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Stop Fine-Tuning Models You Don’t Need
Fine-tuning sounds like the answer until you factor in the cost, the data pipeline, and the six months before a bigger model makes yours obsolete. Most of the time, prompt engineering or better context gets you there. But sometimes it doesn't — and that's where things get interesting.
In this free night session, Aaron Gallant covers the real tradeoffs behind fine-tuning LLMs, from synthesizing training data with frontier models to running PEFT and QLoRA on constrained hardware. You'll learn when smaller, specialized models actually beat throwing money at a bigger one — and why data curation is the work nobody wants to talk about. Built for engineers who want to make the right call, not just the cool one.
Live and remote. Wednesday, June 3 at 5 PM CT. Register now.
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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JUNE 13, 1966
Washington, D.C., USA
60 years ago
Ernesto Miranda — the Phoenix truck driver whose confession in a 1963 rape case, obtained without informing him of his right to remain silent or to have an attorney, became the basis for the Supreme Court ruling that changed American criminal procedure.
On June 13, 1966, the United States Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona by a 5-4 vote, ruling that suspects in police custody must be informed of their constitutional rights before interrogation. The rights — to remain silent, to have an attorney present, to have an attorney appointed if they cannot afford one — must be communicated clearly. Statements obtained without this warning are inadmissible in court. The decision was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The case originated with the arrest of Ernesto Miranda, a Phoenix truck driver with a history of mental illness and prior arrests, who was identified by a victim as the man who had kidnapped and raped her. Miranda was arrested, placed in a lineup, and interrogated for two hours without being told that he had the right to remain silent or to have a lawyer present. He confessed. The confession, typed up by the police, was signed by Miranda and used as primary evidence at his trial. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty to thirty years in prison. The ACLU took his appeal to the Supreme Court.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The United States Supreme Court — where Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the 5-4 decision in Miranda v. Arizona on June 13, 1966, establishing the requirement that suspects be informed of their constitutional rights before police questioning.
Chief Justice Warren's majority opinion was clear about the problem the decision was addressing: police interrogation techniques in 1966 routinely involved psychological pressure, extended isolation, and implicit or explicit coercion that extracted confessions from suspects who did not know they had the right to refuse to speak. The Court cited police manuals of the era — including the Reid Technique — that instructed interrogators in methods of psychological manipulation. The purpose of the warning was to give suspects a genuine rather than theoretical right to silence.
The Miranda warning as it came to be standardized: 'You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.' These four sentences — or their functional equivalent — must be communicated before custodial interrogation. The specific wording is not mandated by the decision; individual jurisdictions developed their own versions that have been tested against the constitutional standard in subsequent cases.
Ernesto Miranda was retried without the confession and convicted anyway, on the basis of testimony from his former girlfriend. He was paroled in 1972. He subsequently had multiple encounters with law enforcement, was stabbed to death in a Phoenix bar fight in 1976, and was found to have Miranda warning cards in his pocket at the time of his death. The man who had given his name to the most famous procedural requirement in American criminal law died at thirty-four in circumstances that required the police to read the Miranda warning to the suspect in his murder.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Miranda established that constitutional rights must be practically accessible, not merely theoretical. The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel had existed since the Bill of Rights. Miranda said that these rights meant nothing if suspects didn't know about them. The warning requirement was a mechanism to make existing rights real for people who were least likely to know about them.
The decision transformed police interrogation practice across the United States. Police initially predicted that the warning requirement would make it impossible to obtain confessions and would gut criminal prosecution. In practice, suspects routinely waive their Miranda rights and confess anyway. The decision changed the procedure without dramatically changing the outcomes — a fact that both its defenders and critics find instructive.
Miranda remains one of the most litigated constitutional decisions, with over 1,000 subsequent Supreme Court opinions touching on its requirements. The boundaries of what constitutes 'custody,' 'interrogation,' and adequate waiver have been defined and refined by decades of litigation. The core holding — warnings before custodial interrogation — has survived but its edges remain contested.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On June 13, 1966, the Supreme Court required that everyone arrested in America be told their rights before police questioning. The man whose name is on the decision was stabbed to death ten years later with Miranda warning cards in his pocket. The warning that resulted is now memorized by every law enforcement officer in America and understood by most of its population.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"The prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination."
— Chief Justice Earl Warren, Miranda v. Arizona (1966)
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Ernesto Miranda's case, the interrogation techniques the decision was designed to address, the specific wording of the warning, and the subsequent history of both the doctrine and the man who gave it his name?
