@cdarwin@c.im2026-04-15 23:53:34
US stocks opened with modest gains but two of the three major indices enjoyed banner sessions.
S&P 500, Nasdaq ended at records highs as markets bet on US-Iran accord
"That said, it still feels a touch premature to be pricing in a smooth resolution," he added.
Talks involving US Vice President JD Vance ended last weekend in a typical shitshow.
On the Iranian side, a foreign ministry spokesman said "several messages" had been exchanged via Islamaba…
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2026-01-16 01:30:51
me: *low whistles*
me: "Damn, check out THOSE bollards!"
8yo: "What?"
me: "These metal things. they're nice, aren't they? No drivers parking on this sidewalk!"
8yo: *lays down on one*
8yo: "Yeah, they're good, I guess."
#SafeStreets
@heiseonline@social.heise.de2026-04-14 14:36:00
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-03-16 10:22:41
On the first day of the #PTSD intensive, we talked about the shooting. I had felt like I was done with that, that it didn't have anything left for me. But there was something still that filled me with rage... that is still confusing and enraging.
It wasn't actually being shot. I wasn't even the possibility of death. I had been prepared to die. I always knew that was possible. It was something else.
I remember Marc Hokoana's face as he pepper sprayed pacifists, smiling and taunting, joyfully hurting people who he knew were refusing to respond. I remember their flags, the kek flag, literally a Nazi battle flag replaced in 4chan colors with the clover 4chan logo instead of the swastika. How many people have been tortured, have died? How much suffering, that these people not only welcomed but celebrated, joyfully participated in.
The cruelty was the point. It was the plan, the plan he posted to Facebook, the same plan as they have always had, of torturing people until someone responds and then murdering them. Inflicting trauma, responding with overwhelming force, showing how "big and strong" they are because they can always escalate.
Try to stop someone from peppers praying people, they shoot you. Shoot back, like Michael Reinoehl, and they send a death squad for you. But we keep standing up, so they keep escalating to the slightest imagined infraction. Now they just murder you for being in a car, for filming at a protest, for existing.
The bar for what justifies murder or torture will continue to move lower until there is no one left, or until they can no longer escalate.
The feeling of helplessness is still not the biggest thing though. It's the joy with which they inflict this on us. That's it. That's the thing.
CW: gun violence, abuse dynamics
https://hexmhell.writeas.com/the-creature-ptss-5-day-1
@aredridel@kolektiva.social2026-04-14 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.
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-01-16 00:15:50
Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI, alleging Grok refused to stop making sexualized deepfakes of her, amid custody disputes (Peter Senzamici/New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2026/01/15/us-news/elon-musks-baby-…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-04-15 06:25:40
A December 2025 survey of US adults finds 21% follow local news very closely, down from 37% in 2016; 42% get news from online-only sources, up from 15% in 2018 (Pew Research Center)
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/local-news-fact-sheet/
@heiseonline@social.heise.de2026-02-14 11:26:00
@cdarwin@c.im2026-02-16 05:03:29
Trump's CDC is canceling $600M in HIV and STD funds to four Democrat-led states
The Centers for Disease Control plans to suspend grants to local public health agencies, hospitals, NGOs and universities in
California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota
Attorneys general in the four states set to lose funding have sued to block the cuts,
saying the changes are retaliation over state resistance to the administration's immigration priorities.
In the suit, th…
@heiseonline@social.heise.de2026-01-16 08:18:00