1. Napoleon's goal was to pursue and defeat the Russian army in the field, not necessarily capture cities. Going north would have meant releasing the pressure on the main russian field armies and let them engage his main force at their discretion while exposing his flank.
2. St. Petersburg remained the political and economic capital of Russia; St. Petersburg never displaced Moscow in real world importance.
3. St. Petersburg was shielded from land and sea with prepared fortifications on both and Napoleon lacked a fleet to effectively blockade it.
4. Its in the middle of a very dense forest and swamp, not the the best logistics and ability to maintain a siege.
The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city.
> The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city.
There was an 18 month siege of SP during WWII. SP starved and people there resorted to cannibalism to survive. I don't remember if it was ever taken but the Germans definitely tried to. And the situation there was ghoulish, so even if they didn't, they almost did.
You're correct and I'm wrong. Germany started negotiating Russia joining but this seems to have been disingenuous from Germany and part of the lead in to the attack on Russia.
It's more complicated than that. Go have a listen of the Mannerheim tape with Hitler. Hitler basically confesses to Mannerheim that Stalin was blackmailing Hitler with oil and that this was the casus belli for Hitler, but then Hitler had no idea of Stalin's tank manufacturing prowess and he says that if he had known he wouldn't have invaded Russia. Super interesting. You get the impression that though Hitler hated Russia and Russians, it was events that led to Barbarossa rather than Hitler's long-term plan -- things got away from his control real quick.
To be clear on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ they changed this
>>It seems like every company on the web is buying and selling my data. You’re probably no different. Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.
to this:
>>It seems like every company on the web is buying and selling my data. You’re probably no different. Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
Of course, saying "(in the way that most people think about “selling data“)" makes the guarantee completely meaningless. The rest of the paragraph is just marketing puffery. Its meaningless bromides about how much they value your privacy. Notice they only say they put "lots of work" into stripping identifying information provided to commercial partners (which is just another way of saying selling). Again, this is meaningless. They went from a very strong guarantee to no guarantee at all. Any company that sells your data that makes any effort at all to strip identifying information can make this claim regardless of whether personally identifying information can be recovered with a modicum of effort.
If we manage to read the next 2 questions on the list, or spend 30 seconds on a web search, one would find the link to Firefox's privacy policy which details the specific types of data they collect and how they use it, and has enumerated rights for users: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
This is actually a much stronger guarantee than "we don't sell your data", which is not actually a strong guarantee at all. "Selling your data" is a nebulous term that means different things from person to person, and any company that doesn't literally exchange money for data could probably claim it with some level of credulity.
Speaking on "reading the next thing", let me repeat yjftsjthsd-h's comment below, which of course you ignored (a pattern for people excusing Mozilla in these recent convos):
-----
yjftsjthsd-h 2 hours ago | unvote | root | parent | prev | next [–]
And now without cutting it conveniently before the fun bit:
> Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
You appear to have cut off the part where they say that actually yeah they have to stop saying they don't sell your data because they are selling your data.
No, actually, they don't say that. They very clearly say that they don't (and don't believe most people will) consider what they are doing "selling your data", but that it may legally considered selling your data in some countries.
For example, Firefox runs ads using your language and city/country (on the default new tab page) - but no other data. I think the vast majority people would fine with the privacy implications of that, but this may be legally considered selling your data.
Being specific about what types of data they collect and how they use it is actually far superior to some nebulous promise that has no definition.
Short answer: yes. The AGPL should be avoided at all costs because it has never been robustly tested in court and its unclear what the licensing implications actually are.
There are various explanations in plain english sometimes offered about how the AGPL will apply. None of these are true.
Companies that have a made a business decision to provide AGPL licensed code do so with the understanding that no serious business will ever consider using such a product in their software stack. If you choose an AGPL licensed product it will (rightly) become a gigantic headache at some point. It will certainly become a problem if anyone does due diligence.
Most companies that provide AGPL, including us (ParadeDB) also offer a commercial license for interested companies. Several successful software companies (Grafana, MinIO, Citus, etc.) have chosen to be AGPL to thread the needle between being true OSS while also managing to monetize their offering :)
There isn't any evidence that models are doing any kind of "system 2 thinking" here. The model's response is guided by both the prompt and its current output so when you tell it to reason step by step the final answer is guided by its current output text. The second best answer is just something it came up with because you asked, the model has no second best answer to give. The second best answers always seem strange because the model doesn't know what it means to come up with a second best answer; it 'believes' the output it gave is the correct answer and helpfully tries to fulfill your request. Sometimes the second best answer is right but most of the time its completely nonsensical and there is no way to distinguish between the two. If you ask to choose it will be strongly influenced by the framing of its prior response and won't be able to spot logical errors.
Asking it to do lateral thinking and provide examples isn't really helpful because its final output is mostly driven by the step by step reasoning text, not by examples it has generated. At best, the examples are all wrong but it ignores that and spits out the right answer. At worst, it can become confused and give the wrong answer.
I've seen gpt-4 make all kinds of errors with prompts like this. Sometimes, all the reasoning is wrong but the answer is right and vice versa.
well, the tuning of training data results in at least some predictions that resemble varying models of systems 1 and 2 thinking. there is no reasoning at all. it's all models of reasoning, tokenized by opinionated taxonomical algorithms and degrees of systemic, academic/conventional human interpretation (tags) that are far from capturing the general human experience.
