picafrost

I believe that it simply speaks to his worldview. It's an institution in Norway, so he expects that Norwegian leaders can and should pressure the organization into awarding him. This is what he would do.

Academic research is a marvel because (aside from patents) nobody owns it, in the sense of property. It is given away to be used freely. Researchers want their work used and cited. The primary external reward for publishing is reputation and prestige which translates to remuneration for researchers. And that remuneration can be poor.

Beyond the issue of growing understanding and keeping a bountiful stock of questions to pursue, this scheme seems to be threatened as well.

Only OpenAI could turn solving a Millennium Prize Problem into bad PR. Sad that such an amazing milestone in the trajectory of AI is mired under poor stewardship. AI may solve many human problems but it won't stop humans from being human.

> Maybe letting other countries rob us blind is worse.

I find this argument interesting because the US economy is the largest in the entire world by a fairly wide margin. That the US is being robbed implies it's operating from a position of weakness, which is an absurd idea.

Are other countries with factories really responsible for US companies outsourcing manufacturing to them? Do you want cheap goods or do you want your fellow Americans paid pennies?

The US consumer economy must grow. Regulating anything that has the potential to continue its growth is simply not a priority for the current US administration, and investors won't miss out on big tech exits as they grow more scarce. Let the gamblers gamble, let socially harmful uses of AI proliferate, let the surveillance state spread, as long as they generate revenues that do not collapse* the economy. If they produce individuals harmful to society, well, indignants can be Flocked, fined, and, if necessary, imprisoned.

Flouting the law ahead of regulators has always been a strategy in startups, only now the stakes are not "get a ride to the airport."

Are there not disparities between running an application in the terminal and running a native GUI? I can only speak for macOS, but my experience with bespoke native GUI applications of my own or other developers (pre-built distributions in GitHub assets) is that I must first pass through the layers of the macOS security model: doing a right-click dance to launch the application, changing permissions in security settings, etc. I assume the experience is different depending on how you set up Xcode to compile, how it's signed, etc (I have zero experience with how this works). That said, I do not recall being subjected to any of this using terminal applications.

Put differently, a GUI application seems to subject you far more to the whims of Apple or Windows than a TUI and perhaps even a different run context. Maybe the permissions fiddling for this is insignificant. Is there a clear user contract from Apple or Microsoft about this?

Naturally, this is a non-issue in Linux.

I find it a real shame that botany doesn't receive a larger share of the curriculum in school. Plants are ubiquitous (obviously), they've been here well before we have and will remain here well after we've gone extinct. Despite that, in my experience, the average person knows very little about how and why they are organized into taxonomies and what characteristics that gives them.

Seed pod? Square stems and opposite leaves? Five petaled flowers? All simple things to identify and dramatically narrow to a small set of families, if not one. And then the morphology between plants in those families becomes interesting to observe. And so it goes on.

Then again, a great number of people live in areas totally absent of any plants that aren't from a Home Depot, so that knowledge can scarcely be used. This is something Joey (the author) loves to rant about in his videos.

> we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.

The veiled implication here is hilariously petty. This entire document is hilariously petty. And apparently, ignorant of the news cycle.

This does not build more trust in OpenAI. If it's-totally-a-misunderstanding and Apple-should-have-communicated-better is the best they can offer, well, good luck in court.

In my view the best writing presents a portal to someone else's mind. LLMs do not have a mind. They can produce text and perhaps even 'weave a tapestry' of plot lines that make for an enthralling and well written story. Maybe a meaningful one, if prompted with a particular set of themes and narrative ideas. Is that a voice?

I don't know. But I do think, or rather I hope, real voices will prevail. But publishers (including KDP) have a rough road ahead of them, if they also want that. Just search YouTube for tutorials on how to spam Amazon with AI generated works, hoping for a break out. It is sad.

Is anyone working on cryptographic human-crafted attestation, without feeding the work into LLMs?

Very neat! Love seeing immediately grok'able simulations like this that you can just browse to.

There are a few neat black hole shaders[1][2] on Shadertoy as well.

[1] https://www.shadertoy.com/view/tsBXW3

[2] https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lstSRS

One reason I switched to the cheapest notebooks and cheapest (reasonable) pens is a feeling that I was attempting to live a simulacrum of productivity bathed in nostalgia for an era I never lived in, and which probably never existed.

There's a vision I am still somewhat attracted to of illuminating notes into a handcrafted moleskin (or whatever) journal and in doing so, creating an artifact that has value across all dimensions. This intention, whether it sits on the surface of my subconscious or just below it, detracts from the thing of value: what's being written.

What really changed my perspective was attempting to write seriously. The first draft of a long form work is the bare minimum to begin writing. Writing does not really begin until it exists. When I tried to adopt this into the notes I made in my professional life what I found is that, in general, I didn't really need much of the notes anyway.

> Hong Wang will become the third female mathematician in history to receive the Fields Medal

Interestingly, if true, it will also be the first time an MIT PhD graduate has won the Fields Medal.

As I understand it many of the very wealthy do not "own" properties directly but control LLCs that do. The chain of trust/LLC ownership can be complex. Also as I understand it, this legislation does not really answer that call effectively -- though I have, of course, not read the full legal text myself.

I suppose in Ken Griffin's case, even if his residence is owned by an LLC he controls, he is known to reside in it. But how effective is this legislation when the purpose of LLC ownership is expressly anonymity and accounting convenience?

All wildlife populations are in a severe decline [1][2]. More should be done about this, but I guess as a species we will have to learn the hard way.

