David and Amy are - openly - skeptics in the subject matters they write about. But it’s important to understand that being a skeptic is not inherently the same thing as being unfairly biased against something.

They cite their sources. They backup what they have to say. But they refuse to be charitable about how they approach their subjects, because it is their position that those subjects have not acted in a way that is deserving of charity.

This is a problem with a lot of mainstream journalism. A grocery store CEO will say “It’s not our fault, we have to raise prices,” and mainstream news outlets will repeat this statement uncritically, with no interrogation, because they are so desperate to avoid any appearance of bias. Donald Trump will say “Immigrants are eating dogs” and news outlets will simply repeat this claim as something he said, with adding “This claim is obviously insane and only an idiot would have made it.” Sometimes being overly fair to your subject is being unfair to objective truth.

Of course OpenAI et al are never going to openly admit that they can’t substantially improve their models any further. They are professional bullshitters, they didn’t suddenly come down with a case of honesty now. But their recent statements, when read with both a critical eye, and an understanding of the limitations of the technology, amount to a tacit admission that all the significant gains have already been made with this particular approach. That’s the claim being made in this headline.

So is your autism diagnosed or undiagnosed?

I ask this as an autistic person, because the only charitable way to read what’s happening here is that you’re clearly struggling with statements that aren’t intended to be read completely literally.

The only other way to read it is that you’re arguing in bad faith, but I’ll assume thats not the case.

Please learn the difference between “lying” and “presenting a conclusion.”

Claiming that David Gerrard an Amy Castor “don’t understand the technology” is uh… Hoo boy… Well it sure is a take.

So, I had to double check myself on this one, and my original answer wasn’t entirely correct.

If it is found that the destruction of evidence was intentional then yes, the jury can be instructed to view the missing information in the least favorable light, or a case can simply be outright dismissed or a default judgement entered.

However even in the case of “accidental” (ie, not provably intentional) deletion the court can still take various measures to redress the balance in some way.

I am not a lawyer but this guy is - https://joneskell.com/how-spoliation-of-evidence-impacts-litigation/

AFAIK that is, in fact, how juries are generally instructed to regard destruction of evidence.

The problem is that they won’t.

Yes, AI tools, in the hands of skilled people, can be very helpful.

But “AI” in capitalism doesn’t mean “more effective workers”, it means “fewer workers.” The issue isn’t technological so much as cultural. You fundamentally cannot convince an MBA not to try to automate away jobs.

(It’s not even a money thing; it’s about getting rid of all those pesky “workers rights” that workers like to bring with us)

You’re missing the fact that a flatscreen TV will still often represent - as a portion of someone’s wealth - a far greater cost than a private jet would to a billionaire. Consider that most low income people are getting their cell phones on payment plans, whereas a multimillionaire can afford to buy a Lamborghini Gellardo out of pocket. On top of that, high end purchases like cars, yachts, houses, fine art, etc, often retain a lot of their resale value, turning them into investments in many cases, often reselling for more than their purchase price. So yes, I absolutely did account for the tax exemptions on “essentials”, and even when you factor those your sales tax only model still ends up being less onerous the more wealthy someone is.

I also want to call out the unspoken implication that is often present with these theories - not accusing you of doing this, but it needs to be said - that items like phones, computers and TVs are extraneous luxuries that no poor person should ever own, as if enjoying a fulfilling life or engaging in relaxation are things that only the wealthy should be allowed to have access to.

No

An investment contract exists if there is an “investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others.”

And just to be absolutely clear, many cryptocurrencies do not qualify as investments, and the government agrees. However there are numerous other regulations that the crypto industry apparently cannot handle, such as “Know Your Client” laws, which all financial institutions have to abide by, and which exist to prevent money laundering (Binance’s internal emails revealed that they knew perfectly well that their clients were using their service to facilitate crime, and they were perfectly happy with that).

These are not bad faith regulations. They exist for good reasons, and there is absolute no good reason why the crypto industry shouldn’t also be subject to them. If these are currencies they should be regulated like currencies. If they are investments they should be regulated like investments.

There wasn’t a need to “define a new regulatory framework that actually fits” because, funnily enough, the existing regulatory framework already fits. It turns out, inventing new words doesn’t actually change the fundamental nature of the thing you’re describing. Refusing to call something an “investment” doesn’t change the fact that you’re selling an investment, refusing to call something a “security” doesn’t prevent it from being a security if it meets the definition.

Edit: Sorry, let me address that ridiculous point about Coinbase “asking for clarity” directly. Yes, Coinbase repeatedly “asked for clarity” in the same manner as a dude in a girl’s DMs repeatedly asking for nudes while being told in the bluntest of terms to fuck off. They were given perfectly clear answers, they just didn’t like them, so they kept claiming, with zero fucking basis, that these will laid out rules that every financial institution has been following for decades were somehow “unclear” to them. It was a conversation not unlike a Sovereign Citizen trying to get out of a speeding ticket by claiming that they don’t understand where the officer’s authority comes from. The law is prefectly clear. If you don’t understand the law, you hire a lawyer who does. That’s a cost of doing business. Sticking “smart” in front the of the word “contract” doesn’t suddenly invent a whole new field of law. I can’t suddenly get away with murder because I call it “crypto murder”. The law is based on what you do, not what you call it.

Lower income people spend - as a proportion of their income - far more of their income than higher income people. This makes the “nothing but sales taxes” approach much more regressive than it initially seems, despite often being touted by economists as a progressive approach to taxation.

Coiners: “We want to be taken seriously and treated as legitimate businesses!”

Biden Government: “OK. We’ll treat you as legitimate businesses in your respective fields and expect you to comply with the same regulations everyone else has to.”

Coiners: “Oh shit wait no this sucks, our whole business model only works because of crime, quick everyone vote for a fascist conman!”

Companies release free products to bring people into their ecosystem. If your company is already using Workstation Player, and now they’re looking for a Type 1 hypervisor, it makes sense to seriously consider ESXi. The idea especially is that you get smaller companies hooked on your free products early and then as they grow they buy more of your stuff rather than reconfigure their whole setup. You also get IT enthusiasts and home users to adopt, which gets you name recognition and builds familiarity. Then in the workplace those same users look to your brand as one to trust.

For VMware, the problem is that they recently made a huge volley of deeply anti-consumer moves - basically told all their small customers to fuck off, and told their big customers to prepare to get fucked - and it really did not go the way they’d hoped. Turns out when you’re competing in a space where KVM, Hyper-V and XCP all exist, it’s actually not that difficult for customers to leave. So they did.

This won’t directly help their bottom line but it’s presumably a sacrifice play to salvage their brand somewhat. Turns out when you tell people to fuck off, they tend to do just that.

It’s been proven that even small amounts of synthetic data injected into a training set quickly leads to a phenomenon termed “model collapse”, though I prefer the term “Hapsburg AI” (not mine).

Basically, this is the kind of thing you announce you’re doing because it will hopefully get you one more round of investment funding while Sam Altman finishes working out how to fake his death.