Except that it isn’t. There are many open AI models being created by non-corporate entities, NousResearch is one of the more popular ones. They are dedicated to creating open models for the betterment of all.

And even if you do use open models that were created by a corporation… ok. It isn’t like using those models on your own hardware, on your own network, is going to be providing anything to those corporations.

To be fair, Google had the ability many years before ChatGPT was released to release a similar product but they purposefully didn’t, and instead they only used it internally. And then when OpenAI did their release Google was one of the voices calling for moderation. They released Bard because otherwise they were going to be left behind, and likely have lawsuits from investors.

Do you want to live in a country with a dictatorship like that? I don’t.

Uh, I’ve got some bad news for you …

I have my local LLM currently setup and it runs just as well as Sonnet 4.6 from a quality standpoint, and for performance it is slightly slower but it’s still faster than I can respond.

This is with a Strix Halo APU with 128GB unified memory using the latest Qwen3.6 models with llama.cpp.

My favorite Scrabble win was using ‘eBay’… before playing that word I looked at the instruction sheet and it specifically said that “words that begin with a capital” are not allowed. There were some sour grapes after that one.

It’s a wonderful show, and I don’t know the scene you’re referring to but they do tend to spend a lot of time creating dishes, which I suppose is something chefs do when coming up with something new. But what gets me is when they are outside of the professional kitchen and cooking for someone. It’s happened a few times where someone says they are hungry, and so one of the chefs will ‘whip up something’… and it’s like a whole process. Once it even involved a trip to the grocery store, and that was when a kid was hungry.

Even still, it’s a great show.

This is how we play… and it has resulted in some VERY long games.

Once we had some friends over and their 8 year old son was playing with us. He almost won a few times, but his dad did everything in his power to keep him from winning. It was close to midnight before that game ended and it was the first time I considered changing the house rules.

Which Zahn books? The Heir to the Empire or the newer Thrawn trilogy? I love both, and I feel like they’ve done an incredible job with Rebels, Ahsoka, Mandalorian… really all of the tv shows (though I haven’t watched Maul yet). I would love for them to continue telling these stories and have the original characters just show up where it makes sense… like Luke coming to collect Grogu for training. Maybe have Han and Chewy running a cantina left to him by Lando. Ewoks starting the process of joining the New Republic and electing representatives. And Wedge… well, he had enough of war and no one has heard from him in many years.

They don’t need to keep telling stories about Luke… the remarkable part of his life happened when he was young, now he’s doing the boring and difficult work of rebuilding the Jedi Order. There’s no exciting story there, but he can be in the background of other characters who are doing remarkable things.

You come to the comments and see if anyone has a good summary of it yet.

They don’t.

The Linux phone is like Iranian nukes… always just right around the corner.

That how I feel… but I only ever talk about it to a very small number of people. No one needs to know my shit.

“They are living, sentient beings, and if we have the ability to save them through a safe and humane solution, we have a responsibility to try.”

So I’m only going to offer to save half of them.

But seriously, I’m glad he’s able to help. I wish he could find a way to keep them where they are while also protecting the local environment because the story of these hippos is great and could be a nice tourism draw for Columbia, but even saving some from culling is a good thing.

I’m curious why? She has done great in both dramatic and comedic roles, as well as dark comedy, which I think would work well with White Lotus.

I did some ‘back of the napkin’ math a few days ago to see what it would take for the employees in my company to purchase enough shares for a controlling stake in the company. I figured that we’d never get 100% of the employees to buy in, but we also don’t need 100% of the shares, so to keep it easy I calculated if 60% bought 60% of the shares… and it would cost each employee around $2.3 million.

That tells me that each employee provides $2.3 million worth of value to the company… and we’re not getting paid anywhere near that. Not even close.

I need to use this because I’m always awkward trying to figure out ways to get people to open up. I work with a couple of Asian guys at work, and one of the guys is VERY open about his background. I could write an essay on his life from age 13 to 60. The other guy is a complete mystery. I’ve worked closely with him for 3 years and I still have no idea about his background. A few years ago he told me he was taking two weeks off “to go back home” and I thought that this was my chance to find out more, I asked “where’s home?”. And he replied “L.A.”.

It is even more important after retirement… gotta keep the market healthy so you don’t have to go back to work.

When my daughter was 7 she got really interested in graffiti and had tons of questions about it. She asked if there were any famous graffiti artists and I told her the names of some of the more prolific local artists, but of course told her all about Banksy.

I told her that she’s really lucky to live during a time when Banksy’s identity is unknown because at some point it will become known and the magic will be over.

That was 2 years ago, and I haven’t told her about this story yet because until Banksy confirms it, I don’t accept it. And because it makes me sad that the magic might be over.

We can unmask Banksy but just let the Panama Papers fade into obscurity.

We’ve effectively put sanctions on ourselves, amazing.

Isn’t Nova Scotia poorly located to be an efficient spaceport since it won’t get nearly the same boost from the Earth’s rotation as it would if it launched closer to the equator? I imagine that a Caribbean or South American country would gladly take $200 million to lease them a spaceport location.

Does Japan have any of that?

Not really. Their unions are actually designed to be part of the company rather than external for an entire industry. Since the delivery drivers appear to be contractors they aren’t considered eligible to join the union.