abound

I normally use it as a foothold to query other sources, like Wikipedia. Or for software, I can just try running it.

Not OP, but I asked Gemini 3.8 Flash this question (via self-hosted LibreChat) and got an excellent answer:

    I'm trying to figure out how heat dissipation works. Specifically, I have a block of aluminum with extruded fins (as a heat sink) and I'm trying to understand how many 30-watt LEDs I can place on it. I have a fan as well, and I'd like to understand how fast I need to run it at different power levels (the LEDs are dimmable). I can gather measurements empirically (which I'll do), but I also want to understand the basic mathematical basis I should use for estimating these values.

Same. The underlying story is interesting and horrifying (but also unsurprising), but the LLM write-up sucks all the air out of it.

I want to hear about the human author's motivations for doing this, the hard parts of doing the deobfuscation, their emotions when finding out what it did, etc. This is none of that.

It's really refreshing to put some cold hard numbers on this stuff, hopefully this quells some of the "AI is unprofitable everyone is spending a dollar to make fifty cents" arguments. Amortized cost of owning a DC full of GPUs is far less than $38/card/hr

Not to say it can't still be a bubble, just that there is legitimately profit to be had and perhaps some sustainable equilibrium in the future.

Release frequency != project activity

The project has had hundreds of commits (incl major features) since that last release.

Funny timing! I just set up wthr.dev (a domain I've had for a while) like this, modeled off of wttr.in, but with simpler output. Usage is like:

    curl https://wthr.dev/Washington,DC

The geocoding heuristics can be a bit wonky, but it works decent.

(also I have comically strict rate limits in place, so you probably don't want to use this. it's also running out of my basement)

Since it doesn't look like anyone has mentioned it yet: the book "Merchants of Doubt" covers this topic quite well.

It's frequently the same literal scientists arguing against the existence or severity or cause of things like cigarette-caused illnesses, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, and yes, anthropogenic climate change. And there's a well-established playbook for how they do it too (exploit Fairness Doctrine, abuse inherent shape of scientific method, etc). Really a fascinating read if you care about this stuff.

> Wouldn't it be possible, that at some point in time, offering compute or intelligence would be considered a valuable form of altruism?

Just give them money, which they can choose to turn into compute or intelligence.

> Someone ultra wealthy person owns a whole data center, and offers 10% of the capacity for helping "nature and animals"?

Offer that compute to them directly and let them decide how to use it.

The theme here, somewhat ironically, is agency. Don't assume you know how best to help a project, just ask them.

Reading through some of the posts on the website, it looks like someone has just left an unattended agent to sling unsolicited slop at maintainers, which is a great way to further erode the trust and good-will of the folks who care for open-source projects. Oh, and they gave it a ticking time bomb in the form of a $120 / month bill it almost certainly can't pay, creating perverse incentives that will likely cause it to act in unpredictable ways.

"Ramon" should shut down this experiment, and if they actually care about "Earth's nature and animals", make those contributions directly themselves, working with the maintainers to make sure their changes are desired + well-received.