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Is this actually innovative? I respect there’s a lot of work in making it reality and doing it specifically for AI training. But doing portions of work in clusters that are far apart and combining them has been done many times before for non AI things, right? Or so I would think.

The drug in question is metformin. I’ve heard people say it’s a wonder drug but it’s rarely talked about. I wonder what else it’s good for.

I’m not an expert on Asian history but I feel like there isn’t a focus on the Mughal empire by the West. This history is just not well known. The way India was covered in school classes (at least in America) was that Britain came into India, colonized the country, oppressed Indians, and then Gandhi resisted without violence, which somehow led to the British leaving, but they split up India on their way out into India + Pakistan.

But it seems like India was not ruled by Indians (Hindus?) even before European colonization. Aren’t these previous Mughal rulers and the people before them also colonizers then, if they weren’t indigenous Indians / Hindus? Why aren’t they also discussed that way? When did Indians rule India then - was it in the first millennium?

To me, this is all basically outside of the public’s common knowledge and focus in the West.


It's again complex, yes to some extent Mughals were colonisers but they eventually simply wanted to rule. It's not discussed because most history before 11th-13th century was systematically wiped out over centuries.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have little to minorities or even the memory of past left, but that's mostly what happens with cultural imperialism. There were Hindus / Bhuddist or Zorastrian in those areas, now there are none. Infact India have more Zorastrians than modern day Iran, many fled to India around 16th Century escaping similar cultural imperialism.


Wait so these people invaded and took over India? For what reason - Land? Religion? Feuds? And it seems like they were displacing another Islamic colonial power that was already there? Weird to have this article discuss battles but skim over the context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Mongol_tradition

Read that and you’ll get the context.


That’s insane. And what does researcher even mean - some random university student? What would they know about securing that data? I wonder if the people whose data is out there even know this is happening

The people involved are volunteers. The rules for getting access are readily available, and clearly don't include "some random university student": https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/about-us/how-we-work/access-to-u...

They clearly do include "some random student" as the data can be shared with others from the eligible research group which are almost always university students who have zero clue about itsec.

I worked in this field. It's not just the students. Hardly anyone seemed to understand how and why you would keep data out of a git repo.

I'm curious – in which context? I've worked on NIH-funded grants in academic medical centers, throughout the research lifecycle, and I've seen how both stringently data management plans are vetted, and how annual IRB certification drills the basics even into the oldest tech-phobic investigators.

That being said, I may be as pessmistic as you are: I don't think people right now grasp how standards for deidentification may no longer be enough, and how easy and automated deanonymization changes everything. Unfortunately, cuts to federal science agencies means that I doubt any well-informed guidance will come soon.


Yet another example why NO ONE should trust age verification laws or companies like Anthropic forcing you to verify identity with shady companies like Persona (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872608). Whatever info you give up, it’ll be exposed one day.

Other countries should just view all of this as a declaration of war by this theocratic authoritarian regime. I don’t like Trump and his dangerous corrupt rule, but the rule of the ayatollahs must also come to an end.

If you are an American citizen, you should not worry about the ayatollahs ruling thousands of miles away from you, but you should be doing something about the tyrant ruling near you.

It was slowly sunsetting not so long ago ... what ever happened to make them act out so badly recently?

It was only last year they were sincerely offering to dilute the HEU reserves.


The rule of the United American Epsteinates must come to an end too.

US politics is for Americans to resolve. They don't have a right to determine politics elsewhere.

One perspective is that politics requires participation and that doesn't exist in an authoritarian theocracy.

Reversing this isn't Trump's goal, of course. But for many, human rights supercedes national sovereignty.


> One perspective is that politics requires participation

That's democracy, which is one way a country can choose to run itself. It isn't god given.


Right however "choose to run itself" is the crux of it. If the choice is made by a royal family or oligarchy or ethnic majority (who often claims godgiven power), should an outside observer simply take the rulers at their word?

Whatever, but do they have a right to interfere? The USA is self evidently not a model for democracy. Who's idea of how to run a country should prevail?

It's a messy question that is not worth discussing if you believe that sovereignty belongs to the rulers and not the people.

I feel like it does not work well. Shazam struggles to recognize music in real life environments that have some background noise, even with a lot of time. It’s much worse than the built in music recognition Google’s phones have, for example.

No way I would agree to that. It’s already bad that Anthropic asks for a phone number, when other services don’t. People have a right to use AI anonymously just like they have a right to access the Internet without age verification or other violations of privacy. Otherwise, everything you say and search for could be used against you. Maybe even in a court.

But worse, on top of that, they’re using Persona? This is the company that is apparently linked to Peter Thiel and Palantir (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47021421). Discord ended up cutting ties with Persona (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036). And allegedly Persona might be sharing the data you submit to them with the federal government (https://cybernews.com/privacy/persona-leak-exposes-global-su...).

Anthropic seems to be losing the plot. It’s getting harder and harder to trust them as they keep making changes without transparency, and making changes like this. I’m sure they will claim they have good reasons - like blocking Chinese AI companies from distilling Claude or whatever - but this makes me view Anthropic the same way I view Palantir.


Does this mean you could use other non Anthropic models those clouds offer but with Claude Cowork or Claude code?

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