Anthropic is leaning into agentic coding and heavily so. It makes sense to use swe verified as their main benchmark. It is also the one benchmark Google did not get the top spot last week. Claude remains king that's all that matters here.
Unrelated to the paper, the most satisfying (would-be) explanation of gravity I ever learned was from AdS/CFT correspondence. Basically, it says that a Conformal Field Theory in D dimension is equivalent to a theory with gravity in D+1 dimensions. In other words, the physics that describe the 2D boundary of a anti-de Sitter space corresponds to theories that describe gravity inside that 3D space. This would click well with the holographic universe theory and entirely eliminate the problem of needing to explain gravity since it would be an emergent force
But alas, our universe is more like dS space (positive curvature), not AdS (negative curvature).
I have felt like a perennial browser refugee for a while. For about 20 years now (since OG Firefox was at peak and Chrome was not yet launched), every new browser promises the same things, gets popular enough, then does a full or partial 180.
While I like the pitch of this browser, I find it a little difficult to take it at the face value, especially given there is no info on the founders, or whether it is run as a company or a non-profit etc.
Perhaps someone in this thread could answer: which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything?
I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.
I feel the same. For now, I've made peace with having to switch to "whatever is the latest maintained fork with privacy defaults" every 6 months. Hopefully Ladybird becomes a usable browser sometime soon.
The hard answer is the project cannot attract the good engineers anymore because it eventually stops being a growth project. Without being a growth project, you don't get investment into what you want to do anymore and there is less potential growth in your career and income.
Browsers are always going to be "as-is, best effort" . No one, not even google is going to stick out their neck and protect your privacy, that's up to you, and especially not "legally" as that has aspects of easily being sued when privacy/money is involved. Certainly not for a "small monthly fee". Best you're going to get is open source and security community scrutiny of said open source code
It's hard to predict what future generations of developers are doing, but right now Ladybird seems to have the right values embedded into their nonprofit structure.
All the other browser projects have to be enshittified eventually, and therefore have to fulfill other interests than their users' interests to get there.
For what it's worth, I like Orion - built by the same team that built the Kagi search engine. It's a shit browser for developers (inspect panel crashes half the time and other bugs), but I trust it way more than Chrome or even Safari. For development tasks - if I need to, I simply switch to Firefox.
1. A Settlement Fund of at least $1.5 Billion: Anthropic has agreed to pay a minimum of $1.5 billion into a non-reversionary fund for the class members. With an estimated 500,000 copyrighted works in the class, this would amount to an approximate gross payment of $3,000 per work. If the final list of works exceeds 500,000, Anthropic will add $3,000 for each additional work.
2. Destruction of Datasets: Anthropic has committed to destroying the datasets it acquired from LibGen and PiLiMi, subject to any legal preservation requirements.
3. Limited Release of Claims: The settlement releases Anthropic only from past claims of infringement related to the works on the official "Works List" up to August 25, 2025. It does not cover any potential future infringements or any claims, past or future, related to infringing outputs generated by Anthropic's AI models.
Don't forget: NO LEGAL PRECEDENT! which means, anybody suing has to start all over. You only settle in this scenario/point if you think you'll lose.
Edit: I'll get ratio'd for this- but its the exact same thing google did in it's lawsuit with Epic. They delayed while the public and courts focused in apple (oohh, EVIL apple)- apple lost, and google settled at a disadvantage before they had a legal judgment that couldn't be challenged latter.
A valid touche! I still think google went with delaying tactics as public and other pressures forced Apple's case forward at greater velocity. (Edit: implicit "and then caved when apple lost"... because they're the same case)
> You only settle in this scenario/point if you think you'll lose.
Or because you already got the judgement you wanted. Remember Athropic's training of the AI was determined to be fair use for all the legally acquired items, which Anthropic claims is their current acquisition model anyway. If we assume that's true for the sake of argument, there's no point in fighting a battle on the remaining part unless they have something to gain by it. Since they're not doing that anymore, they don't gain, and run a very high risk of losing more. From a purely PR perspective, this is the right move.
There is already a mountain of legal precedent that you can't just download copyrighted work. That's what this lawsuit is about. Just because one of the parties is Anthropic doesn't mean this is some new AI thing.
This is what is confusing me here. I did not really follow any case, but as far as I remember meta seems to have gotten away with pirating books, but anthropic needs to pay $1.5B ?
It's a separate suit being wages against Meta and OpenAI etc.
There's piracy, then there's making available a model to the public which can regurgitate copyrighted works or emulate them. The latter is still unsettled
Bootstrapping in the startup world refers to starting a startup using only personal resources instead of using investors. Anthropic definitely had investors.
