Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
7hr ago
Annex the Caldwell LDS Temple. Rename it the Nampa Temple.
Quantumfreakonomics
8hr ago
now that you have substack tactics guys breaking down gifs and so on.
I request links
Quantumfreakonomics
8hr ago
I think it's ITAR. I don't know all the technicalities of the legal regime, but it sounds like the proximate concern of the government is that China/Iran/North Korea/Russia would be able to use Fable to find and fix security vulnerabilities in their own code. This would be a big blow to US offensive cyber capabilities. Think Stuxnet exploits getting patched.
Quantumfreakonomics
8hr ago
The Anthropic C-suite needs to rewatch Oppenheimer.
More details are emerging regarding the US Government's decision to impose defense export controls on Claude Fable. There are lots of similarities between this kerfuffle and the February Supply Chain Risk designation. Somehow, Anthropic executives still don't understand the language of power and government. It's not hard. All they need to do is watch Oppenheimer (and pay attention this time). If they still can't figure it out, here is my cheat sheet:
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If you are working on sufficiently powerful technology with dual-use applications, then you work for the War Department. There is no option for you to continue your preferred work while licensing only peaceful civilian applications of your product.
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If you piss off the wrong person, you're screwed. Some people will see defeating you as a stepping stone to greater power and influence. Some people will work to destroy you simply out of spite.
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Anthropic has scientific geniuses, Anthropic has an Oppenheimer, but does Anthropic have a General Groves? How far do you think Oppenheimer would have gotten without General Groves?
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If you are trying to convince the government that you are not a security risk, do not hire people like this and present them as neutral experts. (No seriously, what the actual fuck were they thinking?)
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You don't get to decide what counts as a security risk and what doesn't. That is the job of the government and the political process.
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The president does not care about your ethical concerns. You think you know how much he doesn't care, but he actually cares much less than that.
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If you aren't okay with the government using your technology, then don't build it. Isidor Rabi said no. You can say no too.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
Most American sports have a much faster cadence than soccer. Popular crowd activities from these sports don't port over easily.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
Lots to unpack here.
At the philosophical level, if we don't have the state capacity to implement a regulatory regime that meets Anthropic's specifications, then why is Anthropic training and releasing frontier models? It reads like they are saying, "here are our demands for submitting to the authority of your government". That's not how it works. You submit to the government or you get shut down, like the rest of us.
At the operational level, I don't know how possible it would be to implement a regime that is "transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts," for regulating capabilities that don't exist yet. How can it be fair if we don't know yet what the relevant metrics are? How can it be clear if we don't know what red flags to look for? How can it be grounded in technical facts if nobody knows how these models work?
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Amy Adams is perfectly cast.
Dissagree here. Any woman more attractive than Dr. Holly Krieger is not believable as a serious intellectual.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
How are you guys preparing mentally and physically for the impending arrival of flesh-eating maggots?
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Maine punishes only the buyer of sex, not the seller.)
Here’s how Susan Collins can still win
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
In the parallel universe of Sudan, Arabs and black people look exactly the same
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
I'm also confused by how many people in the US seem to be driving without their license on them; what the fuck?
In most parts of the US, not driving is simply not an option. If you can’t get a license, then you just have to deal with your entire life being a continuous string of misdemeanor offenses.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
The fun little wrinkle here is that Irish Nationalism, like Palestinian Nationalism, is a left-wing ideology. Conceivably we could see a similar progression to what happened in Palestine, where the historical champions of the nationalist cause lose legitimacy and are replaced by a more explicitly religious right-wing resistance front.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Thanks for the court documents. I hadn’t seen that before. It looks like Bricks and Minifigs’s entire argument hinges on the claim that they were a bona fide purchaser to the entire store and inventory. I’m not sure how well that will hold up given that
a.) They didn’t purchase the store. They repossessed it, and
b.) The previous owner told them about a consignment agreement on the day they repossessed the store.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
I don't think people realize how risky mom-and-pop shops are as counterparties. FinnaSkipTown LLC can just shut down and not give you your money, stuff, or services at any time.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
If a Danish company wants to tell me how to use English plurals, they are welcome to put their flag on the moon whenever they want.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Alright, lets talk about the LEGOs.
In case you have been living under a rock, here's the story so far:
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Elderly man has $200,000 LEGO Star Wars collection.
