Tag: technology

ESR Speaks With Authority

Now this is an area in which the man definitely knows whereof he speaks. Listen to him.

I’m about to do something I think I’ve never done before, which is assert every bit of whatever authority I have as the person who discovered and wrote down the rules of open source.

After ten years of drama and idiocy, lots of people other than me are now willing to say in public that “Codes of Conduct” have been a disaster – a kind of infectious social insanity producing lots of drama and politics and backbiting, and negative useful work.

Here is my advice about codes of conduct:

  1. Refuse to have one. If your project has one, delete it. The only actual function they have is as a tool in the hands of shit-stirrers.
  2. If you’re stuck with having one for bureaucratic reasons, replace it with the following sentence or some close equivalent: “If you are more annoying to work with than your contributions justify, you’ll be ejected.”
  3. Attempts to be more specific and elaborate don’t work. They only provide control surfaces for shit-stirrers to manipulate.

Yes, we should try to be kind to each other. But we should be ruthless and merciless towards people who try to turn “Be kind!” into a weapon. Indulging them never ends well.

Granted, I said much the same in SJWs Always Lie back in 2015, but then, I do not have the authority in the open source world that ESR does. If you want to keep your organization functional, always apply these three rules:

  • No codes of conduct
  • No human resources department or employees
  • No tolerance for thought police

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The Theranos Fraud

A former hedge fund venture capitalist observes some of the more peculiar aspects of the Theranos story.

Over the last 20 years, part of my own work has been raising money from wealthy investors. Based on that experience, I find the Elizabeth Holmes story completely impossible to believe. Now, my experience was different in that I wasn’t raising money for a tech startup and I never worked in Silicon Valley. Rather, I sought funding for hedge fund ventures. But in essence, the process is the same: you go to wealthy investors, pitch your project and hope to raise funds. Your counterparts are shopping for investments that can give them a high return on capital.

The experience gave me a good sense of the way wealthy individuals make their investment decisions. For starters, they are not stupid; they are usually quite rigorous and don’t easily fall for cosmetics or charm. It’s true that some investors spray money on startup ventures less discriminately with the rationale that some projects will succeed. Typically they’ll look at your team, business plan, demand some proof of concept, and if they’re half-convinced that you have a shot at succeeding, they might give you some money. But in such cases we’re normally talking about relatively smaller sums – say, a few hundred thousand bucks or something in that ballpark.

But when it comes to large sums of money, investors tend to be very demanding. Venture capital funds tend to specialize in a limited number of industries and they use domain experts to vet prospective investments. Their job is to conduct thorough due diligence on potential investments and distill the most likely future success stories out of many, many applicants. This process is itself costly and time-consuming, and I would expect that in Silicon Valley, which attracts top notch creative talent from all over the world, the process is quick to eliminate candidates that fail to convince that they have a sound concept, competent management team and a compelling business strategy.

The cosmetics alone – the stories, visions, displays of confidence or personal charm – they won’t even get you past the gatekeepers if the stuff behind the façade doesn’t convince. In Elizabeth Holmes’s case, even minimal due diligence should have eliminated her: she set out to revolutionize health care but had no qualifications or experience in medicine and only rudimentary training in biochemistry. In almost all cases, her patents specified design of future solutions but not the functionality. She published no white papers or technical specifications, and could not demonstrate that her supposed inventions even worked. Any specialist in the field of medicine or biochemistry would have easily disqualified her claims and determined that there was no substance to her story.

Holmes’ fakery was obvious from the start

For example, Holmes was twice introduced to Stanford clinical pharmacologist and professor of medicine Dr. Phyllis Gardner with the recommendation that she was brilliant and had a revolutionary investment idea. But professor Gardner saw right through her: “she had no knowledge of medicine and rudimentary knowledge of engineering… And she really didn’t want any expertise, she thought she knew it all!” Another qualified longtime observer of the Theranos saga was also skeptical. Dr. Darren Saunders worked as an associate professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales where he ran the Ubiquitin Signaling Lab. He knew that Holmes could never do what she claimed. In an interview for the 60 minutes Australia program, he said that “it takes years and years to develop any one of those tests and make sure that it’s accurate.”