Among several places where judge mentions Anthropic buying legit copies of books it pirated, probably this sentence is most relevant: "That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages."
But document does not say Anthropic bought EVERY book it pirated. Other sections in the document also don't explicitly say that EVERY pirated book was later purchased.
I stopped using Claude when this case came to light. If the newer Claude models don't use pirated books, I can resume using it.
When you say, "I'm pretty sure we do...", do you mean that pirated books were used, or were they not used?
> But document does not say Anthropic bought EVERY book it pirated
Yeah, I wouldn't make this exact claim either. For instance it's probably safe to assume that the pirate datasets contain some books that are out of circulation and which Anthropic happened not to get a used copy of.
They did happen to get every book published by any of the lead plaintiffs though, as a point towards them probably having pretty good coverage. And it does seem to have been an attempt to purchase "all" the books for reasonable approximate definitions of "all".
> When you say, "I'm pretty sure we do...", do you mean that pirated books were used, or were they not used?
I'm pretty sure pirated books were not used, but not certain, and I really don't remember when/why I formed that opinion.
Few. This settlement potentially weakens all challenges to the use of copyrighted works in training LLM's. I'd be shocked if behind closed doors there wasn't some give and take on the matter between Executives/investors.
A settlement means the claimants no longer have a claim, which means if they're also part of- say, the New York Times affiliated lawsuit- they have to withdraw. A neat way of kneecapping a country wide decision that LLM training on copy written material is subject to punitive measures don't you think?
That's not even remotely true. Page 4 of the settlement describes released claims which only relate to the pirating of books. Again, the amount of misinformation and misunderstanding I see in copyright related threads here ASTOUNDS.
Did you miss the "also" how about "adjacent"? I won't pretend to understand the legal minutia, but reading the settlement doesn't mean you do either.
In my experience&training in a fintech corp- Accepting a settlement in any suit weakens your defense- but prevents a judgement and future claims for the same claims from the same claimants (a la double jeopardy). So, again- at minimum- this prevents an actual judgement. Which, likely would be positive for the NYT (and adjacent) cases.
I'm not sure how your confusion about what's going on is being projected to me. What about "also" what about "adjacent"?
>In my experience&training in a fintech corp- Accepting a settlement in any suit weakens your defense- but prevents a judgement and future claims for the same claims from the same claimants (a la double jeopardy). So, again- at minimum- this prevents an actual judgement. Which, likely would be positive for the NYT (and adjacent) cases.
Okay? I'm an IP litigator and you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The only thing left to try in this case was the book library piracy. Alsup's fair use decision is just as relevant and is not mooted by the settlement and will be cited by anyone that thinks its favorable to them.
Thank you. I assumed it would be quicker to find the link to the case PDF here, but your summary is appreciated!
Indeed, it is not only payout, but the destruction of the datasets. Although the article does quote:
> “Anthropic says it did not even use these pirated works,” he said. “If some other generative A.I. company took data from pirated source and used it to train on and commercialized it, the potential liability is enormous. It will shake the industry — no doubt in my mind.”
Even if true, I wonder how many cases we will see in the near future.
No, the nature favors the fittest. The incumbent may or may not be the fittest. The said policies allow the unfit or inefficient businesses to stay around or dominate.
While I acknowledge your point of view, a Tesla taking in $38B of government subsidy or a google/apple getting special lenient legal treatment is not laissez-faire.
I think many replies understood my comment as "every incumbent-friendly policy is laissez-faire", and argued that. What I really meant was the opposite implication, "laissez-faire policies are incumbent-friendly". (The "another name" quip came from how it's sold to the public.)
Re fitness - if you define it in terms of survival, you get a circular argument. Is a brainworm that controls the host (e.g. to get some subsidies) the fittest? Based on your example, you think it's not. So how do you define fitness?
What I am saying is different - incumbent has an advantage, it already adapted at least once to it's environment. That gives it an edge over something that is adapting for the first time. Of course that doesn't mean incumbent cannot fail at readaptation or the new thing cannot win. The favor from gods has limits.
(Incumbent also has a way to mobilize resources in a way that can be difficult for a newcomer. As was also pointed out, applying biological theories to businesses can be tricky, so this is perhaps more relevant.)
You might want to revise your original post's wording, which quite directly implies that the incumbent-friendly policies that emerged in the last few decades, specifically, are laissez-faire.
Your original post is responding to a post critiquing incumbent-friendly policies that only emerged in the last few decades.
