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Comment Re:I wonder how long till the CIA (Score 1) 122

"prevent automation"

Buggy Whip Makers would like a word with you.

While your post has some interesting tidbits, some even worthy, the conclusions are incorrect. You're blaming government intervention while proposing government intervention as a solution.

The more government is involved in economic matters, the more screwed up things get, because that's the nature of regulations. We just need ONE MORE regulation, and that will solve all the problems (and somehow creates additional problems).

Supply Demand curves exist in all markets. Pushing them around artificially is a recipe to inefficiencies.

Comment Re:How long until the scams begin? (Score 1) 22

With Passkeys, they have access to your stuff without any oversight by courts and discovery. There are ZERO 4 and 5th Amendment rights to stuff protected by passkeys. They can compel you to unlock your phone, and put your finger on the print reader, and facial scan you .... all without your permission or CONSENT. As much stuff behind that initial Passkey on your phone (ApplePay/GoogleWallet, Banks, everything).

Legally it is untenable how much access they have with Passkeys.

Passcodes cannot be compelled (XKCD hammer notwithstanding). 4th and 5th Amendments apply.

Comment Re:How long until the scams begin? (Score 3, Insightful) 22

If passkeys are movable, then they can be duplicated and reused by nefarious actors as easy as this seems to indicate here.

I have not, and do not, and never will trust passkeys as primary security for anything.

Passkeys can be compelled legally, with and sometimes without a warrant. Passwords cannot be compelled at all. SCOTUS has already set the rules.

Comment Re:Its very puzzling, isn't it? (Score 1) 96

While the energy source of wind and solar are free, building and maintaining the plants is not free.

If all they were building were a single 100MW data center, sure: renewables would be cheaper to build. But they evidently are planning a major campus that will consume most of the plant's 615 MW output over the next 25 years.

A solar installation, in a favorable location, capable of supplying 600MW around the clock (with battery backup) would have to be roughly 1800MW in capacity. It would be among the largest inthe world, on the order of ten thousand acres in size at a build cost of maybe 2 billion. The battery backup system to ensure 99.9% uptime would be 9x the size of the largest li-ion grid storage system ever built, and set you back on the order of 4-5 billion dollars.

While it's probably cheaper to go renewable than build a *new* nuclear plant, if you can reactivate and one for just two billion that looks like a bargain, if you have a use for all that power. Inability to save money by load following is the financial Achilles' heel of this generation of reactors, but if you have a guaranteed customer for most of your output, years in advance, that's as close to an ideal economic case for them as anything could be.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 2) 86

ToS is the strongest argument, but the distillers are not parties to the ToS. They get their data from data brokers. It is possible that data brokers are violating the ToS, but it would be hard to write ToS that precluded running queries for third parties without creating problems for consultancies and other businesses. Even presuming the ToS could be written to preclude the data brokers doing that, it doesn't affect the resulting model.

But the general shape of the argument brings us right back to unclean hands: we worked hard on this model and it's not fair for you to profit off our work in a way that doesn't have our permission.

Comment Re:It's just like The Osbornes! (Score 1) 70

I think the fair-minded position is to see what people think when the documentary comes out. You're essentially arguing a negative here -- that there *can't* be anything of value that hasn't been said yet.

Also, I don't think saying something *new* is necessarily critical. Sometimes saying something obvious but in an interesting way is worthwhile.

In this case, Holmes gave access to the filmmaker. Obviously she has an agenda. If the filmmaker is smart, he has an agenda that's different from hers. If he knows his business he'll find something interesting to show you from that conflict.

Now looking at the trailer -- holy shit that woman gives off batshit crazy vibes. That's new to me. I expected her to be slick, persuasive, like Saruman in Lord of the Rings: someone. you'd need real strength of mind to resist being persuaded by. If I'd just handed someone like that my business card, I'd get it back on some pretext then head as fast as I could for the door.

Comment Re:So what? (Score 3, Interesting) 86

It doesn't make it *right*, but it does make claiming it is *wrong* inconsistent with their own behavior. This could prevent the US companies from suing the Chinese companies seeking an injunction (due to the "unclean hands" doctrine), and probably blocks them from seeking monetary damages in most US jurisdictions.

And suing may undermine the US companies own intellectual property claims by exposing their shaky foundations. An AI model isn't *expression*, so it can't be copyrighted. Insofar as the service allows the underlying model to be deduced through regular usage, trade secret protections don't apply because that's *reverse engineering*, which trade secrets don't prevent.

This leaves violations of terms of service. But setting aside the dubious enforceability of anti-reverse engineering provisions, the Chinese companies may not even be parties to the ToS agreement if they are obtaining the model data through a network of contractors and shell companies.With only moderate paranoia, they can effectively shield themselves from some kind of US tort claim.

Which leaves them with the model they've created from the US company's model, but which the US company has no IP claim upon. If I download a DeepSeek model that's been (hypothetically speaking) trained on Claude, Anthropic might not like that, but what can they do about it?

It's a strange situation. US investors are spending cumulatively on over half a trillion dollars a year in the hope of owning a breakthrough frontier model that is the end of the economic world as we know it. But the essence of the model might not be intellectual property at all.

Comment Re:School Requirements (Score 1) 105

I never really enjoyed reading long fiction. I read a lot, just not fiction.

I was made to read fiction in school (a long time ago), and it always bored me to read stories that had nothing I wanted. I don't find it entertaining or even relaxing.

I've read plenty of books, and in my younger years, used to read those thick IT tomes on Windows and Linux and ....

https://img-cdn.hpb.com/normal...

Comment DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE (Score 2) 148

This is just a kindly reminder to NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE.

Ever.

"I respectfully decline to answer any questions. I invoke my 1,2,4,5 Amendment Rights. I do not consent to any searches. I refuse all roadside exams, and wish to have my lawyer present during any further interactions. BTW, here is my lawyer ... {pushes the button* on my phone}. My Attorney will represent me fully during this interaction, you may address them directly."

* https://www.attorney-shield.co...

Then STFU.

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