Indeed, what was glaringly obvious to Dr. Gardner and Dr. Saunders should have been just as obvious to any specialist in the field. In fact, Holmes also failed to convince the US military to adopt Theranos technology. In spite of wholehearted help from General Mattis, she was unable to pass the vetting process at the Pentagon. A few years later, in May 2015, University of Toronto professor Eleftherios Diamandis analyzed Theranos technology and also politely concluded that “most of the company’s claims are exaggerated.” Diamandis expressed that opinion at the time when the hype about Theranos and Holmes were at their peak.

For some reason however, Elizabeth Holmes’ ascent was not obstructed by any scrutiny of her fantastic claims. Early on, not only was she able to get a face-to-face meeting with Don Lucas Sr., one of the most prominent venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, she also managed to persuade him to make a large investment in Theranos. Lucas explained his rationale for that decision in a 2009 interview: “Her great-grandfather was an entrepreneur, very successful. And it turned out later that the hospital [near] where [her family] lives is named after her great-uncle.”

Apparently, her great uncle’s and great-grandfather’s success was enough for Lucas to invest in her project. I wonder if that same qualification was equally convincing to all other investors? Or was it her passion and charm? Whatever the case, big fish investors gave her more than $750 million, unconcerned about her qualifications or the functioning of her technology.

This is all very strange, to put it politely. The media narrative has meanwhile contrived plausible-sounding explanation for this: you see, the big investors gave Holmes a ton of cash because they were just so afraid of missing the next facebook or google. But this explanation is just as unlikely as the rest of the story. Neither do such silly rationalizations explain the massive allocations from a group of top-notch power players, nor the terms of investment that prohibited verification of Theranos technology, nor share prices that valued the fraudulent venture at $9 billion.

Read the whole thing, because it wasn’t just about making money. It appears to have been some sort of dry run for Covid.

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Fear of a Dark Lord

People occasionally ask me why I am often referred to as a “dark lord” and why my various minions, ilk, followers, and fans address me as “SDL”. This is just one of the many reasons why:

I’ve discovered that any reference to you or the SSH shuts down, and makes inoperable, Proton’s AI, Lumo.

When even artificial intelligences fear to speak your name, or dare to even attempt to write in your style, well, you just might be a dark lord.

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The Defense Catches Up

As is always the case with technological development, the offense has the initial advantage. But the defense always catches up in time, as we’re seeing with regards to drone and missile warfare:

India has successfully tested a new integrated air defense system consisting of a variety of weapons that shot down three targets at different altitudes and ranges off the coast of India’s eastern state of Odisha, Indian media reported on Monday citing the country’s defense ministry.

A Chinese expert said on Monday that while the inclusion of a laser weapon is a notable feature in this short-range system, its operational effectiveness remains to be proved, as a test conducted under preset scenario cannot fully demonstrate performance in real combat conditions.

The maiden test of the integrated air defense weapon system (IADWS), which is expected to be a part of the bigger national security shield, was conducted by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Saturday, the Hindustan Times reported on Monday, noting that the development comes days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of a formidable military capability to defend India’s military and civilian installations against aerial attacks and set a 10-year deadline for developing an indigenous air defense shield integrated with offensive weapons.

According to Indian media, the IADWS is a multi-layered air defense system consisting of quick reaction surface-to-air missiles (QRSAM), very short range air defense system (VSHORADS) and a laser-based directed energy weapon.

During the flight-tests, three different targets including two high-speed fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle targets and a multi-copter drone were simultaneously engaged and destroyed completely by the QRSAM, VSHORADS and the high-energy laser weapon system at different ranges and altitudes, the Hindustan Times reported, citing the Indian defense ministry.