A small way to help is to replace some or all of your lawn with native species. A lawn should be a throw rug, not wall to wall carpet that is functionally a desert. If you won't get fined for doing so.

[1] https://www.worldwildlife.org/news/press-releases/catastroph...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...

Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.

But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?

I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.

> Anthropic has also been in ongoing discussions with US government officials about Claude Mythos Preview and its offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. [...] We are ready to work with local, state, and federal representatives to assist in these tasks.

As Iran engages in a cyber attack campaign [1] today the timing of this release seems poignant. A direct challenge to their supply chain risk designation.

[1] https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa...

A truly post-modern form of anti-authority: I refuse to inject things the government recommends but willingly inject things strangers on the internet write about and which originate from random Chinese laboratories.

There's a mind-boggling market of un[der]studied and un[der]regulated substances for people who desire peak health and performance, many of whom refuse to engage in regular physical activity or a regular diet.

They don't seem to be any happier for it. If anything, they live at a higher and more diffused state of anxiety. I think it is rather sad.

The air in Manhattan got better because people rejected resignation and demanded that we must do better.

By "scars" you mean the permanent destruction of coral reefs, old-growth forests, and the species that depend on them? These cannot be rebuilt on any timescale meaningful to civilization. What exactly are you defending?

Survival is the floor, not a metric of success.

This is all we've got. We need to do a better job of preserving it.

I continue to find it bizarre that some Americans are offended that Europeans do not want to be dragged into the American corporate surveillance, advertising, and consumption cult. Will nothing be sovereign until Europe is also littered with personal injury attorney billboards, broadcasting pharmaceutical ads, and other pox marks of a degraded culture? Why search for a better way when you can normalize awful (because it's more profitable).

Nature's finest achievement. A hyper-efficient "mind" built on a pyre of fossil fuels and rare minerals so it can help us burn the rest faster. Surely the Neanderthals stand envious that millions will be able to confide their unemployment woes to ChatGPT after GPS-navigating to the Dollar General in the nearest bleak strip mall in search of affordable goods.

I love watching magpies. I have seen them tease cats by "foraging" just out of sprint and leap distance. They quickly fly up to a tree when the cat moves, always keeping an eye on it, and resume when the cat resets, as other magpies in the group watch from above. I've seen them harass a hawk try to eat a fresh hunt, six magpies surrounding it, taking turns pecking at the hawk's tail until it leaves.

They have interesting interactions with the hooded crows, tolerant of each other but still competitive over food. If a white tailed eagle enters they area they will together team up and attempt to chase it away.

They have complex social interactions with each. I've seen a younger magpie in a group get pinned down by a dominant one while several in the group pecked at its belly, because it ate out of order. They acknowledge even me, their neighbor, who occasionally leaves some winter food out for them.

Anyone who is fortunate to spend real time in or at the edge of nature, and takes the time to observe, should be humbled by the complexity and intelligence of the world around us. Some species stand out, of course, like the magpies.

Most of what we have created as the human race is best characterized as complication rather than complexity, when compared to the utter complexity of the natural world. In the era of AI I find it amusing that we believe we're approaching being able to construct a kind of real intelligence when so many can barely recognize, let alone understand, the "lesser" forms of intelligence around us.

Looking at the website of the organization [1] of the author, linked at the bottom of the submitted link, I get serious Time Cube [2] vibes.

I'm both fascinated and worried about what the internet will look like in five years.

[1] https://www.faf.one/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150506055228/http://www.timecu...

Of course. But LLMs may subtract the need for top talent to be working on them.

So much of society's intellectual talent has been allocated toward software. Many of our smartest are working on ad-tech, surveillance, or squeezing as much attention out of our neighbors as possible.

Maybe the current allocation of technical talent is a market failure and disruption to coding could be a forcing function for reallocation.

I am increasingly feeling okay with the idea of being left out. The worst parts of working professionally in a software development team have been amplified by LLMs. Ridiculously large PRs, strong opinions doubled down due to being LLM-"confirmed", bigger expectations coming from above, exceptionally unwarranted confidence in the change or approach the LLM has come up with.

I am dying inside when I make a comment and receive a response that has clearly been prompted toward my comment and possibly filtered in the voice of the responder if not copied and pasted directly. Particularly when it's wrong. And it often is wrong because the human using them doesn't know how to ask the right questions.

Fortunately, most of the fundamental technological infrastructure is well in place at this point (networking, operating systems, ...). Low skilled engineers vibe coding features for some fundamentally pointless SaaS is OK with me.

I think this is good to highlight for non-Scandinavians.

Scandinavian countries are extremely open and transparent in a way that might be shocking for Americans. For example, in Norway, I can check nearly anyone's brokerage account holdings, addresses, phone numbers, etc. on public websites. I can in theory look up anyone's tax filings.

Personal identification numbers do not tend to be considered private in the same way that social security numbers in the US are.

I find this narrative in some corners of American politics fascinating because of how completely it misunderstands US power.

Hegemony isn't charity. It's expensive. What the US gains is an invitation to exert power all over the world from bases and ports within countries playing a willing role in the US position. It gains the US dollar as the reserve currency and petro-currency of the world. In particular, without the world accepting the US dollar as the reserve currency, the US's ability to maintain a large budget deficit evaporates.

To gain this sort of power without invitation and strong alliances built on shared understanding and trust will cost the US much, much more in the longer term.

Totally bizarre to watch the US transform from the endearingly crazy and rich friend to the one who holds you at gunpoint and robs you.