Donald Trump says random bullshit he cannot deliver on, that will appeal to his most rabid supporters.

The Biden Tariffs have way more impact on total EVs sales than reducing the EV credit to $0. The tariff blocks $6k EVs from enter the US, the credits just knocks $7.5k off a $50k car.

Like I get that us here in the United States are wary of Chinese things, but let’s all be honest, American car companies aren’t going to produce a sub $20k EV anytime soon. LiFePO₄ batteries have been a thing for some time now, the excuse the batteries are the main cost of the car is faux argument that US makers just aren’t ready to stop subsidizing their other vehicle platforms with EV sales.

Trump’s arguments won’t do shit no matter which side of the aisle you sit. The thing killing wide adoption in the US of EVs is the US EV makers.

Roney Beal, 72, a Shamong, New Jersey resident

This person has literally nothing else to do but hammer this lawsuit until their untimely passing.

When Beal told them that she would call her lawyer, they told her to get out of the casino and to not return. The Beals were then escorted off of the property, Di Croce said.

But this person is literally 72, the casino could hypothetically just wait them out.

Di Croce hopes Bally’s wants to make this situation right with Beal. After suffering a heart attack last year, Beal turned to the casino for enjoyment.

I mean and there’s a good chance the lawyers just drag for as long as they can. Odds are favorable for the casino winning on things just sorting themselves out naturally here.

There is a legal way to do this:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress

— Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1

Nebraska and South Dakota have a compact that’s been approved by Congress that has land swap between the states based on where the river is when particular assessments happen. So land leaving one state and going to another state isn’t unheard of. If you go look at NE and SD’s border in the southeast corner of SD, you’ll see the river and the border is pretty tight. Now compare that to states that have no such compact like Arkansas and Tennessee. River and the border are all kinds of messed up.

The thing is, both Idaho’s and Oregon’s State assembly will have to vote on it as you indicated. It’s not up to the citizens to dictate when a state’s border can be redrawn. Once Idaho and Oregon have a compact, they will need to send it to DC for Congress to vote on it. If it passes both the House and the Senate, the new compact can be enforced and the new borders drawn.

From what I’ve heard Oregon will not even begin to entertain this notion.

But yes, this is completely legal in the Constitution and we’ve done it before too. And we even have had the case where we took one state and split it into two happen before as well. Virginia and West Virginia. So we’ve used this part of the Constitution enough to know exactly how it needs to go down.

Is it going to go down? IDK. California said they were going to split up into 3, 4, 5 different States, not holding my breath on that one either. Would be pretty neat to redraw Idaho though. Never liked it’s weird long edge on the west side. Now it’ll look like someone giving the middle finger or something.

What’s wild is that one of the people who write anti-cheat software was saying they needed to get their shit working on Linux like yesterday.

So I mean, it crazy that Windows is literally having some folks scramble on how to get their shit working on Steam/Linux.

Yeah, I think that’s the bigger issue here. These devices pay their way by collecting data to sell off. What this “overhual” is indicating is that they haven’t quite figured out how to make these devices not only pay for themselves, but also, generate a net background profit for the company.

The only thing I’m reading from this story is that Amazon is just aiming for more dollar signs from Alexia. I’m going tell you in the day and age of Siri and Whatever Google’s thing is, this is going to backfire massively on Amazon. This will likely collapse whatever paltry Alexia that’s out there. And I have a good feeling they’ll look at this collapse as “well the technology just isn’t a good money maker.” No you idiots, it’s not a mass profit driver. I get how something not drawing double digit percentage gains is a mystery to you all, but just because you cannot buy your fifteenth yacht from it, doesn’t mean that the technology is a failure.

But it’s whatever, Amazon’s ship to wreck.

Quick things to note.

One, yes, some models were trained on CSAM. In AI you’ll have checkpoints in a model. As a model learns new things, you have a new checkpoint. SD1.5 was the base model used in this. SD1.5 itself was not trained on any CSAM, but people have giving additional training to SD1.5 to create new checkpoints that have CSAM baked in. Likely, this is what this person was using.

