Zombie mode: "Others are stuck in “zombie” mode — surviving but unable to grow. They can muddle along like that for years, investors said, but will most likely struggle to raise more money."
My uncle has had his startup kickstart with investors money and then paid them back. Now he is slowly growing but not expanding the company only the assets. I wouldnt call this dead. Its just sometimes you hit a ceiling for expansion
I think it might mean the opposite of what one would expect. Afaict, calibration error means something along the lines of "how often was the model wrong but confident that the answer was correct".
That means a low calibration error would be a good thing, ie the model correctly recognizes when it is unsure about answers instead of confidently stating the wrong answer.
And then they got rekt in Manzikert, 1071 AD. 46 years after Basil II's death.
Let's not kid ourselves, the Byzantines had far more underlying problems throughout its history and only mostly survived by a.) the walls of Theodosius, and b.) bribing away potential invaders and getting others to fight their wars.
Generally battles like Manzikert or similar events were only as disastrous because they were inevitably followed by internal chaos and civil wars.
The free for all nature of the succession meant that whenever the empire was facing major difficulties (i.e. because the emperor was incompetent or due to factors he couldn’t really control) every general or noble within the eyesight of the throne thought that he should have it.
Turkish gains after Manzikert itself were limited and much of the imperial army survived. Of course it marched straight back to Constantinople for its commander to appoint a new emperor (since Romanos IV was captured by the Turks).
Then the Romans kept fighting each other for years while entire Anatolia was gradually lost.
Manzikert was a disaster but they certainly had enough resources to bounce back (i.e. it was certainly not worse than Cannea)
1204 also started as coup attempt by the Venetians to put the son of a former overthrown emperor on the thrown.
Exactly! Manzikert was barely a disaster in terms of numbers. Half of Romanos's army was not even on the field. They simply didn't come to his aid, most likely because they were led by a Doukas who wanted one of their own on the throne.
Byzantine history is full of such examples. Civil wars that last decades, never-ending internal strife, and the ever present threat from steppe tribes and caliphates. It's a wonder they survived as long as they did.
That's precisely what I meant by underlying problems. New emperor? Let's revolt. Emperor captured? Free for all king of the hill. Old emperor returns? Let's blind him, imprison him, and then free for all king of the hill.
Yes, Basil II had the unfortunate legacy of not leaving an heir at a very bad time. The Romans of the Eastern Empire had their problems but mostly just a continuation of the old Empire: dynastic jealousy and external enemies. As enfeebled as their last 300 years were, they were pretty unique in having lasted almost 2 millennium.
That's like telling a drug addict that it's bad for his/her health. Sure you're staying facts, but they're not going to take it up. Might as well preach to the wind.
From a young one's perspective, it's natural they're going to take it as one more incursion into their lives, else Red Note, an app made for a largely Chinese audience by an unrelated company would not have seen so much uptake over the past few days.
Do we have actual numbers on signups for RedNote though? I feel that if I’ve learned anything in the past ten years of social media, a lot of noise is made by a very small percentage of users (not necessarily even people).
> Bytedance without TikTok is still an order of magnitude worth more than Perplexity
They’re not buying Bytedance - TikTok, they’d be buying half of the piece of TikTok Bytedance would own after spinning it out to its non-Chinese shareholders.
LoL, the algorithm is the only reason TikTok was able to dethrone both Meta and Alphabet in short form content (also Snap but who gives a damn about that loser).
TikTok even put their algorithm workings out there in the internet, as part of public presentations, yet Google and Facebook being unable to replicate something that's anywhere close to performant compared to TikTok is evidence of the moat ByteDance has.
Algorithms can and have been copied and improved. It is human nature.
For years people would wax about Spotify's algorithm never being dethroned, but the anecdotes I'm seeing lately are that YouTube Music's algorithm is now far ahead of the pack.
If the algorithm is all TikTok had, they'd lose long term. See also Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
> Algorithms can and have been copied and improved.
Tiktok's algorithm can't be copied in the West. What makes it "so good" isn't some technical secret—it's that it starts apolitical and remains politically non-committal. If you're not into politics, it won't push political content at you. If you are, it won't suppress conservative views or force-feed you western progressive narratives. If you change your political interests it won't continue to nudge you towards western progressivism or Conservatism™ or some mainstream "safe" brand of political discourse.
Western corporations won't replicate this because they're committed to embedding specific messaging in everything at all times to astroturf and force national culture shifts.
This understanding is sufficient to explain the motive behind the Tiktok ban as well as why no extremely well funded and highly motivated, intelligent corporations in the west can repeat tiktok's algorithm success.
For other disasters, while climate change is "global", the effects are pretty much localized and to various degrees. Some places have had adapted construction to those kinds of blue moon disasters since centuries, so why should they part with more money?
And considering most of Europe is basically low risk territory, it makes sense?
Afaik, only Turkey and a small part of the Balkans is considered earthquake territory. And there's no fracking in Europe to induce minor manmade earthquakes either.
Despite being hit by earthquakes more often than other parts of Europe, usually only buildings and houses not built up to standard or old ones crumble, other buildings just shake and that's it. Of course, I do not know the exact risk of earthquakes in California and their intensity, but it's definitely possible to build earthquake resistant brick buildings
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