This isn't a simple composition; entire details were ai created. You can see sections around her hair that look like stable diffusion inpainting. The texture will immediately be cut off and a very softer blurred ai generated part will continue. There are details all around the image that look like that. The jacket and both sweaters aren't original for instance. Large sections of the background on the left were clearly added in as well.
Virtually the only original parts of the image that are unmodified are the faces and hair from the neck up and fingers on the two older children. The person who made this clearly had nothing to go on.
The explosion was so powerful that the personnel in the monitoring station who were not expected to receive any radiation at all had to hide in a back room of their concrete bunker and hope an evacuation was possible. The radiation & fallout was so intense that all the monitoring ships had to leave their assigned stations. The bomb was a full 2.5 times what the designers expected: 15 megatons as opposed to 6. Just a complete unnecessary tragedy for the islanders.
MIRV warheads were not a thing yet. Also by being possible you kinda need to build them to uphold MAD. Being able to kill all civilians is the whole point
The Mayan and Aztec conquests were completely different. The Mayan polities were situated in terrain that was much harsher for an invader, military capability doesn't mean much when a military force can't be effectively maintained in the field against. There also wasn't much incentive for the spanish to extend their domains into the mayan polities at that time. The spanish were far more focused on populous areas where they could extract wealth which was the only way for spanish conquistadors to gather volunteers. Even under these conditions the actual military engagements were very one-sided with most of the Yucatan conquered within thirty years of the Aztec conquest.
>>but it might be the second foremost reason why Cortez was able to conquer them - the first being Montezuma’s reticence to slaughter them in the jungle when he first heard of them and his subsequent religious obsession with the white conquistadors, until it was too late and they were well established.
Montezuma was never in a position to slaughter the conquistadors in the jungle. The Tlaxcalans (a rival state to the mexica) engaged the conquistadors in a series of brutal skirmishes (most with the advantage of surprise) on their home turf but failed to make any real progress. Its very clear that the attacking Tlaxcalan warriors suffered horrendous casualties when they engaged the castillans in close quarters combat due to the superior steel weapons(mostly swords) of the latter. Since the Tlaxcalans vigorously defended their independence its hard to argue the Mexica could have done any better fighting at a distance that would have stretched their supply lines.
As for his supposed religious obsession, its unclear and isn't necessary to explain his actions. There is certainly no evidence that Montezuma was confused or acting irrationally; he repeatedly tried to deter the conquistadors from coming and made attempts to play them off against the Tlaxcalans.
The Tlaxcalans made the mistake of engaging the conquistadors where their cavalry was most effective and allowed them to fortify themselves at Tzompachtepetl, at which point Spanish armor provided to be too effective for Tlaxcalan tactics (send wave after wave of troops instead of overwhelming them). Eventually they just kind of gave in and weren't really defeated in great number before allying against the Aztecs.
In their very first skirmish at the edge of Tlaxcalan territory where it was mountainous and undeveloped, a small scout troop took down two horses out of the sixteen that Cortex had with him. Spanish tactics and discipline were enough to overcome large numbers only when they controlled where the battles happened. If Montezuma had used guerilla tactics during the subsequent trip, it would have been far more effective (he had plenty of spies reporting on their movements so I don't think the logistics would have been that difficult). Cortes even lengthened the journey in part to minimize how much time they'd spend in terrain that favored those tactics.
Maybe "obsessed" is the wrong word but Montezuma was influenced by legends of Quetzalcoatl as a white-skinned, bearded man who opposed human sacrifices and was reluctant to just go out and slaughter the conquistadors. Their religion was definitely an influence in the whole affair beyond just the whole human sacrifice bit.
If it weren't for an epidemic of smallpox, the Spanish would have to conquer Tenochtitlan at a very high price in blood. Urban combat negated a lot of the advantages of European steel.
Their most recent scientific paper they published 3 months ago only says that scientific breakeven (Qsci > 1) is possible. Which has been claimed many times before pesky engineering challenges and unmodeled behavior starts to interfere. The paper actually mostly just rehashes their marketing so its impossible to judge how realistic their claims are. Regardless, they don't seem like they are close to any kind of actual prototype let alone one that can demonstrate scientific breakeven or the order of magnitude harder engineering breakeven.
Their claims seem very hard to believe to put it mildy.
Helion has never demonstrated that their technology actually works on any scale. Even if they magically made breakthroughs and were able to hypothetically build a prototype plant it would be almost impossible to solve the operational challenges to build a commercial scale plant in seven years. It would be far more challenging than building a nuclear plant for example. That ignores all the complexity of their D-He3 aneutronic fusion cycle; they probably cannot operate a commercial scale power plant (that would presumably use D-He3) without having first constructed D-D reactors.
1. Napoleon's goal was to pursue and defeat the Russian army in the field, not necessarily capture cities. Going north would have meant releasing the pressure on the main russian field armies and let them engage his main force at their discretion while exposing his flank.
2. St. Petersburg remained the political and economic capital of Russia; St. Petersburg never displaced Moscow in real world importance.
3. St. Petersburg was shielded from land and sea with prepared fortifications on both and Napoleon lacked a fleet to effectively blockade it.
4. Its in the middle of a very dense forest and swamp, not the the best logistics and ability to maintain a siege.
The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city.