Two, yes, you can get something out of a model that was never in the model to begin with. It’s complicated, but a way to think about it is, a program draws raw pixels to the screen. Your GPU applies some math to smooth that out. That math adds additional information that the program never distinctly pushed to your screen.

Models have tensors which long story short, is a way to express an average way pixels should land to arrive at some object. This is why you see six fingered people in AI art. There wasn’t any six fingered person fed into the model, what you are seeing the averaging of weights pushing pixels between two different relationships for the word “hand”. That averaging is adding new information in the expression of an additional finger.

I won’t deep dive into the maths of it. But there’s ways to coax new ways to average weights to arrive at new outcomes. The training part is what tells the relationship between A and C to be B’. But if we wanted D’ as the outcome, we could retrain the model to have C and E averaging OR we could use things call LoRAs to change the low order ranking of B’ to D’. This doesn’t require us to retrain the model, we are just providing guidance on ways to average things that the model has already seen. Retraining on C and E to D’ is the part old models and checkpoints used to go and that requires a lot of images to retrain that. Taking the outcome B’ and putting a thumb on the scale to put it to D’ is an easier route, that just requires a generalized teaching of how to skew the weights and is much easier.

I know this is massively summarizing things and yeah I get it, it’s a bit hard to conceptualize how we can go from something like MSAA to generating CSAM. And yeah, I’m skipping over a lot of steps here. But at the end of the day, those tensors are just numbers that tell the program how to push pixels around given a word. You can maths those numbers to give results that the numbers weren’t originally arranged to do in the first place. AI models are not databases, they aren’t recalling pixel for pixel images they’ve seen before, they’re averaging out averages of averages.

I think this case will be slam dunk because highly likely this person’s model was an SD1.5 checkpoint that was trained on very bad things. But with the advent of being able to change how averages themselves and not the source tensors in the model work, you can teach new ways for a model to average weights to obtain results the model didn’t originally have, without any kind of source material to train the model. It’s like the difference between Spatial antialiasing and MSAA.

Okay for anyone who might be confused on how a model that’s not been trained on something can come up with something it wasn’t trained for, a rough example of this is antialiasing.

In the simplest of terms antialiasing looks at a vector over a particular grid, sees what percentage it is covering, and then applies that percentage to to shade the image and reduce the jaggies.

There’s no information to do this in the vector itself, it’s the math that is what is giving the extra information. We’re creating information from a source that did not originally have it. Now, yeah this is really simple approach and it might have you go “well technically we didn’t create any new information”.

At the end of the day, a tensor is a bunch of numbers that give weights to how pixels should arrange themselves on the canvas. We have weights that show us how to fall pixels to an adult. We have weights that show us how to fall pixels to children. We have weights that show us how to fall pixels to a nude adult. There’s ways to adapt the lower order ranking of weights to find new approximations. I mean, that’s literally what LoRAs do. I mean that’s literally their name, Low-Rank Adaptation. As you train on this new novel approach, you can wrap that into a textual inversion. That’s what that does, it allows an ontological approach to particular weights within a model.

Another way to think of this. Six finger people in AI art. I assure you that no model was fed six fingered subjects, so where do they come from? The answer is that the six finger person is a complex “averaging” of the tensors that make up the model’s weights. We’re getting new information where there originally was none.

We have to remember that these models ARE NOT databases. They are just multidimensional weights that tell pixels from a random seed where to go to in the next step in the diffusion process. If you text2image “hand” then there’s a set of weights that push pixels around to form the average value of a hand. What it settles into could be a four fingered hand, five fingers, or six fingers, depends on the seed and how hard the diffuser should follow the guidance scale for that particular prompt’s weight. But it’s distinctly not recalling pixel for pixel some image it has seen earlier. It just has a bunch of averages of where pixels should go if someone says hand.

You can generate something new from the average of complex tensors. You can put your thumb on the scale for some of those weights, give new maths to find new averages, and then when it’s getting close to the target you’re after use a textual inversion to give a label to this “new” average you’ve discovered in the weights.

