scientific knowledge is the best (only) thing we have.

Admittedly, I went in with extremely low expectations. It was fun, though, and I liked the visuals and the music. The plot was … something.

> Some teams in the Google Cloud org just laid off all UX researchers below L6

That’s not all UX researchers below L6 in the entire company. It doesn’t even sound like it’s all UX researchers below L6 in Google Cloud.

There’s wildly varying levels of quality among these options, even though they could all reasonably be called “PhD-level research.”

I find this timeframe surprising. I did some quick searches and there are models like GREET that suggest the break-even point is much sooner than that in the US. It is difficult to know for certain, of course, as there are many variables.

Regardless, it is of course better to incentivize long-term ownership as well. I think of HOV access as similar to a tax deduction on purchase. It’s a cheap way to provide a carrot for initial EV adoption.

It is a widely held belief that users don’t change the defaults, and I’m not asserting it’s wrong in general, but why doesn’t it apply to web browsers?

As an (unhappy) Windows user, I note that Microsoft pushes Edge aggressively, with each major Windows update “helpfully” offering to “optimize my computer” by making it the default browser again. However, Edge market share is only ~12% on desktop [0], despite the fact it is significantly more work to install Chrome than it is to change a mere default setting. Is that just because desktop users are more willing to jump through hoops?

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

It’s possible that they relaxed the safety filtering to allow humans but forgot to update the error message.

[1] https://viruscomix.com/evidence.png

For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.

[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...

To clarify, they look at the probability a model will produce a verbatim 50-token excerpt given the preceding 50 tokens. They evaluate this for all sequences in the book using a sliding window of 10 characters (NB: not tokens). Sequences from Harry Potter have substantially higher probabilities of being reproduced than sequences from less well-known books.

Whether this is "recall" is, of course, one of those tricky semantic arguments we have yet to settle when it comes to LLMs.

This does not appear to be the case, at least on iOS Safari. I went to Google Maps, gave it permission, then went to Google Search and searched for “delivery near me.” It again asked me for permission.

I agree, in principle. However, this is a trap.

Here’s a playbook:

1. Declare, loudly, that a problem exists. The problem doesn’t have to be real, but it’s better if it is.

2. Announce, even more loudly, that you are going to address the problem in a way that’s suspiciously self serving.

3. Implement your preferred solution as rapidly as possible. The “solution” can be as flawed as you like. It may or may not actually fix the original problem; that part is unimportant.

4. When people react to your implementation, they sort themselves into three buckets: supporters (partisan or otherwise), detractors (partisan or otherwise), and “reasonable people” who “see both sides.”

5. While the “reasonable people” are still debating whether it was a good idea to cure the patient’s brain tumor by decapitation, move on to the next “problem” that needs to be “fixed.”

Education level is correlated with voting preference [0].

US universities are funded in large part by scientific research grants. Cutting funding directly damages these institutions, and it gives the current administration leverage they can use to influence university political policies through either overt ultimatums (cut DEI or we don’t give you the money) or indirectly by funding professors with pro-administration viewpoints while defunding professors with anti-administration viewpoints.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535279/presidential-ele...