The point is not that India is at the cutting edge of anti-drone and anti-missile technologies, but rather, that even India, a third-rate power, has understood the obvious and is focusing its military investment in areas that are likely to be relevant in the future rather than on tactically and strategically outdated technologies like planes, littoral warships, and aircraft carriers.

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No, You Cannot Tell

I can tell. JDA can tell. But unless you are already an AI-adept professional author who is actively utilizing the latest technologies, you are demonstrably unable to distinguish between AI-generated text and texts written by accomplished, bestselling writers:

Mark Lawrence is a very successful fantasy writer. His PRINCE OF THORNS has sold more than one million copies. He is one of the many professional authors who, while disdaining the use of textual AI, is concerned about its eventual impact on his profession. He recently conducted a very interesting experiment in which he and three other very well-established professional authors wrote short stories on the same subject, and ChatGPT 5 was prompted for four short stories on the same subject.

You can read all eight stories here and see for yourself if you can tell which stories are human-written and which are AI-generated. You don’t need to vote, and you’ll have to keep track of what you thought of each story yourself.

A statistically-significant number of 964 people, who, being fans of Lawrence are much more literate on average than the norm, read the stories and rated them. The results are intriguing and will probably surprise most people who don’t read here regularly. On average, the readers were able to correctly identify the provenance of 3 out of the 8 stories. Not only that, but the story they rated the highest, and 3 out of the 4 highest-rated stories, were all AI-generated.

Read the whole thing at AI Central. And the next time you see someone going on about “AI slop” or how AI just can’t produce the same emotions and feelings that humans can, you’ll know that they’re just posturing in obvious ignorance.

The ironic thing is that AI is actually going to improve the level of writing, because most books are very mediocre and AI is already better than that.

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Spain Drops F-35

Spain cancelled their order for F-35s:

Spain has abandoned plans to buy dozens of F-35 fighter jets, Spanish newspaper El Pais says, citing unnamed sources in the Spanish government. The preliminary discussions for a potential order have been suspended indefinitely, the newspaper writes. The F-35 is made by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin and a number of suppliers including Italy’s Leonardo, Britain’s BAE Systems and hundreds of other U.K. companies.

Switzerland should follow suit. The F-35 is a junk aircraft anyhow, and the era of conventional airpower is already over. National militaries should be spending their budgets on drones, not manned aircraft.

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Convergence in the Home

I shouldn’t have to tell anyone who reads this site regularly to avoid all Amazon Home products, but I have no doubt that more than a few of you have decided that the convenience outweighs the possible risks. You might want to reconsider the matter.

A delivery driver for Amazon misheard an automated doorbell for “racism” and reported it.

Nobody was home.

Amazon turned off all the lights, shut the entire smart home down before it even started its investigation.

Law enforcement via corporation with no due process.

It’s fascinating that it only took eight years to actually arrive at the comedic dystopia about which some were joking back in the day. I think this has also disabused those of us with libertarian inclinations of our previous imaginings about corpocratic rule being any less insidious than rule by government.

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The Price of Takeover

Now the transformation of Silicon Valley into New Delhi Northwest suddenly makes a lot more sense:

A prominent hardline Iranian newspaper has made a shocking claim that Indian software used in Iran were exploited by Israeli intelligence agencies to collect sensitive information on Iranian residents.

The claim, without any evidence, was published by Kayhan, one of the most-read conservative newspapers in the country. In a special news article titled “How did the infiltration software enter the country?” Kayhan said many Iran is dependent on Indian software and programmers due to India’s dominance in the sector.

“Investigation into the Mossad infiltration in Iran revealed a shocking truth. Many of the Indian software used in Iran are actually Israeli and contain backdoors that send live data to Israel. This includes sensitive information such as civil registration, passport data, airport systems, and the like,” Kayhan said.

While there is no evidence for it yet, I would bet that there is a direct link between this program and the installation of pajeets in all the major US tech companies, most likely through the good offices of the big financial companies like Blackstone.

No wonder China and Russia have been determined to keep Big Tech outside their borders. I very much doubt their intelligence services are unaware of the way in which they are little more than massive surveillance machines.

