phoenixreader

The author is attacking the field of theoretical algorithm design broadly as being useless. If we take the author's logic to its conclusion, many algorithms we learn about in a standard Algorithm Design course such as "median of medians" (finding the median in a list in O(n) worst-case time) is useless because it is not used in practice. Even the original 2019 Harvey–van der Hoeven result, showing integration multiplication can be done in O(n log n), has a galactic overhead and no applications.

> theory gets so unmoored from the original question that an “open problem” becomes nothing more than an academic status puzzle...The theory of computer science has become a form of mathematics that doesn’t concern itself with computers, and it offers little reward for impact outside those mathematical pursuits

I thought it is common knowledge (and a common warning from profs to first-year CS students) that computer science has very little to do with computers. The very concept of Turing machines and decidability are mathematical in nature, far removed from how computers these days are run. The undecidability of Wang tiling, for example, is definitely a notable CS result, but it has nothing to do with computers." It is essentially a branch of mathematics. "Computer Science Is Not About Computers, Any More Than Astronomy Is About Telescopes" is a famous quote attributed to Dikstra. There is even famous MIT Open Courseware clip: https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?t=30

In this case, they needed routing to the internet because they needed to search and read from the internet.

I don’t think this is the right take. OpenAI employees are generally very competent compared to industry standard, and I have trouble believing they committed significant error in their sandbox design process.

I think what is happening is that the ability for frontier models to break out of sandboxes has exceeded the ability of average competent employees to build and maintain sandboxes. This doesn’t need to happen all the time. If the natural variation of agent executions cause agents to have ability to break out of sandbox 0.1% of the time, given how many agents OpenAI runs, this behavior happens eventually.

All sufficiently complex processes and software has bugs, but recently frontier models have become sufficiently advanced to exploit them.

I have encountered instances where Claude 4.6 on Bedrock appeared to be more personable than the Claude 4.6 on Claude web. I think the system prompt plays a role in making it more "customer service" like in certain situations.

Link with more complete info to this case: https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-chronicle-herald-metr...

A decade is nothing. If issues will be worked through a decade from now, that means the best time to think about opportunities/coonsequences related to that is now.

I thought college is expensive in the US. This is the first time I learned that a random, unverified person can EARN money from going to a college.

Cool site! You’d find this wiki a fun read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)

That’s very cool! Does it use the source code at all? Or does it just use README and directory tree?

I don’t understand how this works. I know someone who founded successful startup based on art-painting robots. But why will anyone buy such art not attached to fame? Unlike bitcoin, the supply of such art is not limited. It’s still infinitely reproducible through the robot.

The Chinese government had built the infrastructure for the Great Firewall, allowing them to block whoever they want. The US does not have this capability.

Context: https://globalnews.ca/news/10082240/counterfeit-toonies-coin...

US and Canada should invest more in finding a treatment for opioid addiction. A drug that cures heroin addiction would save so many lives and helps people reach their true potential.

A beer is not as addictive as Heroin. Drinking a beer is not going to ruin your life.

Microsoft Publisher was great for making banners and posters for small businesses. It’s basically free for people with Office. Anyone knows a suitable replacement? Is it all Canva from now on?

His sentencing is in February. According to the plea deal, he waives his right to appeal any sentence not more than 18 months, so he might still be in jail for a short period.

Yes, and 2/3 of the households in Canada are home owners.

I just do not understand how the blog writers are expected to come up with money to defend their case.

According to the Twitter thread linked, at the beginning there were only 30 items, so using bubblesort didn't matter. The number of items has since grown to a thousand.

I don't think this is SPP. SPP highlights in the difference between the mathematically optimal choice and the choice chosen in practice. It is a difference between theory and practice. The problem proposed in this article occurs even in theory alone. Non-ergodicity means there is a mismatch between "the average of all possibilities in the next time-step" and "the long-term trend of one datapoint".

If we put bounds on the bank in SPP, the first coin toss would still have positive EV. In the new ergodicity problem, even with bounds on the bank, it is unclear whether the "first" coin toss is worth taking.

fun fact: an average "policy debate" speaker speaks 350 words per minute and is completely unintelligible to an average person. They speak faster than auctioneers. A "policy debate" is not your average debate and is more like its own sport. The goal is to cram so many arguments into the limited time that your opponents cannot address them all.

Watch these and you definitely cannot understand them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FPsEwWT6K0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrTYHn1Am0c&list=PLHaG-zIzA-...

Even the Onion could not have written a better skit.

This is very good. Are the summaries manually curated?