Yeah there’s also those people who aren’t native speakers. I tend to run ChatGPT over most stuff I write because while writing in English for over 30 years now I still can’t compare to a native speaker.
Call it lazy but I think for the reader reading a rephrased LLM article is more enjoyable than trying to parse some borderline “Kauderwelsch”(German for gibberish) :)
I’m just one reader but I enjoy reading English from non-native speakers. There’s often a terse, wry or precise quality to it that native English writers won’t make the time for, since they can roll out so many idioms. Your translations are legitimate contributions to the English-language community.
I do miss the smells of O-chem lab. It is like hearing a crips clear note played when you have only ever heard chords. I think my favorite was thymol, a thyme extract. Something I've smelled a thousand times but never in isolation.
Sweet? I'd rather liken it to period blood, but more metallic and kind of... vicious. Its smell is hardly comparable to its relatives xylene, toluene, ethyl benzene.
I liked xylene most, followed by toluene. Maybe it's bias because you know it is carcinogenic... but indeed benzene isn't as nice as the others. Vicious undertones, that's very apt.
So has anyone an idea how those tariffs would affect software sales? Say I'm a German guy selling a license for my software to someone in the US. Will this fall under tariffs, too. Or are software licenses somehow exempt? Asking for a friend(me).
My opinion. (Also as a German guy doing a similar thing).
On the first order no. The tariffs just announced are only on goods and are collected at the ports when you physically import them.
On the second and third order. What I think will happen is that the EU will mostly retaliate against US services. And then trump might counter retaliate against EU services. So I would start looking for customers outside the US.
It won’t unless you’re shipping an item to the USA.
I think the eu should look into taxes on u.s. services, instead of tariffs on products. Taxing AWS/Azure/etc +25% would do a lot in getting similar services in the eu expanded.
No, they're not, except to those who want to drag them into politics. For people whose lives revolve around politics, everything is politics, but that's just them.
I have a good use case for them: Communication with the bureaucracy of my country. I tell my LLM of choice to write a letter to $whoever about $whatever, then I print it out (yes, we still have to do this as email don't get accepted) and send if off. I don't even need to proof read it because if there's a mistake the bureaucracy will tell me in another letter. So the burden of correctness checking is on some bureaucrat which saves me time and mental resources.
I wouldn't ever use a LLM for anything where correctness matters (code) because I'd spend the same amount of time checking the generated code as writing it myself. But a letter to my tax office? Heck, why not. If something goes really wrong I can always say "gee, I made a mistake let's try it again".
So what, you use it to spam and waste other people's time? I know, dealing government bureaucracy and corruption is soul leeching but spam was always one of the golden usecases for generated AI.
Sending official letters to the local government isn't spam, and generally not a waste of time.
People with cognitive issues, issues typing, language or presentation issues, LLMs provide a massive improvement in how they are percieved and recieved by the other side. Also, immigrants or people with langauge issues aren't quite as disadvantaged and don't need to use excess time translating or risking an embarrasing misstatement. It's a night or day accommodation tool in the right circumstances.
No, I don't just send them random letters. I reply to mail I get from them or when I need them to do something (like adjust my tax pre-pay).
Also one could argue that bureaucracies only exist to create bullshit jobs and waste citizens' time. So I wouldn't even feel bad about spamming those assholes.
If you knowingly operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold, you very much bear some responsibility of those injuries.
If Ross let drug dealers sell fentanyl-laced drugs, which ended up killing someone, he absolutely should be charged.
Those deals wouldn't have been possible without his platform. Sure, maybe the same drug dealer would have sold the bad stuff to some other poor user outside silk road, but those dealings that ended up happening on silk road are his (Ross) to own.
You can clearly see that "deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl)" didn't particularly alter or rise until after the 2013 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down of the Silk Road website and arrest of Ulbricht.
If the Silk Road Marketplace had any influence on fentanyl deaths Then some kind of spike would be expected during the years of operation, 2011-2013.
