It's not often I say this, but China definitely has the right idea when it comes to executive liability for corporate misdeeds".

In this case, Anthropic risked a large fraction, if not even a majority of their potential income to do the right thing. That doesn't seem like pretend at all. And yes, Google started out better and then turned into a company that very much is not so. But if there's no reward or incentive for good behavior, and everyone just takes for granted that every "good" company is going to become terrible, then that makes companies have even more incentive to go and become terrible. So the best rest response is treating the good ones like they are doing good things as long as they keep doing so, and push back when they start moving away from that.

Everyone is misunderstanding the intent behind this. The key phrase in TFA is "unlicensed AI output".

Music charts don't measure popularity, they do their damnedest to create it. From the famous RIAA payola scandal (which very much still happens, it's just structured slightly differently to remain legal) to the latest breakout nepo-baby somehow charting in the top ten despite nobody ever having heard of them the day prior - The various recording industry groups exist to promote their members - who are not the actual artists - and couldn't care less about accuracy.

There's nothing human about "the machine" (now an oddly ironic description) fearing AI generated music because it very much is an existential threat to them. I'm neither a fanboy nor hater of AI, but it won't be long before it doesn't suck and these whores can no longer control the market.

Yes - "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

We live in a world where everyone on the planet, on every side of the issue, knows perfectly well 34-time felon and adjudicated sexual assailant Donald J. Trump is at the very least a pedo rapist, a corrupt and incompetent businessman who managed to bankrupt the licenses-to-print-money that are casinos, and was quite possibly Epstein's boss rather than merely a prolific client of the largest human sex trafficking operation known to modern history. And yet somehow, his base is willing to draw a line in the sand over some mythical official release of the Epstein files. The same Epstein files that would 1) completely exonerate him if his story is true, and 2) have already been sufficiently released and/or leaked prior to redactiongate to eliminate any reasonable presumption of innocence.

This is a relatively minor retaliation case. Unless Kegsbreath needs a distraction from his next drunken compromise of opsec, this ruling will be publicly acknowledged with some whining, then privately ignored anywhere it matters. It's a hefty uphill battle to ever "prove" Anthropic doesn't get a particular contract in violation of Lin's ruling.

Wait... you're going to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (founded in 2003, signed into law by George W. Bush) and you're shocked that there was - somewhere in the 400k square foot building - a chart of stereotypes about white people next to a chart of stereotypes about black people?

The logic is economic autarky -- the belief that we're always better off having complete political sovereignty over every part of our supply chains than having to depend on imports for anything.

This is likely also behind Trump's trade war with Canada. His demands with Canada aren't about discirimatory tariffs -- those were negotiated away with NAFTA then re-negotiated in his first term. His demands are now infringe on Canadian sovereignty, to give US control of Canada's external trade policy, and even on its internal markets (e.g., the use of French in Canadian internal commerce). Symbolically, that's why he wants to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America". HIs establishment of US control over the Venezuelan oil industry is his greatest foreign policy achievement -- although it's not clear he understands the legal limits on what he can do with their money.

There's a foreign and military policy angle to this too: Taiwan is absolutely critical to the US economy, so we are absolutely committed to defend them if China invades. Semiconductor autarky would mean it's not our problem.

The problem with autarky is that even if it's a good idea (which economists don't believe), you can't conjure it into existence overnight. It will take many years, possibly decades for the US to replace the Taiwan's semiconductor industry. In effect, the administration is proposing to inflict the very damage on the US economy that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would inflict.

And, once the US has voluntarily self-inflicted that damage, China would be free to invade Taiwan.

You realize Netanyahu is Jewish, right?

I can't speak for the GP, but in my case it was a sort of "constructive dismissal" that finally pushed me away from all things FB-related.

I used to enjoy outing scammers on IG. I was even so naive as to think I was in some small way doing the platform a service by sticking a red flag on its bad actors. Whoops, guess what, folks? Scammers drive engagement and that's all these platforms care about. So I started getting progressively longer mutings after every post or comment I'd make, regardless of how tame - It got to the point where I finally rage-quit after getting a three-day ban immediately (as in, the notification arrived exactly as I hit post, so there's not even a chance I was reported that fast) for commenting something like "nice sunset, wish I was there!" to a close friend.

I have to admit it's somewhat changing how I write - Not because I use AI to help me write, but rather, my own writing style pretty much meets most of the criteria listed. Case in point, there's a negative parallelism right there and I wasn't even trying for an example. It's an extremely effective rhetorical device, and AI be damned for trying to steal it from us!

Low-frequency word choices, hyphens/dashes/em-dashes (I use hyphens rather than em-dashes, but most people have no idea what the difference is), and Oxford commas? Check. And okay, that last one was intentional.

Accordingly, I now consciously try to sound at least a bit less like AI when writing, mostly through the use of more metaphor and sensory references that have no meaning to an AI.

There is no country on Earth where you're required to own works you cite from. It may be all but impossible to access some content without paying, but once you've seen it - including unlawfully* - you can reference it to your heart's content and there's not a damned thing the author or publisher can do about it.

Google is clearly trying to firewall off their own issues with mass copyright infringement during AI training by passing the buck to the end user. Not happenin', guys! If this rent-seeking scheme actually works in any form, it will just make Gemini everyone's absolute last choice for literature review.

* Yes, there are of course exceptions like classified material and trade secrets, but that's not what Google is talking about here.

I'm sure you'd be welcome if you ever wanted to - you're already ideologically highly aligned (and never really were with the US...) :) Honestly, economically and geopolitically it'd be a very strong alliance for both parties, as what Canada offers vs. what it needs is a good match for what the EU offers vs. what it needs. Though admittedly both parties need to rearm fast - but the EU has a lot more resources to do that than Canada has on its own. Canada has raw materials, EU needs them. Canadian automakers/parts suppliers need an alternative market, EU can provide it, etc.

Shifting eastward wouldn't be frictionless - for example, your oil infrastructure is designed to send it south, not to ports that can export it to the east, and European refineries would need to set up to process it, for example. But it's pretty clear that the current status quo can no longer be relied on, as the US is intent on extortion.

They're certainly trying. I was listening to an exoplanets researcher the other day (in response to "How are scientists adjusting the way they work during the Trump administration?") grumble about how they're afraid to use the phrase "diversity of exoplanets" in their work because of a (well-grounded) fear that having the word "diversity" will get their paper flagged for rejection. This sort of environment is toxic.

(My favourite response was "Spell it 'divers' and throw in the occasional 'thou art' and 'exeunt' " ;) )

"another human - like me"

Serious Zalgon 26 McGee vibes there ;)

Yes, I'm sure children in poor countries who may or may not read English are desperate to get ahold of, say, an obscure 1993 book on VCR repair.

These are books that are unsold for a reason.

It's a testament to the interplay of words that forms the tapestry we call language!