Grok was constantly say it was doing something that it had ZERO ability to, and I kept calling it out and it kept apologizing and then immediately doing it again.

As a guy who spend 5 figures a year on Ai, the last thing I want is that. I know Claude and ChatGPT also do it, but Grok was doing it CONSTANTLY.

Totally agree with your apt comparison. Now, in the same vein, are message forums liable for statements made by its users?

One of the lessons we've had as the Federal, multi-branch nature of the US governmennt has frustrated Trump is that the government may be fucking us over, but it's not doing it in *unison*. It's doing it piecemiel, on the initiative of many interests working against each other, just as the framers intended. The motto on the Great Seal notwithstanding, there are myriad roadblocks to consolidating power in the hands of a single individual. It takes time and repeated failures. This is why the second Trump Adminsitration is worse than the first; they've figured out ways around things like Congressional power of the purse, put more of their henchmen in the judiciary, and normalized Congress lying down and letting the president walk all over them. It's a serious situation, although fortunately Trump isn't long for this world.

Especially once they started to use DOCSIS technology to push faster Internet services. And they were able to keep up (mostly) with fiber Internet, They now offer symmetric 1.2 gigabit speed Internet with DOCSIS 4.0, which has started its national rollout. I expect Comcast once it achieves near-natonal coverage of DOCSIS 4.0 to push it to 4 gigabit symmetric access.

In short, I expect Comcast to be less in the cable TV business and more in the cable modem Internet business. And very likely they may widely offer a cloud storage DVR with effectively unlimited storage to save video from cable TV channels and streaming services for later viewing.

While that's true, a responsible generation aims to boost the next generation to a *higher* level than the education they received. The world has become more complex and faster-paced, and even if that weren't true, the consequenes of aiming high and falling short are better than the consequences of aiming for the status quo and falling short.

So while I'm 100% onboard with skepticism that technology will magically make education better, I think the argument that "the education I got worked for me should be good for them" isn't a strong argument. What we need is a better ecducation that would have been a better education fifty years ago: stronger math, science, and language skills, general knowledge, and, I think critical thinking and media literacy. Possibly emotional intelligence -- it's kind of pointless to teach people critcial thinking skills if they are carried away by emotions.

There are no economic or security reasons to blockade Cuba, so that leaves *political*.

It used to be believed that bullies were low status individuals who are lashing out out of frustration. But research has shown that bullying is an effective strategy for achieving and maintaining social status. In other words it's a political winner. So the focus of research has shifted from the bully to the people around him who enable the bullying. The inner circle are the henchmen -- people without the charisma and daring to initiate the bullying, but join in when the bully gets things started. Around them are the audience, the people who wouldn't risk participating but enjoy the bullying vicariously. And around them are the much larger group of bystanders, who don't approve but are waiting for someone else to stop the bullying. Then off to the side are the defenders, who stand up to the bully.

Perhaps the least appreciated supporting factor in the phenomenon of the high-status bully is the silence of the bystanders, which is dependent upon the perception of widespread approval. Since you can't visibly see the the line between the approving audience and the apalled bystanders, the silence of the bytstanders is absolutely essential in sustaining the bullying.

Lot's of Americans are apalled at the idea of using military force to inflict suffering on the Cuban people. But that's only politically advantageous *because* of *them*. Tney are indistinguishable from the relatively small number of people who are thrilled when Trump announced he can do anything he wants wtih Cuba. The gap between actual approval and *perceived* approval is absolutely critical in establishign and maintaining any kind of authoritarianism. This is why would be authoritarian leaders are so focused on punishing and marginalizing any kind of expression of disapproval.

If a free work is freely used to freely train these LLMs about freedom, what chance does a "free" foundation have against these AI giants?

ftfy

Don't get me wrong -- I love Linux and all free software, and think the FSF has its place. But, they went a little coo-coo with GPL v3 (Linus is right), and this situation just further illustrates their chronic hypocrisy.

Maybe grok didn't freely poach the free book that's free to use for any purpose without payment (you know, free).

Stallman wrote the book in question, and is the founder of the FSF. It's entirely appropriate to reference him in commenting on this article. Don't be such an apologist.

Thanks for your questions, Freenet caches data but it isn’t meant to be a long-term storage network. It’s better to think of it as a communication system. Data persists as long as at least one node remains subscribed to it. If nobody subscribes (including the author), it will eventually disappear from the network. So yes, if only your node subscribes then the data will only exist there and won’t be available when your machine is offline. But if other nodes subscribe it will be replicated automatically and remain available even if your node goes offline.

Not from 2023, the linked video is from last month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

In 1790, the US population was 94.9% rural. There is no country. in the world today that rural -- Burundi, which looks like blanks spot in the world at night satellite picturs, is 88% rural.

The largest city at the time was New York, with a population of 33,000. Northern Manhattan was near-wilderness, mid-town was farms and country houses.

In 1790 the US was. country you could "police" with sheriffs and volunteer posses, largely to keep the peace. If you got robbed, you hired a private thief catcher. This works in a 95% rural country with just 3.4 million inhabitants. It would be chaos in a country 87x larger.

8GB is plenty of RAM for what most users use their laptops for, if the OS doesn't gobble it up with background tasks. Probably be a good idea to steer clear of Chrome as a browser on these things.

It's actually more like an iPhone 16 Pro runing MacOS in a laptop form factor. Apple basically rummaged through their parts box and pulled out a mobile CPU that'll deliver 50% more single core performance than what's in a high-end Chromebook with only 80% of the power draw. And Apple's got *massive* economies of scale on those parts, so they can afford to deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

The only place the Neo appears to falls short is in RAM, but this is *not* a power user machine, it's for basic office tasks and multimedia consumption. Realistically 8GB is plenty for many users.

In any case, the desktop isn't the center of most users's universe anymore; the switchboard of their life is their smartphone. This is a gateway drug to MacOS IOS integration, and eventually onto the upgrade treadmill. Users will switch seamlewssly between their iPhones and Neos all day long, with data on iCloud and iMusic etc., and when it comes time to upgrade their phone or their laptop, they won't be *stuck* exactly, but if they leave the reservation they lose a lot. But they certainly could upgrade to a *much nicer* Macbook....

It's no wonder the other laptop makers are sitting up and taking notice. Apple has set up a one way conversion ratchet for people tempted by a really nice and perfectly adequate entry level machine at an entry level price.Nobody else has the vertical integration -- chip foundries to device manufacturing, to software platform -- spanning desktop and phones that's needed to do this.