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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Depending on the state you live in, and whether the lease specifically mentioned taking special care of the hardwood floors, this could very well be considered regular wear and tear. There does not appear to be intentional damage here.

    The landlord will also need to provide documentation prior to getting work done if they want you to cover the bill, at which point you’ll have the option to contest it.

    Check out tenant rights for your state to verify. Hopefully, you’ll also be more careful with hardwood floors in the future. Couches on wheels are no-bueno.


  • Since Reagan’s neoliberal policies, Republicans have created a vicious cycle of: government inefficient so reduce funding -> not enough resources to hire good talent and provide services -> government inefficient so reduce funding.

    IRS is the perfect example where they can only afford to go after the mid-income, while the wealthy get to openly dodge taxes.

    All this while promoting the idea that the private sector can do it better, which has led to increasing inequality in resource access, and has only contributed to more money in the pockets of executives and those same Republicans.

    We need someone like FDR again to expand government programs and show how good a well run government can be for everyone. Current Democratic leadership’s half assed policies only help to reduce their favorability because neither the left nor the right is happy.



  • The criticism from large AI companies to this bill sounds a lot like the pushbacks from auto manufacturers from adding safety features like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. Just because someone else used a model for nefarious purposes doesn’t absolve the model creator from their responsibility to minimize that potential. We already do this for a lot of other industries like cars, guns, and tobacco - minimize the potential of harm despite individual actions causing the harm and not the company directly.

    I have been following Andrew Ng for a long time and I admire his technical expertise. But his political philosophy around ML and AI has always focused on self regulation, which we have seen fail in countless industries.

    The bill specifically mentions that creators of open source models that have been altered and fine tuned will not be held liable for damages from the altered models. It also only applies to models that cost more than $100M to train. So if you have that much money for training models, it’s very reasonable to expect that you spend some portion of it to ensure that the models do not cause very large damages to society.

    So companies hosting their own models, like openAI and Anthropic, should definitely be responsible for adding safety guardrails around the use of their models for nefarious purposes - at least those causing loss of life. The bill mentions that it would only apply to very large damages (such as, exceeding $500M), so one person finding out a loophole isn’t going to trigger the bill. But if the companies fail to close these loopholes despite millions of people (or a few people millions of times) exploiting them, then that’s definitely on the company.

    As a developer of AI models and applications, I support the bill and I’m glad to see lawmakers willing to get ahead of technology instead of waiting for something bad to happen and then trying to catch up like for social media.



  • I reached out to Roku support regarding this. The rep told me “why are you complaining. You are the only one.” He then disconnected the chat. I’ve reached out to my state’s AG to report this. No action so far but waiting. If there are enough complaints, that might help move the needle.

    What Roku is doing should be completely illegal - bricking the product after purchasing it for full price if you don’t agree to waiving your rights.




  • Switching to a Linux can be overwhelming. A few distros have made great strides to make most of the OS work right after installing it. But even if there’s only 1% issues due to hardware, drivers, gaming, etc., troubleshooting those issues would often require using terminal and are not accessible to everyone. There’s no customer support to reach out to, and online forums can be difficult to navigate for someone not familiar with coding.