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Elderly man enters into a consignment agreement with the local Bricks and Minifigs franchise.
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Said franchise undergoes a messy ownership change mediated by Bricks and Minifigs corporate. The new owners stop honoring the previous consignment agreement and refuse to give the LEGOs back.
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Elderly man's son gets the runaround trying to get his father's LEGOs back. Corporate tells him to deal with the franchise owner. The franchise tells him to deal with corporate.
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Frustrated, the elderly man's son turns to YouTuber Reckless Ben. The resulting video goes viral.
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The situation escalates into a wild goose chase as Reckless Ben attempts to serve legal process onto the store owners, aggravated by encounters with the suspiciously hostile American Fork, Utah police department (oh yeah, both the new franchise owners and the Bricks and Minifigs CEO are Mormon)
All of this is complicated by the fact that Reckless Ben is, well, reckless. He wears hidden spy cameras. He uses false pretenses to get into situations and locations. At one point he gets arrested for stalking. Despite this, it's hard not to root for him. He seems to have the franchise owners dead to rights for conversion (aka stealing), and Bricks and Minifigs corporate seems at best lackadasical that one of their franchises is defrauding counterparties, and at worst complicit.
I don't see how Bricks and Minifigs survives this as a company. This story is everywhere and nobody is on their side. This is not a particularly lucrative buisiness to begin with, and right now their name is mud. They did, finally, two weeks later, sort of admit that they were wrong and that Brian will get his LEGOs back. It's been radio silence from the principles since that last message went out. I would be surprised if we've heard the end of this saga.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Why is Trump going to the Knicks game tonight?
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
”In medieval Scandinavia, it wasn’t uncommon for a group of people to actively observe a newlywed couple having sex in the bridal chamber”
This makes a surprising amount of sense when you think about it. At its core, what a marriage is is a public announcement that these two specific people are having sex, and that the community is okay with it. There is no better representation of these values than for the community to literally watch the consummation of the marriage.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Be the change you want to see in the world.
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/contact-and-directory/anonymous-tip-lines
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Also her ability to not get caught. That is where most of the value add is.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
This question hits differently having just returned from a date with a woman who would be well into her mid-30s at motherhood on any reasonable projected timescale. I’m pretty sure it’s not even legal to abort downies in Texas. I can’t imagine traveling hundreds of miles for the sole purpose of killing my own child. The thought has me physically sick. I also wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life babysitting my infertile dead-end offspring.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
If there is one thing we know about California, it's that they would never take a well-meaning but poorly-thought-out policy and stick with it despite increasingly absurd consequenses year after year.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
I feel bad for the lady’s husband. One day you’re married to a tradwife influencer, and the next day your wife’s sexual history is printed in the New York Times.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
Slow news week. The current thing is still Graham Platner.
NYT: Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior
That's right, the New York Times hunted down as many of Platner's ex-girlfriends as they could to dig up dirt on this guy. It would be an exaggeration to say that the entire article is irrelevant high school-tier personal gossip, but gee there sure is a lot of irrelevent personal gossip. The one anecdote with teeth comes from a woman active in Republican politics.
But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.
During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.
“It hurt,” she said. But she added: “It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.”
There are a lot of ways one could interpret those paragraphs.
He had what she described as a “warrior ethos” and would fantasize about killing people he deemed a threat, she said. She said he told her that rape was about power.
It was something that stuck with her through the years, Ms. Fifield said.
“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” she recalled, saying that he added that it would not be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
“He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.
Ladies, never ask your man what he would do to a home invader. Unless you're into that.
This article confirms my earlier suspicion that Platner is getting the kind of hostile media coverage usually reserved for Republicans. The elephant in the room is that this is because Platner likes Nazi imagery (it is beyond serious dispute at this point that he knew for years it was a totenkopf) and dislikes the state of Israel. I am 90% sure that both of the authors are Jewish. It feels icky to break out the calipers for this (though I am not basing my assessment solely on their names and faces. I was able to find old articles linking them to synagogues), but I really do think it is relevant.
If there was a 10% chance that the H-bomb would reverse gravity, and Eisenhower told Oppenheimer to fix it, and Oppenheimer said, "I can't. That's just what H-bombs do." Then yes, Eisenhower's job would be to stop the test and put the entire department on administrative leave.
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