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Comment Re:The dirty secret of LLMs is the training data (Score 1) 38

There are projects like LLM-jp: A Cross-organizational Project for the Research and Development of Fully Open Japanese LLMs looking to solve this problem by creating LLMs from open data. These are helped by a meaningful Open Source Definition, and hurt by a weak one.

A quarter century ago nobody wanted to make their source code public either; remember Ballmer: Linux is a cancer?

If you want to help ensure a future where Open Source AI models are plentiful rather than drowned out by commercial black boxes, then sign the Open Source Declaration.

Submission + - Community Commitment to Open Source Definition (opensourcedeclaration.org)

samj writes: In light of yesterday's OSAID fork undermining the Open Source Definition, we have prepared this Community Commitment to Open Source Definition declaration reaffirming it, and ask you to sign and share it to protect a quarter century of progress:

We, the undersigned members of the Open Source community, declare that Open Source is defined solely by the Open Source Definition (OSD) version 1.9.

Any amendments or new definitions shall only be recognized if declared by clear community consensus through an open and transparent process to be determined.


Comment Re:X Æ A-12 (Score 1) 80

Hollywood disagrees. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I'd agree with you if Tesla had done anything meaningful prior to Elon's involvement. Using your analogy, Tesla wasn't even a little backwater restaurant that got investment—it was just a couple of guys who thought it would be neat to make hamburgers.

Businesses

LogMeIn Acquired By Private-Equity Firms (techcrunch.com) 29

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: LogMeIn announced this morning that it has agreed to be sold for $4.3 billion to affiliates of Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corporation, the private equity affiliate of Elliott Management Corporation. The purchase price comes out to $86.05 per share in an all-cash deal. The company had a 52-week high of $96.87 per share and a low of $62.02. The purchase price represents a 25% premium on the closing share price on September 18th, which the company reports was the day media reports began to leak that the company was up for sale.

Bill Wagner, president and CEO at LogMeIn said in a statement that the price reflects the high value of the company and will give stockholders a meaningful return. As you would expect, he was also was optimistic that the partnership with Francisco and Evergreen will help the company going forward. As for the private equity firms, they are getting a broad portfolio of products including unified communications and collaboration (UCC). LogMeIn bought Jive Communications for $357 million in 2018 to give it deeper penetration in the unified communications market. It's most well known product is probably GoToMeeting, which has had to compete with the likes of Zoom, WebEx, BlueJean, Google Hangouts and others in a crowded video conferencing space. The company bought GoToMeeting from Citrix in 2016 for $1.8 billion
Unless it can find a buyer who will offer a higher price, the deal is expected to close in mid 2020 after standard regulatory scrutiny.

Comment Google programming skills (Score 5, Interesting) 91

Add this to the list of rubbish software by Google. People just assume that because a small number of Google projects have legitimately impressing programming prowess that this standard of quality is consistent among the ~30,000 engineers at the company. In my experience, Google software tends to be fairly poor on average.

Legitimately good:

* Some parts of Android
* Chrome (due in no small part to the architectural origins set by KHTML and Apple)
* V8

Assumed to be good because the results are great but who the fuck knows what sort of hacked up garbage is under the hood:

* Google search
* Google maps
* Advertising networks
* ChromeOS

Was already good when they bought the company that made it:

* Google Docs
* Google Earth
* SketchUp

Hot garbage:

* Many parts of Android
* Most of the Android SDK
* Google Desktop, Toolbar, Talk and countless other pieces of shit Windows software

Comment Re:Maybe so (Score 1) 145

Unquestionably. Tesla are still mid-tier when it comes to materials, fit and finish etc. That said, it's all relative. Compared to other cars made by Porsche, I think the Taycan is fairly ugly—those drippy melty headlights are distractingly hideous. Whereas the Model 3 looks quite nice for an American car.

(I might have bought a Tesla 3 but for the all-glass roof. I hate sunroofs and where I live, the sun is very hot in summer. Also my current car is perfectly fine.)

Comment Re:Cool parlor trick. (Score 1) 145

The quantity of battery isn't just important for range, it also determines the maximum number of watts that can be pulled by the motor—and thus the upper limit of performance.

This is why the upcoming Tesla Roadster is said to have a 200kWh battery pack. It's for performance, not range.

(MAYBE you could replace some battery with comparatively lightweight supercapacitors, but then you've only got max power when the caps are charged. The electric equivalent of turbo lag, perhaps.)

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