So I could bring down eBay by opening a store; selling something that I know (but eBay doesn't) is dangerous / broken / false. If that sale goes through, should eBay be taken down since they operate a marketplace where unsafe products are being sold ? eBay cannot reasonably test every single item that is sold through their platform. Same goes for every second hand marketplace in the world. They need to take some measure to address this, but cannot reduce the risk to 0.
As far as I know, SilkRoad had a whole reputation system in place to allow users to flag untrustworthy sellers; that system was inline or even ahead of what many "legal" marketplace had put in place. A part of why SilkRoad was so successful is precisely because overall that reputation system allowed users to identify trustworthy sellers.
This theory was actually tested last year and...eBay won.
The DOJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of the EPA against eBay in 2023, seeking to hold them liable for prohibited pesticides and chemicals as well as illegal emissions control cheat devices sold through the platform that violate multiple federal laws and environmental regulations.
There wasn't even really an argument about whether or not the items were actually illegal to sell - all parties including eBay basically stipulated to that and the judge even explicitly acknowledged it in her ruling - the entire case came down to whether or not eBay could be held liable for the actions of third party sellers on their platform who they failed to proactively prevent from selling illegal items.
In September 2024, U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant granted eBay's motion to dismiss the case, ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides eBay immunity for the actions of those third party sellers.
DOJ filed an appeal on December 1st so we'll see where that goes but as it stands now - no, you couldn't take eBay down even by listing stuff eBay does know to be illegal, based on current precedent.
Why the courts applied Sec230 that way in one instance and not another is the real question and the more cynically minded might also wonder how eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's various philanthropic and political endeavors (including but not limited to being the $ behind Lina Khan's whole "hipster antitrust" movement) could be a factor too. He's no longer an active board member but still a major shareholder whose existing shares would likely be worth a lot less if a case with a potential ~$2 Billion in fines had been allowed to proceed.
Ebay tries to prevent you from selling illegal stuff though. Silk Road didn't. The reputation system was to prevent scams and bad quality products, not to prevent illegal transactions, right?
A large minority of the population (and in some cases, like weed, an overt majority) of the population don't think those transactions should be illegal. "The law is wrong" is sort of the whole point, and why Ulbricht is a quasi-folk hero.
It's a philosophical difference. As someone running a market where buyers and sellers meet I think it's valid to let the buyers and sellers participate in the exchange among themselves at their own risk. The person running the market doesn't need to treat the participants like children. Plus, if you're on the TOR network and buying obscure research chems using crypto in the early 2010s I think it's safe to assume you're more sophisticated and aware of what you're getting into than the average person.
I think there is some difference between running a marketplace which you intend for people to sell products legally on, and a marketplace which you intend and know people will sell products illegally on.
Whether I agree with it or not, the law often recognises differences like this. It's not illegal to lie, but it is illegal to lie in the aid a murder. The lier themselves might not be a murderer, but the lier is knowingly facilitating murder.
Ulbricht was knowingly facilitating crime in the case, and sometimes this crime would result in the deaths of people. And despite knowing all this he took no action to address it.
Perhaps your point was he just didn't deserve the sentence he receive, which is fair, but he clearly did something that most people would consider very wrong.
I also wonder how people would feel if Silkroad was associated more with the trading of humans, CSAM, biological weapons or more serious things rather than just drugs. I doubt the "he's just running a marketplace" reasoning would hold in most people's eyes then.
This is why people only blame the DZOQBX brands that sell on Amazon for review fraud and not Amazon themselves, who are blamelessly hosting all those fraudulent sellers.
Smart people can differentiate between a transparent marketplace which provides a net economic benefit to society from an obfuscated one which by design enables illicit activity.
Call it lazy but I think for the reader reading a rephrased LLM article is more enjoyable than trying to parse some borderline “Kauderwelsch”(German for gibberish) :)
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