Not to argue against you here, but this only sounds like half the calculation.

Carbon is sequestered in the cow itself when it eats the grass - cut grass grows faster and spreads more than grass left to grow to full height (at which point carbon sequestration should severely slow down, though I don't know for sure), which means the cows are actually pulling some portion of atmospheric CO2 into their bodies before releasing said CO2 back when it dies.

I have no idea the actual numbers on that. I would be surprised if it were enough to offset the methane release, but I don't know either way.

Because people don't buy these phones!

It's been done before. CAT - as in the heavy equipment company - has a line of ultra-durable phones. Those phones you could pretty much throw at concrete and they'd probably be fine. They're popular enough to keep making them, but they aren't exactly taking over the market.

People want slim, sleek, sexy phones. Then they want to cover them up so their slim, sleek, sexy phones look gaudy, and don't break.

Most vegans I've met aren't about toxins, they're about killing animals. Toxins may enter in as an ad-hoc justification to attempt to bolster their claim, but the smart ones only care about the treatment/killing of animals (because the toxins angle is rather obvious bullshit - meat is good for you, in most cases).

So far you've given zero evidence for your claims. It sounds like you're the one with the preconceived notions who is avoiding any disconfirming information.

I found something more pathetic!

It's some random nobody going to bat for a $2,700,000,000,000 lifestyle brand and computer company as they cling to absurdly outdated messaging technology instead of joining the industry standard that literally every phone operator on the planet has switched to.

That is NOT what LLMs do at all. There aren't any "pieces" for it to "slice and dice" or repeat. There aren't even whole words saved. It doesn't have any data or record or memory of any kind.

What they do is predict the conversation, based on a set of tokens (akin to syllables, but not the same) and a highly tuned neural network.

It's literally taking your question, combined with what it has already said itself in previous prompts, and is predicting the rest of the conversation not even a whole word at a time.

It's literally making shit up as it goes. The most amazing thing about LLMs is how close they get to reality while literally pulling their responses out of their asses.

And this is why these authors are going to loose their asses. Because copyright only protects the distribution of copied works, it doesn't do anything for what people use said works for.

And even worse for these authors, even if they're right? Copying for the purpose of research is a fair use exception.

If you don't think publishing a book is a major career advancement criterion, why did you mention it?

You're the one who said publishers would sell to a library, not me:

This is not how copyright works. Perpetual copyright is automatic, it is granted as soon as the copy is fixed to a physical medium. This makes zero sense. How am I straw manning you? YOU are the one talking nonsense.

Finally, at the mention of The British Library you make it clear that you wholly misunderstand how copyright works. UK publishers are require to send copies of their works to The British Library, but The British Library only allows reading of their works on premises. Anybody can do this. I could let you read any copy of any book I own inside my own home. Hell, I could lend you the book even, just like any library, and have no problem at all with copyright. Digital lending is a whole separate beast, and The British Library is required to pay a royalty to the author every time they lend their book digitally.

Copyright does not simply govern the copying of works. It governs copying for the purpose of distribution. If they do not distribute the work, the copying is completely legal. This is true for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Libraries, including The British Library, do not distribute copies except where they have been expressly authorized by the copyright holder, or if the work falls into the public domain for one reason or another (or both, in the case of their digital collections).

Copyright is written for people, not computers.

I'll bet someone could train up a Martin-GPT and finish his books before he could.

And there would be nothing he could do about it, because they'd be brand new works written in his style.

Remember people, copyright only protects words you've actually put to page (or any other storage medium), not words you might write down someday. The copy must physically exist somewhere to be subject to copyright. And for you mindless pedants out there, digital storage is a form of physical storage.

There's nothing illegal about copying works for private use. It's literally in the copyright statute.

Copyright is a protection against distribution , not consumption .

As long as they aren't distributing copies of the works they can do whatever the hell they want with them.

It doesn't apply because he said it doesn't apply, ok! Gosh!

I can't believe you expect a slashdotter to back up the argument that he made up that clearly has no basis in law or even sound logic.

I'll be honest I'd feel a lot more protective of the copyright of authors if the limit were the original 20 years, instead of the current life of the author + 70 years.

LLMs can be taught to be good at math, but it's really not their forte and isn't what they should be used for. A calculator is more reliable with less effort.

The lack of knowledge problem is perfectly highlighted by the recent case where a law firm was sanctioned because their lawyers used ChatGPT to get their legal references, and ChatGPT invented several new court cases from whole cloth. They never bothered to even look up the cases themselves, because they didn't know ChatGPT could lie to them like that.

My best layman's explanation for LLMs like ChatGPT is that they're like that guy you know who ALWAYS has an answer, even when he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. He's constantly just making stuff up. He'll tell you all about Quantum Mechanics or the Civil War, but he's actually just riffing, making it all up as he goes.

LLMs are exactly like that, except it just so happens that when their invented stories match reality 90-95% of the time.

It's a little unfair to call this accuracy "pure luck", because it's exactly what the LLMs are designed to do, but it is fair to say they didn't get it right because they have any idea what they're talking about. The very concept of "knowing what they're talking about" makes no sense based on how LLMs work.