Combine the corporatized nomination process with the scare tactic of anyone not firmly aligned with business interests being unelectable due to some *ism used as a bugaboo, and it's nearly impossible to get someone over the line. Hell, the Democratic party will outright prevent primary procedure if they decide the votes aren't going the way the establishment players want.

What's sad is that even if the Democrats get as much power as possible, they'll use it to piss themselves into doing nothing in the name of healing the country or some bullshit. And with no consequences, it'll just be one more election before the pendulum swings back this direction. We need consequences for the outright lawbreaking, constitution ignoring ignoramuses in charge now, but I don't see it happening with our current round of available politicians.

Starbucks doesn't overcook. They just start with charcoal. I sense zero coffee beans in any of their products when I'm forced to drink it because someone thought they were being helpful by buying us all Starbucks bilgewater.

It's more than just beans though. You can buy the nicest beans in the world, but if you grind them wrong for your brew method, leave too many fines in the brewer, allow it to steep too long, or too short, over extract, under extract, etc. There's a million ways to make coffee taste like complete shit, and very few ways to get it to taste good on its own. Most people aren't going to take the time to learn how to do it right, they'll just toss in some sugar and cream and go.

This message brought to you buy a guy who has experimented with water type, water additives, blackwater extract, cold brew, pour over, drip maker, percolator, moka pot, hand grinders, electric grinders, burr grinders, various temperature brew-points, steel mesh filters, various types of paper filters ..........

We don't have a parliament. We have a congress. That has worked tirelessly over the last fifty plus years to prove that they are so ineffective at doing anything at all that it's just easier to go around them and wait for the courts to step in to decide if it's OK after the fact. And once that started happening, the courts were subverted by the guys with the jackboots so that they didn't make "the wrong decisions," so, essentially, thuggish government officials have no checks and balances.

The current federal excuse is that anyone that disagrees with the authorities on any level is to be labeled a terrorist. I'm assuming once these start mowing people down, all of those people will be labeled terrorists too. It does tend to shut down the critical thinking of anyone who might otherwise protest, with the added benefit that protesters are now also seen as domestic terrorists. HOORAY! WE'RE FINALLY ALL TERRORISTS!

Hey! We can solve our problems, or we can make more profit. Guess which is more important?

LOL you have "use cases".

As to what I'd prefer, neither of these. I'd prefer AI developed to realize its potential rather than be corrupted and destroy civilization. This entire conversation is even relevant to that.

"public good" is a handy catchphrase useful for justifying when billionaires steal. Wasn't DOGE for the "public good"?

"Stallman's position was that the source code to software should be free for everyone to use, learn from, and improve."
That was RMS's public-facing claim. In reality, his position was that source code should be free for HIM to use. As a student, he got upset that he couldn't have source code to a driver he wanted. Regarding software projects he was involved in, RMS loved being a dictator, do it his way or get lost.

"Software encapsulates knowledge, he argued, and no one should lock something so fundamental away."
All sorts of work "encapsulate knowledge", it is the work that is maintained as property, not the knowledge. More Stallman garbage. Also, sounds a whole lot like communism, interesting how open source advocates like to deny that.

"To hide software inside a company was to hide knowledge itself."
A plain lie, but a company's internally generated knowledge is their choice to share.

"What I missed was that software was not just a commercial asset; it was a body of knowledge, and bodies of knowledge grow stronger when they are shared. "
So what? Designing and building cars not only produces cars, but it produces knowledge of how to design and build cars. Yet literally NO ONE argues that this generated knowledge should be public property, or worse, property governed by a Stallman license.

""AI is software, and AI is increasingly closed. The frontier models — the most advanced, cutting-edge AI systems — are closed completely."
Here he exposed his limited understanding of AI. AI is software, deterministic software like every other application ever, that is true. But AI is more than software, it is software that is applied to enormous amounts of data. The portion of AI that is software is not "increasingly closed", however the product of that software, the models and subsequent applications of those models, sometimes is. This guy doesn't understand that a model is more than software, the bulk of the product is training. Training IS NOT software, it is a colossal amount of actual work, your work he wants for free.

"But open source AI does not have to match their scale to be useful."
Nothing prevents open source from training open source models. His position is that corporations should be compelled to "open source" the product of their work. In what industry has there ever been an argument for that other than the "Stallman" industry? The problem here is not the existence of OS models, it's that this guy want YOUR work for free, just like RMS does.

"...that is precisely the kind of public good worth paying for."
The irony of a billionaire who advocates getting other people's work for free using this language. The whole point of open source is not "paying for".

"The government, the private sector, and nonprofits should invest heavily in free and open source AI — the way they once invested in open software: public compute grants for open research, corporate and philanthropic support for universities and nonprofits doing the work, and a simple rule that AI built with public money is open by default."
But the entire lead-in was NOT about this, it was about industry producing closed models. The "private sector" invested in OS because they had a vested interest, what would that interest be with AI? And we do have "nonprofits" investing heavily in AI, how is that working out? An argument can be made that it is in the public interest to socialize AI, and I agree with it. but that runs against the capitalist nature of modern societies, the very foundation of open source, AND against the very system that has made this guy a billionaire.

Now, regarding this "simple rule", why is that NOT the rule for everything publicly funded? Perhaps because it would preclude guys like this getting rich? Sorry, the hypocrisy is off the charts.

"The behavior of these people strikes me more and more as cult-member like."

A most important insight. AI is a cult with billionaire sociopaths as its leaders. The internet has enabled propaganda at a scale considered impossible previously and we are seeing the terrible results.

"...and my shell escaped it tried to execute it. "

You do realize that's the problem, right? AI has access to your command line to autonomously execute commands. No no no.

"LLMs are a very handy tool if used right."

You're not going to acknowledge that the problem is you, you enabled an LLM to do destructive things and then complain when there is destruction. You have the mindset that the LLM should have access to nuclear codes but not use them. "Honest mistake" only means that the LLM publishers didn't maliciously intend for the LLM to start a nuclear holocaust, you're at fault for providing the codes.

'Thibault Sottiaux, wrote on X that internal investigations have revealed that these deletion incidents are more likely to happen when "full access mode is enabled, and Codex is run without sandboxing protections, including without auto review being enabled."'

So "more likely to happen" when the tool is NOT prevented from doing it? No shit. In other words, if you use the tool then you're to blame for any catastrophe that results.

It's not AI, but the empowering of AI, that's the problem. Hannibal Lector only eats people when he is given access to people.

Fact-free speculation always makes for the best opinions.

Or if all cars were bicycles instead. Could happen if billionaires get their way.