picafrost

Academic research is a marvel because (aside from patents) nobody owns it, in the sense of property. It is given away to be used freely. Researchers want their work used and cited. The primary external reward for publishing is reputation and prestige which translates to remuneration for researchers. And that remuneration can be poor.

Beyond the issue of growing understanding and keeping a bountiful stock of questions to pursue, this scheme seems to be threatened as well.

Only OpenAI could turn solving a Millennium Prize Problem into bad PR. Sad that such an amazing milestone in the trajectory of AI is mired under poor stewardship. AI may solve many human problems but it won't stop humans from being human.

> Maybe letting other countries rob us blind is worse.

I find this argument interesting because the US economy is the largest in the entire world by a fairly wide margin. That the US is being robbed implies it's operating from a position of weakness, which is an absurd idea.

Are other countries with factories really responsible for US companies outsourcing manufacturing to them? Do you want cheap goods or do you want your fellow Americans paid pennies?

The US consumer economy must grow. Regulating anything that has the potential to continue its growth is simply not a priority for the current US administration, and investors won't miss out on big tech exits as they grow more scarce. Let the gamblers gamble, let socially harmful uses of AI proliferate, let the surveillance state spread, as long as they generate revenues that do not collapse* the economy. If they produce individuals harmful to society, well, indignants can be Flocked, fined, and, if necessary, imprisoned.

Flouting the law ahead of regulators has always been a strategy in startups, only now the stakes are not "get a ride to the airport."

Are there not disparities between running an application in the terminal and running a native GUI? I can only speak for macOS, but my experience with bespoke native GUI applications of my own or other developers (pre-built distributions in GitHub assets) is that I must first pass through the layers of the macOS security model: doing a right-click dance to launch the application, changing permissions in security settings, etc. I assume the experience is different depending on how you set up Xcode to compile, how it's signed, etc (I have zero experience with how this works). That said, I do not recall being subjected to any of this using terminal applications.

Put differently, a GUI application seems to subject you far more to the whims of Apple or Windows than a TUI and perhaps even a different run context. Maybe the permissions fiddling for this is insignificant. Is there a clear user contract from Apple or Microsoft about this?

Naturally, this is a non-issue in Linux.

I find it a real shame that botany doesn't receive a larger share of the curriculum in school. Plants are ubiquitous (obviously), they've been here well before we have and will remain here well after we've gone extinct. Despite that, in my experience, the average person knows very little about how and why they are organized into taxonomies and what characteristics that gives them.

Seed pod? Square stems and opposite leaves? Five petaled flowers? All simple things to identify and dramatically narrow to a small set of families, if not one. And then the morphology between plants in those families becomes interesting to observe. And so it goes on.

Then again, a great number of people live in areas totally absent of any plants that aren't from a Home Depot, so that knowledge can scarcely be used. This is something Joey (the author) loves to rant about in his videos.

> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.

The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle.

This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.

In my view the best writing presents a portal to someone else's mind. LLMs do not have a mind. They can produce text and perhaps even 'weave a tapestry' of plot lines that make for an enthralling and well written story. Maybe a meaningful one, if prompted with a particular set of themes and narrative ideas. Is that a voice?

I don't know. But I do think, or rather I hope, real voices will prevail. But publishers (including KDP) have a rough road ahead of them, if they also want that. Just search YouTube for tutorials on how to spam Amazon with AI generated works, hoping for a break out. It is sad.

Is anyone working on cryptographic human-crafted attestation, without feeding the work into LLMs?

One reason I switched to the cheapest notebooks and cheapest (reasonable) pens is a feeling that I was attempting to live a simulacrum of productivity bathed in nostalgia for an era I never lived in, and which probably never existed.

There's a vision I am still somewhat attracted to of illuminating notes into a handcrafted moleskin (or whatever) journal and in doing so, creating an artifact that has value across all dimensions. This intention, whether it sits on the surface of my subconscious or just below it, detracts from the thing of value: what's being written.

What really changed my perspective was attempting to write seriously. The first draft of a long form work is the bare minimum to begin writing. Writing does not really begin until it exists. When I tried to adopt this into the notes I made in my professional life what I found is that, in general, I didn't really need much of the notes anyway.

> Hong Wang will become the third female mathematician in history to receive the Fields Medal

Interestingly, if true, it will also be the first time an MIT PhD graduate has won the Fields Medal.

As I understand it many of the very wealthy do not "own" properties directly but control LLCs that do. The chain of trust/LLC ownership can be complex. Also as I understand it, this legislation does not really answer that call effectively -- though I have, of course, not read the full legal text myself.

I suppose in Ken Griffin's case, even if his residence is owned by an LLC he controls, he is known to reside in it. But how effective is this legislation when the purpose of LLC ownership is expressly anonymity and accounting convenience?