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@aredridel@kolektiva.social
2026-04-14 14:22:42

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.

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.”

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2026-03-18 02:39:10

A rare daylight #fireball coming with a loud bang was seen and heard Tuesday morning over the U.S. and Ohio in particular: youtube.com/watch?v=dHBjApk3d6w - see skyweek.wordpress.com/2026/03/ for links to many more reports. And ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-fa says: "Signatures of falling meteorites are seen in data from three weather radars [...] NASA Meteoroid Environment Office finds that this was a 2m diameter object weighing around 6 metric tons - more of a small asteroid than a large meteoroid. [...] There are meteorites on the ground around Windfall, OH towards River Styx, OH."

@pre@boing.world
2026-03-17 20:13:01

I see no sign of any recognition from those who would want such a ban that they see any of the collateral damage a successful ban would have on the majority of kids who are not falling for this bullshit. That they are banning any good at all along with the bad.
Under 18s only
I see that the lobbying for these laws are funded by the absolute worst companies on the internet, those who will be entrenched by the legal compliance costs, that will cement themselves as the arbitrators of who is allowed to access the internet.
It’s a gift to Palantir and other surveillance companies. The very people running these algo-feeds are the ones who benefit from IDing every user and stalking them across the internet on their government-approved internet-licence IDs.
I don’t think even a successful ban on social media for kids would actually address the issue of kids being exposed to sexism and misogony or reduce the kids alienation and depression.
A ban can’t help, will make many things worse, won’t address the problem, and will make competing with the worst surveillance capitalists on the planet more difficult.
Going to war with every internet site and advice forum and making internet access harder won’t fix anything, and will have massive collateral damage against everyone seeking support from strangers or trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them.
But I see we are going to do it anyway.
The direction is clear.
Those companies do get what they lobby for, and they are lobbying hard for ID checks on every website, wrapping their desire to enclose the internet commons for themselves in a faux concern for children’s welfare.
And governments wish to monitor and control the internet, so they will pass these laws.
I wonder how many parents have a family group-chat that they’re going to accidentally ban their kids from using, not realizing that ‘social media’ might include Whatsapp? 😆
It won’t fix anything, it will make the situation for kids worse, impose costs and rents and hacks and exploits on all of us, and increase government and corporate power.
Many will lose access to their networks of support and help.
So it goes.
We will build a better more censorship resistant internet. It’s already here really: Briar. Matrix. Nostr. Bitchat. Veilid. Spritely. And the rest.
The laws may push us there faster.
The race will go on.

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot
2026-03-14 08:21:26

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

An image of a BlueSky post by Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social reading:

"Search-and-rescue crews were “flying blind" trying to rescue survivors from deadly tornadoes that hit the Midwest last week. 

Why? Because Kristi Noem hadn't approved FEMA's $200,000 contract with a tornado-tracking tool. 

But she had time to spend $220 million on anti-immigrant ads. Priorities."
@Techmeme@techhub.social
2026-04-13 20:20:45

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)
bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it
2026-03-05 19:01:07

If you imagine #NYC police as Cartman (from South Park) doing the whole "respect mah authoritah!" bit, the behavior of the NYPD around the snowballs incident makes complete sense. It's not that anyone was hurt, nor was there any damage, but their fragile egos just can't handle not having their authority respected. Even when they do completely dumb shit like wandering into the m…

The NYPD's dragnet against revelers who took part in the viral snowball fight in Washington Square Park on February 23 has now nabbed a second New Yorker—this time, a teenager.

On Wednesday morning, 18-year-old East Harlem resident Eric Wilson Jr. turned himself in at his local precinct, and was arraigned yesterday on misdemeanor charges of obstructing government administration and harassment in the second degree, according to the Manhattan DA's office. Following the snowball fight, the NYPD…

#AllBillionairesAreEvil #YesEvenThatOneYouBootlick #WealthTaxNow

A tweet from "Brave New Films" paired with a news article headline: "All billionaires under 30 have inherited their wealth, research finds." The tweet says, 'Wait, I thought "hard work" is what made people billionaires? 🤡'
@PwnieFan@infosec.exchange
2026-03-29 18:19:32

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

“I need to be able to tell my grandkids I did not stay silent”
@pre@boing.world
2026-04-06 22:04:30
Content warning: Watching newly discovered old Doctor Who
:tardis:

:tardis:
Daleks, in the future, are teaming up with the heads of the other galaxies to overtake the Solar system and destruct time, and the Doctor's only got Steven (a pilot from the 24th Century) , Katerina (a slave girl from ancient Troy), and a local soldier to help.
The guardian of our Solar system has betrayed us to the Daleks! He's mined 50 years worth of Terrainium secretly from Uranus to power the core of the Dalek Time Destructor.
The Daleks say "Execute" when they have found someone guilty of negligence, vs just when they are a pest to be exterminated.
The doctor nips in, under disguise, to investigate the council, steals the Terranium and the president's ship, then gets the team stranded on the Solar system's prison planet.
The prisoners try and raid the ship but the Doctor has set a trap and electrocutes the invaders, just in time for them to fix the ship and escape.
Only one prisoner has stowed away on board.
[Then there's a episode still missing, in which apparently Katerina wrestles the prisoner into the air-lock and they are both spaced. The Doctor and Peter return to Earth to warn about the Daleks.]
They arrive on Earth (future earth remember, but all the computers have giant tape drives and knobs) as an experiment on mice is in progress.
I guess the experiment was to try and make mice turn into negative images screaming in slow-motion and then bounce up and down as they are transmitted through space many light years away. And the Doctor, Steven, and some security guard chasing them get sent along too. With the Daleks following on in their ships.
The Daleks exterminate the mice 😔
There's 8 ft tall invisible creatures on this planet so the mice were gonna be in trouble anyway. The Doctor beats them off with sticks before being apprehended by Daleks.
[Then there's four still-missing episodes in which the Doctor and Steven steal a Dalek ship, trick the Daleks with a fake Terrainium core, meet the Monk who attempts revenge, and celebrate Xmas on a silent film set. All with Daleks giving chase]
The security guard and the Monk are still with them in the next archived episode, when they are in a Egyptian tomb for some reason and the companions including the monk are captured.
The doctor faces the Daleks to negotiate his companions' return.
At the hostage exchange the Doctor hands over the core as the ancient Egyptians attack the Daleks. It's a slaughter of course. All the Egyptians die, but they made a good distraction and the Doctor skips off.
He's knicked the Monk's Tardis' directional compass so the Monk goes to who knows what random place now.
The Doctor aims to try and materialize the Tardis at the point the Daleks are likely to use that Terranium, to take over the galaxy and destruct time, but seems like the Tarids fails.
[And then there's another two still-missing ones in which the security guard ages to death in a time-mishap, and an entire planet is wiped of all life to thwart the Daleks. The Doctor and Steven lament the senseless deaths of the three of them that they cared about.]
Crikey. I guess they used to bounce around in time and space more during a story when it was twelve 20 minute episodes. That Prison Planet was there only to be landed upon, have the Doctor electrocute some people, and then leave with a stowaway. The 8ft tall invisible creatures are in like 2 scenes.
Incredible body counts. Just absolute carnage compared to most New Who.
The background of mega-death while the protagonists lament the death of only their own reminds me of the way the contemporary news will focus on one marooned soldier over the deaths of hundreds. Humanize only their own.
The Monk is a good candidate for a return. He's got this great Frankie Howerd like mischievous campness. Exited this story with a randomizer on his tardis vowing revenge.
#watching #tv #doctorWho #TheDaleksMasterPlan