When rules are so convoluted that rulemakers end up breaking them

0.95^20 != 0

a) it adds up if every software developer thinks like this b) the argument is also about CPU cycles (although I have no idea of the scale... if you were to remove all ads on all client devices everywhere, how many MWh/year would you save?)

So you could attribute a black viking or a black George Washington to error. Fine. I will say it's unlikely, given there is a lot of training data out there (ie images) that would not steer the model in this direction. So a rather unlikely error at best.

What do you make then of the refusal of the program to depict, say, a happy family with white skin pigmentation, but is fine with other skin pigmentations? Is it conspiratorial to say that at some point a human actively made that decision?

Not really. They're trained on data. Some of the idiocies that have been widely circulated show clear human steering that could not possibly come from the training data (eg, George Washington being black, Elon Musk and Hitler being equally evil, or Gemini's refusal to depict a happy white family but having no issue with a happy black family). Someone is putting their hand on the scale. And that hand has some pretty odious ideology.

As a daily user, I love this release

So I don't know much about Peter Thiel's political views (although I assume by your post that he's on the right). But locking up people for their ideas sounds... misguided?

Well, they're like cops. They can't possibly see everything. And they're probably understaffed (and too political). Now they tend to reward whistleblowers, so if you know of some wrongdoing, go ahead and report it.

It's not the IRS that would have caught him. But there was no way the SEC would not have caught him.

It is a crime even if you lose money.

How did he think he could get away with it? Guy who probably never successfully traded PA in his life suddenly makes a massive bet on a long shot takeover target and clears $1.8mm? This is a massive red flag for the SEC. Any name who's taken over will be screen for suspicious trade prior to the takeover being announced.

You probably surendered rights to anything you post at some point in the registration process.

Not quite. The Fed did extensive QE under Bernanke and Yellen, without having inflation pick up. It's only when paired with the profligacy (or fiscal irresponsibility) of both the Trump and Biden administrations that you had a meaningful pickup in inflation. You need monetary AND fiscal. Bernanke's term for it was helicopter money in his days. Well, that's what Trump and Biden did with check to households. Not to mention the reckless shutdowns of the economy in various states.

Who gets to define the quantity of effort, talent, knowledge, and appropriate reward? What metrics do you have in mind?

Define "fair"?