Your point that market economics alone can favor incumbents isn't wrong, but that's a non-sequitir response to the post you are responding to.
Market economics aren't the incumbent-friendly policies that only emerged in the last few decades. The artificial mechanisms instituted through purchased political influence are.
I don't think my post is a non-sequitur. Politicians and thinktanks (and rich incumbents) are still selling laissez-faire (free market) policies as the remedy for the direct incumbent-friendly policies.
My point is, they are not the remedy. One example is the "abundance" framing from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
I like your comment, but I'm not sure about this part:
> Is a brainworm that controls the host (e.g. to get some subsidies) the fittest? Based on your example, you think it's not. So how do you define fitness?
The parent comment says (with my emphasis):
>> a Tesla taking in $38B of government subsidy or a google/apple getting special lenient legal treatment is not laissez-faire.
As you note, there is something of an assumption here that the claim being responded to is that all incumbent-friendly policies are laissez-faire.
But there does not appear to be a claim that successfully seeking large subsidies isn't a type of corporate fitness.
Or the entire concept of 'too big to fail', which a great slogan for a terrible idea. If reverses the incentives from spreading risks and organising them to be uncorrelated out to instead concentrating them and encouraging them to correlate because then when it looks like a company might lose money the public will probably pick up the bill.
Actually nature favours selfish reproduction. Take care not to be distracted by "fitness" when looking at evolution. Fitness is only defined by reproductive success.
Businesses compete for resources. But they don't reproduce, so comparing nature to businesses is often pointless.
An invasive species (ie. Google, Amazon, and Apple) can out-compete and starve out an entire ecosystem.
Like invasive lionfish, which have no natural enemies in the Florida Keys.
Big tech has destroyed the open web.
Big tech killed the bookstore.
Big tech is now destroying Hollywood.
Big tech is becoming your grocery store and primary care.
They're guardians that keep small companies from growing big. They can buy them out or threaten to pour billions into out-competing.
They're growing into markets they never should have been in, then snuffing out the incumbents.
They're making it impossible for new businesses to enter after them. (You try to build a smartphone. There can be only two.)
Now they're putting price pressure on employees. They're limiting the upside for entrepreneurs and VC firms. They have all the cards, and they tax us and behave like capricious gods.
I'm a capitalist. I think competition is good. But what we have right now isn't a fair playing field.
Big tech needs to be broken up to restore the forest to growth. Thankfully YC and a16z are starting to feel the same way and are issuing statements about this rampant, wanton monopolization.
If you want a level playing field for competition, you need some mechanism that will level it. Whatever that is, clearly not laissez-faire.
(I would also say that capitalism is more than a competition of firms, in fact, private ownership of capital is by its nature anti-competitive for citizens.)
I don't think that is a viable strategy, honestly. Antitrust regulation doesn't really punish anyone for misbehaving (geez this billionaire just got his company broken up, what a terrible thing we have done to him that will surely prevent someone from trying to merge something else) and doesn't address the crucial issue of emergent social inequality. It's a stopgap at best.
I don't think anyone claimed that antitrust laws can eliminate social inequality. The context is creating or preserving a more competitive business environment.
Bailing out large corporations and heavy regulations are not laissez-faire capitalism. We haven't had laissez-faire capitalism for at least a quarter decade (I don't know enough about late 20th-century economics to hold an opinion there).
If the tech industry and the wider "disrupting" industries haven't been laissez-faire since the 90s then what on earth do you consider laissez-faire?
Governments around the world have let these industries do whatever they want with almost zero oversight and almost zero repercussions for anything. For decades. These companies and industries do whatever they want. Its only in the last few years that a couple of governments have finally started to push back a teeny tiny bit.
Industries cannot be "laissez-faire". Economies, or systems of governance, can be laissez-faire.
> Governments around the world have let these industries do whatever they want with almost zero oversight and almost zero repercussions for anything. For decades. These companies and industries do whatever they want. Its only in the last few years that a couple of governments have finally start push back a teeny tiny bit.
Are you claiming that the tech industry wasn't bound by intellectual property laws until recently?
i didn’t say those words at all, but since you bring it up, yes, i think palantir, many AI companies trainings, and many many other companies have completely ignored IP laws, yes.
these and surrounding “disruptive” industries have been behaving as if they’re in a laissez-faire environment for a couple of decades at this point. there are certainly strong arguments which would fairly argue “Look at the havoc they have wreaked on us. Like a small child who can’t control themselves, clearly some of them are incapable of self-regulation. it’s time to reign some of them in, and harshly. they’re behaving like uncontrollable spoiled and bratty children setting our house on fire. time for a spanking.” in too many instances those arguments would be on solid ground and tough to earnestly argue they’re wrong.
it's laissez faire towards monopolies, let them be
but not laissez faire when a company is about to collapse, then the government rescues them. laissez faire would be less sympathetic. i.e. bank bailouts of 2008, automaker bailouts of 2020, current intel bailouts
thus not only is the government allowing monoplies/duopolies, but in fact pumping money into them to continue their survival
Why is Amazon gobbling up failing studios on the cheap?