Antialiasing doesn’t feel like new information is being added, but it is. That’s how we can take the actual pixels being pushed out by a program and turn it into a smooth line that the program did not distinctly produce. I get that it feels like a stretch to go from antialiasing to generating completely novel information. But it’s just numbers driving where pixels get moved to, it’s maths, there’s not really a lot of magic in these things. And given enough energy, anyone can push numbers to do things they weren’t supposed to do in the first place.

The way models that come from folks who need their models to be on the up and up is to ensure that particular averages don’t happen. Like say we want to avoid outcome B’, but you can average A and C to arrive at B’. Then what you need is to add a negative weight to the formula. This is basically training A and C to average to something like R’ that’s really far from the point that we want to avoid. But like any number, if we know the outcome is R’ for an average of A and C, we can add low rank weights that don’t require new layers within the model. We can just say, anything with R’ needs -P’ weight, now because of averages we could land on C’ but we could also land on A’ or B’ our target. We don’t need to recalculate the approximation of the weights that A and C give R’ within the model.

Because they sure as hell not getting it from any of the Republican leadership.

Crazy. The zombie apocalypse started from people wanting to become infected.

Seinfeld has publicly supported Israel following the 7 October Hamas attack, and traveled to a kibbutz in December to meet with hostages’ families

In case you’re wondering what the argument is. You should still read the story though.

The case literally has zero to do with an affair. The alleged affair could be a complete fabrication. The point of the case is that Trump directed his lawyer to use money for XYZ. Trump then put that money down on the ledger as ABC. That he claimed it was ABC and not XYZ is the entire point of the case.

The WHY he decided to commit fraud is a nice detail but literally has zero bearing on if Trump actually did the whole I said the money was for ABC but it was really for XYZ.

I keep telling folks, but the 118th Congress, the current one, we have so far 46 bills that have made it to law. The only one that really made a big difference was Pub. L 118-5 which ended officially the student loan repayment pause and ended some enhanced benefits of food stamps, SNAP, free lunches, etc.

The other 45 bills have been mostly bumps to the debt ceiling (and of course the small “benefits” Republicans reaped in those), a 250th anniversary of the Marine Corp collection coin (because Congress has the power over the treasury, that’s one of the things they do), renaming post offices (Congress has power over the post in the Constitution), some bumps to VA funding, and that’s about it.

The small wins they got in avoiding the fiscal cliff aren’t exactly massive bangers. I mean compared to say the 117th Congress, the one before this one, that hammered out 362 laws with hits like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPs act, and so forth. There’s just been nothing like any of that in this current Congress.

And the 116th Congress gave us 344 laws, navigated a pandemic, AND got two impeachments out the door.

The Republicans have shown, they’ve got nothing. We literally have on record them as doing nothing. This has been the least productive Congress in modern history. They have literally set a brand new record for number of times it took to get a speaker and for the least amount of work done EVER.

so why would we tolerate it from a judge who is in an arguably more important position?

Because the person being tossed into jail could very well become the most important position. No nation is above political retaliation and the reality of a mob murdering the judge and daughter and then subsequently getting full pardons from that most important position is a non-zero value.

Given the weakness that exudes from Congress on Impeachment, there’s zero ramifications for such a situation. And given the nature of Trump, there’s zero compunction that would ever keep him from this situation arising.

Everyone fears the “official” acts that Trump can carry out. Smarter people understand the non-official actions that he can give a nod to and give comfort to. That’s how truly corrupt governments work, not by official acts, but the non-official ones.

Maybe if that’s the case going back to Kansas which has a better cost of living is a better choice than trying to live in a city or state with the highest cost of living?

Not to deride your minimum wage tangent here, but there’s something to be asked here. Why does California have a high cost of living? Why does Kansas have a low cost of living? I think when you ask the question of why cost of living is so vastly different from area to area you start to get a better picture of why we have a lot of problems addressing wages matching that cost of living.

It’s almost as if people pointed out that raising the minimum wage will result in higher costs for everything and thus raising the cost of living

This has been a national thing. I feel like you’d might have a point if this wasn’t true literally everywhere. Even where I live in very rural Tennessee cost of living has gone up. Our county recently increased sales tax and property tax is likely to go up as well. Cost of goods like eggs have gone from 78¢ to $2.19 here from 2019 to today, with eggs at one point hitting $6.99 a dozen here.

