Tootfinder

Sources: data labeling startup Handshake's gross annualized revenue hit ~$1B, vs. $550M in January; Mercor hit a $1B gross annualized revenue pace this year (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/handshake-merc…

Handshake, Mercor Revenue Surges on Demand for Human Contractors to Train AI
AI firms’ voracious appetite for more data has lifted sales for obscure startups doing the industry’s unglamorous work: contracting with lawyers, PhDholders and medical doctors who grade the answers AI models generate. The latest is Handshake, a 12-year-old startup that began as a job site for ...

So to follow up on this, I've caught it in action. Models, when quantized a bit, just do a bit more poorly with short contexts. Even going from f32 (as trained) to bf16 (as usually run) to q8 tends to do okay for "normal" context windows. And q4 you start feeling like "this model is a little stupid and gets stuck sometimes” (it is! It's just that it's still mostly careening about in the space of "plausible" most of the time. Not good guesswork, but still in the zone). With long contexts, the probability of parameters collapsing to zero are higher, so the more context the more likelihood you are to see brokenness.
And then at Q2 (2 bits per parameter) or Q1, the model falls apart completely. Parameters collapse to zero easily. You start seeing "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy” sorts of behavior, with intense and unscrutinized repetition, followed by a hard stop when it just stops working.
And quantization is a parameter that a model vendor can turn relatively easily. (they have to regenerate the model from the base with more quantization, but it's a data transformation on the order of running a terabyte through a straightforward and fast process, not like training).
If you have 1000 customers and enough equipment to handle the requests of 700, going from bf16 to q8 is a no-brainer. Suddenly you can handle the load and have a little spare capacity. They get worse results, probably pay the same per token (or they're on a subscription that hides the cost anyway so you are even freer to make trade-offs. There's a reason that subscription products are kinda poorly described.)
It's also possible for them to vary this across a day: use models during quieter periods? Maybe you get an instance running a bf16 quantization. If you use it during a high use period? You get a Q4 model.
Or intelligent routing is possible. No idea if anyone is doing this, but if they monitor what you send a bit, and you generally shoot for an expensive model for simple requests? They could totally substitute a highly quantized version of the model to answer the question.
There are •so many tricks• that can be pulled here. Some of them very reasonable to make, some of them treading into outright misleading or fraudulent, and it's weirdly hard to draw the line between them.

Un anšlisis partido por partido del calendario de los Raiders para 2026 https://www.raiders.com/news/un-analisis-partido-por-partido-del-calendario-de-los-raiders-para-2026

Some thoughts from Claude about military use of AI in targeting.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYIHIM6ihVJ/?igsh=cmM1ZmdjaDl3bzJ5

Friend in Bray was looking to move back into the home she was renting in 2022 for €2,100/month.
The landlord quotes her €3,000/month.
I’m shocked: how can he do that when there’s a 2% yearly cap on price increases? So the most he should be able to charge is €2,273.10.
Can you guess the answer?
Did you say because Irish people elected a majority conservative/neoliberal government?
(Apparently the government just removed the 2% cap for new tenancies.¹ Landlords ca…

Three years ago, together with 24 partners across Europe, we set out to answer a question: What if submarine fibre-optic cables could do more than carry data?
Next month, the SUBMERSE Project community and all those interested in fibre sensing come together to share what we found, and to explore where the science goes next.
📌 Save your seat:

Why Cowboys, 49ers pulled off trade involving Osa Odighizuwa https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/san-francisco-49ers/news/why-cowboys-49ers-pulled-trade-involving-osa-odighizuwa/7da8d0cdc30b2305faeffd03…

Willem challenged us to ask ourselves what we would do if we were living under Nazi occupation. Before all of this, I doubt anyone thought they would be complicit. I doubt anyone said to themselves, "nothing. I would cower in fear and do nothing."
But for 4 years or so we all answered that question again and again with our lives. Now here we are, answering it again... Every day. But it's no longer "what would you do during the rise of Hitler?" It's now, "what would you do after the invasion of Poland," and "what would you do after you knew about the concentration camps?"
For some people, the answer is still, "nothing."
But a lot of people have been brave in the face of it all. A lot of people have died, and a lot more will die. He will die, perhaps after a ruling by some court or other but, honestly, probably not. That's just how these things work out. Lots of people die, some for no reason, some because they stood up against injustice. A whole lot of people do nothing, until it's safe to claim victory... Until it's no longer safe to be on the other side.
That's just how these things go. Fascism is self-defeating, but it causes incredible harm on it's path of self-destruction. The more people who stand up, who risk themselves, the faster it collapses and the fewer it can hurt. That's also just how these things go. It's incredibly dangerous for everyone until enough people take some extra risk and make it safe for everyone again.
But that question still stands... Which one of those groups are you in? Are you proud of what you are doing, or will you look back with shame? Some of y'all have a lot to be proud of, but, if you're not, it's never too late to earn your way into that proud group.

inploid: Inploid: an online social Q&A platform
Inploid is a social question & answer website in Turkish. Users can follow others and see their questions and answers on the main page. Each user is associated with a reputability score which is influenced by feedback of others about questions and answers of the user. Each user can also specify interest in topics. The data is crawled in June 2017 and consist of 39,749 nodes and 57,276 directed links between them. In addition, for …

"...the real question is no longer whether Europe can afford to make the energy transition. It is whether it can afford not to. From a central banking perspective, the answer is clear."
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2026/html/ecb.…

Europe’s fossil fuel dependence poses risks to price stability
The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.