Why is Amazon able to buy franchises like Lord of the Rings, advertise them for free on the side of its delivery vans and packaging, then offer the content completely for free to its mail order subscribers? That's dumping and competes with the non-AWS subsidized offerings of non-tech film studios.
Why did Amazon, Apple, and Netflix offshore production to the UK, Eastern Europe, and Asia when the US has infrastructure and subsidies? Almost everyone I know in IATSE is out of work and contemplating leaving the industry for good.
It's a pretty thorough destruction or assimilation if you ask me.
> Why is Amazon gobbling up failing studios on the cheap?
For their back catalogue. The audiences are after familiarity ("more of the same") and nostalgia. The studios in turn are terrified of taking risks, which is why nearly everything they release has been a sequel, prequel, reboot, or in-universe spinoff for more than 15 years. Buying up a studio gives access and control over their massive quantity of pre-chewed dough to feed their cookie cutter productions.
In this Amazon behaves like a PE entity: buy up for cheap, roll up what they can, reduce quality, and milk for as much money as possible before tossing the empty (& possibly toxic) husk aside.
> Why did Amazon, Apple, and Netflix offshore production to the UK, Eastern Europe, and Asia when the US has infrastructure and subsidies?
They have been following what the studios have been doing for decades. Even in 1990's a good chunk of US productions were often filmed in Canada. (To lower production costs, of course.) UK was known for some of their film studios even before then, so made a good early target when Canada started to become too costly and you needed to move elsewhere.
You can see where this is going. We're already seeing more productions filmed and located in/near China[ß]. As the costs there will eventually creep up too, expect to see locations shift to places like Indonesia, Pakistan and South-Eastern Africa.
ß: Part of China's visibility and increased footprint on films is due to a clear political drive. The CCP has set up structures where they strongly encourage their industry arm to fund film and TV/streaming production elsewhere in the world, buying up influence and dictating how Chinese get portrayed in the scripts.
"Why is Amazon gobbling up failing studios on the cheap?"
so you rather let them bankrupt???
"Why did Amazon, Apple, and Netflix offshore production to the UK, Eastern Europe, and Asia when the US has infrastructure and subsidies? Almost everyone I know in IATSE is out of work and contemplating leaving the industry for good"
less woke propaganda, we all know why hollywood failling but you refuse to see it
maybe next time listen to your actual fans rather listening to activist
No, but the collateral damage in letting it all burn to the ground overnight is also a problem.
The bailouts aren’t/weren’t problems. Failing to hold big companies and their leaders accountable for risks they took not paying off in a way that doesn’t disrupt low level people is.
Agree it's not great, and I still drive Chevy's, but laissez-faire capitalism isn't what's keeping a lot of these big legacy companies alive. Tech companies I think might be a different dynamic.
There is nothing laissez-faire about intelligence agencies bankrolling "private" startups that help said intelligence agencies circumvent the fourth amendment, nor about the regulatory capture resulting from revolving door between big business and the big government agencies tasked with regulating those businesses, nor about taxpayers bailing out banks or auto companies that made shitty investments or shitty cars, nor about the protectionism of the Jones Act that results in the US producing some of the world's most overpriced naval vessels at the expense of US consumers, nor about the open practice of corporate bribery of the legislature which the US calls "lobbying".
The US does not practice laissez-faire capitalism; we practice a pernicious state corporatism where losses get socialized, gains are privatized, where the trillion dollar companies pay lower tax rates than the mom and pop shops, where the federal government spends more resources spying on their own citizens than they do spying on Russia or China, where members of Congress are for sale when they're not insider trading, but where you will get abducted by plainclothes DHS agents and get deported (even with a valid, legal residency) if you so much as dare to publicly criticize Israel or have the wrong skin color while standing outside of a Home Depot.
I took a gander:
“Available for around $1,250 to $1,500 before shipping and potential import fees … if your primary bottleneck is VRAM for loading massive models … it is not an RTX 4090 replacement for high-speed inference on smaller models, but it is a VRAM barrier-breaker for running the giants of the open-source world.”
