Tootfinder

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.

Heute 9 Uhr startet das Heart Times Bike Race in die zweite Ausgabe.
#DotWatching : https://www.followmychallenge.com/live/heart-times-2026/

LIVE: Heart Times #2 - 2026
Heart Times #2 is a bikepacking challenge. From the community for the community - no profit, no knickknack! Riding for the good cause with Pikala Bikes!All cyclists are beautiful!

Filing: Anthropic hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with strong ties to Trump administration, days after DOD designated the company a supply chain risk (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-13/anthropi…

And once again with #AltText4You.
Why is that one simple link so hard to click?

In her introduction to an event on climate communication, initiator Mare de Wit quoted a man in the movie La Haine.
While falling from a tall building, he kept saying "Jusqu'ici, tout va bien."
So far, so good. A metaphor for climate change, for those of us who weren't hit hard by it yet.

Ukraine update from Giorgio Provincialli, independent journalist extraordinaire.
Russia loses momentum, but even a falling giant can hurt you if it falls on top of you.
Support Ukraine and independent journalism by sharing the friend link to bypass the paywall:

The Corridor Cracks: How Ukraine Is Strangling Russia’s Road to Crimea
Live from Ukraine 🇺🇦

Feeling this one hard.
[via my old friend, Martin_FFF]

United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta went public with her own account of being raped by Cesar Chavez, following a NYT investigation.
Huerta said she kept the secret because, “I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
https://w…

Dolores Huerta worried her abuse by Cesar Chavez would hurt farmworker movement
The New York Times uncovered a pattern of abuse by the civil rights icon, including of young girls.

Wish I could share the full photo with you but I don’t share identifiable faces from protests. When I asked if I could take a photo, she held up her sign with a determined, slightly sad smile. That feeling could sum up the event. Joyful, yes. But also a recognition that there is hard work left to do. #nokings

Sometimes I worry that having an autoimmune disease will eventually cause me to ignore something serious, because there's ALWAYS something feeling off or hurting. Currently wondering if I am just getting a feedback loop of nasty symptoms that makes it hard to get rid of them, or if there's a more serious root cause. But stress from everything could definitely also be the reason. Sigh. #AutoimmuneDiseases