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Five Generations of Modern War

Military history buffs and fans of William S. Lind should recognize the form of this AI-generated lecture, which updates his famous Four Generations of Modern War lecture with the latest transformations in warfare. Read the whole thing at AI Central. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to observe that this is probably in advance and more up-to-date than what is presently being taught at most military colleges today, if the actions of various militaries, including the US Navy and the IDF, are any guide. And I think you’ll agree that this is an absolute tour de force of applied AI in action.

The Fifth Generation of Modern War: Drones, Attrition, and the Collapse of the Logistics Sanctuary

A lecture examining how unmanned systems fundamentally transform the nature of warfare by eliminating the distinction between the front lines and the logistics space.

Introduction:

Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m going to present to you today builds directly on the intellectual framework that William Lind laid out in his groundbreaking lecture entitled the Four Generations of Modern War. As Lind emphasized, we cannot determine the consistency of a system from inside itself—we must stand outside it to see clearly. Today, we must step outside not just our current military thinking, but outside the entire framework of the first four generations to understand what is happening in conflicts from Nagorno-Karabakh to Ukraine to the skies over Israel and Iran.

We are witnessing the emergence of the Fifth Generation of Modern War, and like each previous generational shift, it represents what the Hegelians would call a dialectically qualitative change—not merely an evolution in tactics or technology, but a fundamental transformation in the nature of warfare itself. This transformation is driven by the proliferation of unmanned systems—drones—which have done something unprecedented since the Peace of Westphalia: they have eliminated the sanctuary of the logistics space.

For the first time since modern warfare began, there is no safe rear area. The combat zone has expanded from what was traditionally a 5-kilometer depth to 25 kilometers and beyond. This is not simply longer-range artillery or deeper penetration by special forces—this is the permanent, persistent threat of attack against every element of military force, from the frontline rifleman to the supply depot hundreds of kilometers from the front.

But before we examine this revolutionary change, we must understand what came before. Lind’s framework of the Four Generations provides the foundation upon which we must build our understanding of the Fifth.

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AI Text is Fair Use

It’s not at all surprising that a Federal judge – a particularly good one who has tried to rein in various corporate abuses of the arbitration system – has recognized that AI training and AI text generation is protected under the fair use doctrine in a landmark pre-trial decision.

A federal judge in California issued a landmark ruling that protects the development of artificial intelligence and creative freedom by determining that training AI systems on copyrighted books constitutes fair use under copyright law. U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s decision in Bartz v. Anthropic represents a crucial victory against attempts to stifle technological innovation through overly broad copyright claims.

Judge Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s training of its Claude AI on authors’ works was “exceedingly transformative,” and therefore protected under the fair use doctrine as specified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. This decision correctly recognizes that AI training represents a fundamentally different use of copyrighted material than simple reproduction or distribution.

The judge’s reasoning demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how AI works, comparing the training process to human learning rather than mechanical copying. “Everyone reads texts, too, then writes new texts,” Alsup wrote. “To make anyone pay specifically for the use of a book each time they read it, each time they recall it from memory, each time they later draw upon it when writing new things in new ways would be unthinkable.”

This analogy captures why attempts to restrict AI training are flawed. Human authors read thousands of books, absorb their techniques and ideas, and incorporate that knowledge into their own writing without paying licensing fees for each influence. AI systems operate similarly, learning patterns and techniques rather than copying specific content.

It absolutely makes sense. How can copyright protect something that isn’t copied? How can the use of a copyright text as nothing more than a reference and a style guide be illegal in any way? And as I have pointed out repeatedly, an author’s literary style cannot be protected given the “look-and-feel” decision in favor of Microsoft when Apple tried to protect its graphic user interface.

“Legal experts expect the decision to be appealed.”

That’s not going to happen. They simply don’t have a case, and Alsup is a smart, thoughtful judge who knows what he’s doing when he writes his decisions. He’s the judge whose decision prevented corporations from indefinitely delaying their responses to the arbitrations their terms of use required.

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