Any quantization beyond Q4_0 goes mad (losing context, making category errors, malforming markup tags, mangling and inventing words) long before the context reaches a size I would consider "useful". I've tried running 31B at IQ3_XS and it looks alright from a distance, for a few prompts at a time. Unfortunately the errors compound and semantic drift goes into runaway. I have no interest in playing with quantizations any smaller than that. The only thing "massively wrong" is the suitability of a 2-bit quantization for my actual use. I've investigated it, and it can be an amusing toy, but it is far from usable for any meaningful work.

Even Q4_K_M was too error-prone for meaningful use, and I was using Q5_K_M as my baseline of "usable for a while". Fortunately, most of the heavily quantized models are based on QAT releases now, and a 4-bit QAT model is pretty much on par with a 5-bit non-QAT model.

DeepMind has released Gemma 4, which doesn't include their largest models, but 31B is a creditable model. I wish I could say the same about the 26B-A4B model, which is just smart enough to be entertaining for a few days or weeks, then everything it does starts to sound the same. Unfortunately, 31B on my hardware (i5-8500, 48 GB DDR4, 12 GB RTX 3060) runs at 0.3 to 1.2 t/s. So while I'm not a big fan of Alphabet's business practices at large, they aren't regressing. Switching to the MIT license basically means they're abdicating all control over derivatives.

The only thing Grok ever really did for open weight AI was show up for the party a couple times. At first, this helped establish a baseline that could never be retracted, but it hasn't proven to be particularly important. Everything since has been far off the bleeding edge, but they collect their participation trophies. I think their subsequent actions have gone a long way toward demonstrating their purposes, which are wholly selfish. They'll do as little as they can to contribute while retaining the benefits of being perceived as open and competitive.

There are literally hundreds of Linux distros out there.

This exists in the Mac world as well, but the primary reason I'm tied to Windows for my DAW is because I can't register my instrument because Native Instruments never bothered making a registration app for Linux.

Also, a movie about a war veteran getting mistreated, and critical of the anti-war movement.

Depreciation is high, meaning you're mostly paying for a name—which people probably aren't going to do anymore. I was just looking at the market for used Polestar 2s last week: a 2024 AWD model with 48k miles (so someone leased it for three years and put every mile allowed onto it) can be had for $29k. This was almost identical to the pricing of a used Hyundai Ioniq 5 with AWD, and the Ioniq started about $5k cheaper.

Amazon took nine years to reach profitability.

I'm not sure Amazon is a good example here. The company famously opted to reinvest its free cash flow into growing the business, rather than saving them and booking them as net income. They likely could have been profitable sooner otherwise.

Also, I am not aware of Amazon receiving billions in government support in the 1994-2001 timeframe.

Not for you, but for them to track your kids.

Indeed, because even if it's not user-repleaceable, any phone repair shop can do it. (It's also crazy to buy a $1k+ phone in the first place, goddamn, there are fine options for much much less.)

It's annoying, but adapters are cheap. I'm not going to lose sleep over $5.

They did, the whole industry uses USB-C now.

And there was "Project Star Trek": back in '92 they got System 7 running on a 486. It was shelved as Michael Spindler pushed for the PowerPC instead, but it existed.

While a sudden simultaneous shutdown is sometimes unavoidable, there is no reason why everything has to come back up at exactly the same time. Certainly, supercomputers of decades past didn't expect that all systems would spring to life simultaneously.

Something violent happened to Uranus. Why do you think it's tipped over on its side?

But Tomb Raider: Anniversary is already that, and still looks perfectly good. And if you want it more strictly faithful to the original, there's the recent remaster. So this is absolutely unnecessary.