Tootfinder

Why would a company pay you to come up with the same solutions generated by a chatbot?
The answer is, they don’t want to pay you! It’s that fucking simple!

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.

from my link log —
U 237C ⍼ RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW is a symbol for azimuth.
https://ionathan.ch/2022/04/09/angzarr.html
saved 2026-03-11 …

Why has the world's first hydrogen double-decker fleet failed?
(Answer: battery EVs are much more economical, simpler, and do not rely on single complex refueling station.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnv6e5l588jo

Why has the world's first hydrogen double-decker fleet failed?
The multi-million pound project in Aberdeen was meant to be the future of clean public transportation.

One thing that really annoys me as a cyclist and as a walker is, when a cyclist approaches from behind and trys to pass..
Next to a street with traffic,
with wind,
with a voice volume that's more like a shy cat.
And THEN getting angry if I don't give the space to pass!
Guys, you - are - NOT - audible!! And I have really good hearing!!
Either
- shout as if it's about your life or
- buy a simple bell (magic!)
- live with the fact t…

I’m not sure what sets us up to have better LMSes, but I don’t think institutions building them in-house is a viable answer.
One long-successful direction I like that has been gaining ground of late is course-specific web sites. I’m cheering the rise of static site generators, and hoping they continue to creep outside the confines of the techiest among us. A course site is not an LMS, but moving course •content• mostly out of the LMS simplifies the problem considerably!
/end

No they want your DNA to track you.
Folks, have you seen GATTACA?
▶️ U.S. lawmakers demand answers after Canadian man says border officers made him give DNA sample | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/us-bord…

U.S. lawmakers demand answers after Canadian man says border officers made him give DNA sample | CBC News
American lawmakers are demanding answers from the Trump administration after a Canadian man says U.S. customs officers held him for three hours and forced him to provide a DNA sample before sending him home.

"What is a nanopublication really?" – by Rohitha Ravinder
https://medium.com/@rohitha0112/what-is-a-nanopublication-really-413cac6da0dd

What is a Nanopublication, really?
In a world where we are surrounded by information and scientific papers, we often struggle to answer a simple question: who asserts this…

Working on an #opensource project can be strange sometimes.
Personally, the strangest is seen when people want something changed.
Some peeps simply ask. (Yes, do this one)
Some get extremely angry that it isn't already like they want and demand it be changed.
Some people try to pay for the change.
Some try to guilt you to make the change by saying other…

Ask why, and know the answers are unsatisfying and contingent. It made sense at the time. Because we didn't understand yet. Because changing it would certainly break something else and we didn't know what yet and didn't have time to understand it. Yet.
Computers can be understood. Everything that is going on can be peeked at, prodded at, taken apart to know what is going on. Inside every complex system are simpler parts. The complexity comes from the combination of them, not mystery.
I cannot emphasize that enough. Just because you don't know, or nobody you know knows why something is how it is does not mean it is unknowable.