- You cannot directly execute a remotely-hosted program.
- You cannot run inference on an API-served model.
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Closed-source:
- You can execute a program with the binary. You cannot generate a new binary, but you could try to reverse-engineer it or (painfully) modify its execution.
- You can run inference on a model with the weights. You cannot re-produce a new set of weights from scratch, but you can fine-tune.
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Truly open:
- You can freely modify the source and produce new binaries.
- You can use the original training data and model architecture to independently re-produce the weights (assuming you've got the compute). You can modify the model architecture to get the weights that would've resulted from training the model that way.
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To me these are pretty clear parallels... I don't think the weights provided in a vacuum are in the spirit of open source, historically speaking.
The policy argument is totally separate, of course, and I fully understand why none of the frontier labs are truly open.
> Closed-source: You can execute a program with the binary. You cannot generate a new binary, but you could try to reverse-engineer it or (painfully) modify its execution.
Time have changed. This should be:
Closed-source: You point an LLM at it, and get back source that's often easier to understand than the original.
I believe this is due to a surge in imports in response to looming tariffs - supply chains are trying to stockpile before they hit. I am skeptical that this stockpiling is significantly displacing real investment.
The way that the figures are calculated views imports as a negative factor to GDP (because NET exports is an input to the model). Please correct me if I am wrong.
Imports are neutral to GDP. The reason they're subtracted in the standard formula for GDP is that makes it easier to count.
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Exports - Imports
The reason that imports are subtracted is because Consumption, Government Spending and Exports all have a domestic and imported component. So instead you could have GDP = (Domestically produced consumption) + Investment + (Government spending on domestic products) + (Domestically produced Exports) and not subtract imports.
But that's a lot harder to measure than measuring totals and subtracting imports.
> this is due to a surge in imports in response to looming tariffs
“GDPNow is an excellent tracking model, however, the January surge in imports - especially for gold - caused the model to move negative. As the Atlanta Fed noted: ‘the contribution of net exports to first-quarter real GDP growth fell from -0.41 percentage points to -3.70 percentage points’.
Usually there would be an offsetting increase in inventories, but that is a lagging indicator. This is a short-term distortion and will balance out over the next month or so. I don't expect negative GDP in Q1.”
I think, this named deferred demand - people known before about new tariffs and buy really need things before new policy taken effect, so now will be some time without new buys.
It will normalize in few years, may be for some markets in few months, and for some will need decades, from EU practice.
These prompts are fielding millions of queries. The test questions are a small part of them. Further, the server doesn't know if it got the right answer or not, so it can't even train on them. Whereas in the arrangement with the testing companies before release, they can potentially do so, as the they are given the scores.
Companies with actual profits can, and do, simply buy back their own stock. Inflating market expectation of future cashflows is not the only way to realize asset appreciation.
you built a internal project, co-hosted with a database, with a password 'abc123'
a month later, your manager decided to share it with other teams, the decision was made in a meeting which you're not invited
when the manager came to you, you asked:
- how about give me a week to make it a saas, with authn/authz
- no, we don't have the time, just tell them the endpoint and the password
another month later, something changed, your company built a partership with another company, your manager decided to share the project with teams in the other company
you asked:
- how about we do something like virtual network peering so that we can share a connected network with our parter
- it's complex, we can not change the network status of our partner, and we don't have a responsible role for this work, just give them the endpoint and the password
password 'abc123' is just a analogy, in this case, there's no password at all
No, he clearly said that a "second home for humanity" is of dubious (but potentially nonzero) value.
Rather, the main benefit would lie in the technological advances made in order to enable such a Mars mission in the first place (similar to advances during Apollo).
>Rather, the main benefit would lie in the technological advances made in order to enable such a Mars mission in the first place
I agree with this view, but the comment I was replying to only mentioned as a benefit that Mars could be a second home (which I find rather ridiculous).
"that comment literally say" even thought it doesn't say that one of the benefit would be "technological advances" so in reality "that comment literally doesn't say it" and that's why I was asking.
As of 1/1/2025 the residential average rate paid for the municipal utility of Santa Clara, CA is $0.175/kWh vs a residential average of $0.425/kWh for PG&E
PG&E has an 11% margin on those rates because they keep burning the state down and having to pay for it. Municipal utilities don't have to worry about that.
The only thing that could be seriously considered a downside is that Santa Clara, CA is now absolutely jam-packed with data centers that have low employment per sqft.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
