Tootfinder

Inside Israel,👉 “there is no room for any question marks or doubts about this war,”
says journalist Gideon Levy,
a columnist for Haaretz and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board.
He says war fever has taken over the country, 🔸with polls showing 93% support for the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, Lebanon and beyond
— at least among the Jewish public.
“Israel is doing as much as it can,” he says.
🔥“As long as the American support is so massive, so blind and…

Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy: Israel Will Not Stop Wars & Occupation Until U.S. Pulls Support
Inside Israel, “there is no room for any question marks or doubts about this war,” says journalist Gideon Levy, a columnist for Haaretz and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. He says war fever has taken over the country, with polls showing 93% support for the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, Lebanon and beyond — at least among the Jewish public. “Israel is doing as much as it can,” he says. “As long as the American support is so massive, so blind and so automatic, this will go …

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.

The privacy disaster of meta glasses...
but it is already around us with any camera-enabled device, such as phones and smart TVs
https://www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/metas-ai-smart-glasses-and-data-privacy-concerns-workers-say-we-see-everyt…

Meta’s AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns: Workers Say “We See Everything”
Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’s lives.

Samsung quietly increases US prices of the Galaxy S25 Edge, S25 FE, Z Flip 7, Tab S11, Tab S11 Ultra, and more; the 1TB Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra jumps by $280 (Adrian Diaconescu/PhoneArena)
https://www.phonearena.com/news/samsung-us-p…

Unitrees humanoider H1-Roboter erreicht im 100-m-Sprint 10,1 m/s
Der H1-Roboter von Unitree kann maximal 10,1 m/s schnell laufen. Das ist ein Spitzenwert für humanoide Roboter.
https://www.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s abrupt exit from the race for California governor
— then his announcement he would leave Congress
— left his rivals scrambling to lock down his former supporters in a crowded contest with no clear leader,
injecting more turmoil into the campaign to lead the nation’s most populous state.
Swalwell’s decision to suspend his campaign Sunday followed allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman twice,
including when she worked for him…

Swalwell exit leaves California governor's race in disarray
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s abrupt exit from the race for California governor left his rivals scrambling to lock down his former supporters in a crowded contest with no clear leader. Swalwell's withdrawal injected more turmoil into the campaign less than a month before mail ballots go out to primary election voters. The congressman's decision followed allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him, that were published Friday in the San Francisco Ch…

At least 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are on board with Trump’s new military alliance.
They are calling it the America’s Counter Cartel Coalition.
Latin America’s top right-wing leaders are involved,
including El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei.
They met in Florida for the event, on March 7.
The United States has promised to use lethal force to destroy cartels and narco-traffickers in those nations.
Kristi Noem,…

The Donroe Coalition: Trump’s new right-wing military alliance
Last weekend, Donald Trump met with right-wing allies from Latin America to kick off a new military coalition to attack so-called drug cartels and push his agenda up and down the hemisphere. This is episode 8 of Under the Shadow, Season 2.

Iran’s missile arsenal is still largely intact, according to U.S. and other intelligence agencies,
contradicting claims made by the Trump administration.
Iran has regained access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz,
as well as to the majority of its mobile launchers and underground facilities, according to a report by The New York Times.

Iran’s Missile Arsenal Still Intact, Sources Say, Contradicting Trump’s Claims
Reports contradict claims made by Trump, who has repeatedly stated that Iran has been “decimated” by the war.

The global economy has been rocked by the war in the Middle East,
with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatening energy flows and sending the price of oil soaring to its highest level in years.
The United Nations Security Council responded to the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war by passing a resolution this week condemning Iran
— specifically for its attacks on U.S. allies in the region
— while ignoring the role of the Trump administration and the Netanyahu govern…

Economist Jeffrey Sachs: U.S.-Israeli “War of Choice,” Assault on U.N. Charter Could Lead to WWIII
The global economy has been rocked by the war in the Middle East, with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatening energy flows and sending the price of oil soaring to its highest level in years. The United Nations Security Council responded to the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war by passing a resolution this week condemning Iran — specifically for its attacks on U.S. allies in the region — while ignoring the role of the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in instigating t…

The list of qualifying documents in the SAVE Act for proving citizenship appears long -- but many of them come with qualifiers.
Under the bill, a REAL ID -compliant driver’s license would have to indicate that “the applicant is a citizen,”
--- but not all do.
Only five states
— Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington
— offer the type of enhanced REAL IDs that explicitly indicate U.S. citizenship.
Standard driver’s licenses, generally available…

Documents required by GOP's voting bill can be difficult and costly to get
Congressional Republicans are pushing voting legislation that's backed by President Donald Trump and would require voters to produce documentary proof of citizenship in order to register for federal elections. Obtaining those records and paying for them may not be as easy as the bill’s promoters make it sound. There's a range of hurdles, including the time and money involved in getting birth certificates or passports. A University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million Americans who ar…