So there is a relationship between minimum wage and cost of living but that’s clearly not the case with California’s minimum wage increase that goes into effect next month. Everything, everywhere is increasing in cost. Which goes back to what I was saying. When you start asking questions on why cost of living is different, you get a picture of bigger factors that drive national cost of goods and services. And you see that touched upon in the article.

“We suspect that low-wage workers’ high likelihood of living in three-earner (or more) households might be due largely to California’s high housing costs,” the legislative analyst’s office said.

Housing is a massive thing everywhere and housing is flying through the roof. The reasons for that are complex and it’s absolutely a discussion, for perhaps elsewhere though (I cannot imagine that Lemmy comments are that great a place for such a trite diatribe). Minimum wage does indeed play a role but, and I could be reading your comment incorrectly, I believe that you are attributing a much larger weight to that factor than it deserves and forgoing the complexity of the issue by solely focusing on that sole reason.

In a 2-1 decision, judges ruled that “the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography. Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

WHY CAN PARENTS NOT DO THIS ASPECT?!

This is the continual wild part of recent conservative bullshit. Everything the State is taking up is basically something a parent could step in and deal with.

“My kid read a bad book that turned them into a frog! Which is also gay!”

Well watch what your fucking is reading then and have a discussion about why you disapprove of it.

“My kid is watching porn and now they can’t function in society and don’t want to get a $7.25/hr job of listening to Karens scream at them!”

Then fucking don’t leave a computer in the their room perhaps? Maybe take their phone away at the end of the day? I mean or have a rational discussion about their ever changing body as they begin to become an adult? I mean any one of those is better than “OH I KNOW! I’LL LET THE GOVERNMENT PARENT FOR ME!!”

And what’s wilder about the Conservative movement, the level of parenting has zero rhyme or reason.

• Watching porn? — That’s Government parenting.
• Working in a meat packing facility with blades so sharp they slice through literal bone? — Oh yeah that’s totally a regular parent thing.

Fucking wild is what it is!

I’m really struggling to wrap my head around where this line between Government overstepping and justified Government regulation is with them. If you don’t want your kid watching porn, then don’t let them fucking watch porn. Ideally you should have a talk about their ever evolving sexuality but clearly that’s just crazy liberal talk from me.

I had some discussion with someone once about the 10th amendment and it relating to State’s banning abortion. And guy was like “Oh yeah this is a clear win for State’s rights!” And I’m like, the 10th amendment is setup that we have one of two winners at the end of the day. The State or the People.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It says OR there. That means every “State win” is a “the people loss”. You do understand that right?

Just fucking silence as that thought slow rolled into his brain’s processing center, that then subsequently hit the panic button because of overload.

I just fucking can’t. DO you want Big Brother in everything or no? Because every inch you give to the Government helps them step-bro your ass.

Oh man! I was just about to say Texas! Oklahoma has its own version of this scheme. These oil companies, they absolutely do not want to pay decommissioning cost on this and they’ll use every trick they can find to avoid it as long as possible.

Coal industry does roughly the same thing just different tricks. Everyone in the fossil fuel industry looking to get out of that whole “what comes next” problem.

But can’t say much, recycling solar is nascent and hardly done at this point but the whole solar industry is brand new so hard to draw a conclusion there. Same for wind, most do eventually get landfill but there is interest at least in recycling, so we’ll have to see how that plays out.

But the energy sector in general seems to always want to skirt the costs at the end of operation, never calculating the full cost into the revenue stream. Stop paying the execs so much and hold some of that cash back for clean up time. You know it’s coming, the responsible thing is to not act all shocked that clean up time has come and file bankruptcy. Execs that do this ought to be shot.

Open the door HAL

Wild days ahead where we’re trading Wendy’s delivery futures on Robinhood.

Remember the go old days when teachers…

checks notes

Taught classes?

Self-immolation. To set oneself ablaze, usually in protest.