Tootfinder

Made new test prints on some off-cuts, using a slightly stronger developer solution than usual to see impact on max. depth. The main image (Eagle Creek, Oregon) is using 18% sodium acetate (curve corrected negative), the test strips are of 20% and 15% solutions (both uncorrected). The phone capture doesn't really show the differences too well, but I think I will go for the 18-20% from now on...
(Btw. The original image is here:

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.

Why are we having fewer children?
(Interview with Berkay Ozcan, Professor at LSE)
- Couple formation happens at later age
- Women are choosing "careers" and not just "jobs"
- More people choose not to have kids at all
What else is going on? Short anser: we don't know yet
Even in countries providing a lot of support to parents, fertility rate has still declined
Immigration is no silver bullet. It's part of the solution, not th…

Berkay Ozcan: “Immigration is not a silver bullet for falling birth rates”
Berkay Ozcan discusses falling birth rates, whether immigration might provide the answer and what a smaller global population would mean for the environment.

Nvidia debuts Nemotron 3 Super, a 120B-parameter hybrid MoE open-weight model; filing: Nvidia plans to spend $26B over the next five years to build open models (Will Knight/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/nvidia-investing-26-billion-open-source-models/…

Nvidia Will Spend $26 Billion to Build Open-Weight AI Models, Filings Show
The move could position the AI infrastructure powerhouse to quickly compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek.

#Spam in my inbox is bad enough, but *wrong* spam boils my blood.
The Auteurs launched in the UK in 2007, then rebranded as #MUBI in 2010.
Of course, #TheMonthly may’ve meant MUBI became available in Australia i…

So here’s a little JavaScript initialisation order quiz.
Take the following code:
```js
class A {
constructor (parameters = {}) {
Object.assign(this, parameters)
}
}
class B extends A {
foo
constructor (parameters) {
super(parameters)
this.foo ??= ‘no’
}
}
const b1 = new B()
const b2 = new B({ foo: ‘ok’ })
console.info(`${b1.foo}, ${b2.foo}`)
```
What output would you s…

In early February there were more than 750 families,
nearly half of them including children,
as well as some 370 single adult women
being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
It is just one of many immigration centers across the country,
but the only one holding families.
Since the start of the Trump administration, the number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has skyrocketed,
-- increasing sixf…

“I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
Hundreds of children are currently being held with their parents at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas. In letters and drawings, eight kids convey the pain of feeling trapped with no end in sight.

You'd think it would be easy to Not Do A Fascism, but state Dems keep falling over themselves to help Project 2025 along.
The latest example is from MA: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/202

Massachusetts House advances unconstitutional social media ban bill that will harm LGBTQ youth and human rights
The Massachusetts House has advanced H. 5349, a draconian and laughably unconstitutional bill that would ban minors from social media, force social media platforms to enable parental surveillance of teenagers’ online activity, and subject everyone to privacy-invading online ID checks in order to access information or speak out online. Dozens of civil liberties, racial justice, […]

Anna Wintour and Vogue's new US head of editorial content, Chloe Malle, hold a joint video interview ahead of the release of Malle's first print issue (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/business/media/anna-wintour-chloe…

Watch: A Conversation With Anna Wintour and Her U.S. Vogue Successor, Chloe Malle
In their first joint interview, Ms. Malle spoke about filling the shoes of Ms. Wintour, who urged people to “get over comparisons.”