skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Keep Android Open in ~tech
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Comment on From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans in ~society
skybrian Link ParentWhat kind of book are you imagining, though? Maybe it includes reading a book to your kid?What kind of book are you imagining, though? Maybe it includes reading a book to your kid?
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Comment on From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans in ~society
skybrian Link ParentYes, good catch, and this is a common problem with survey questions. The people who wrote the question think it means one thing and the people who took the survey think it means something else....Yes, good catch, and this is a common problem with survey questions. The people who wrote the question think it means one thing and the people who took the survey think it means something else. And if you don’t ask people to explain their reasoning, you might not find out?
For someone reading about the survey, if you read the questions then you might see the ambiguity.
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Comment on Keep Android Open in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentWhat do you mean it's not about security? People say that all the time but do they know anything?What do you mean it's not about security? People say that all the time but do they know anything?
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Comment on The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. in ~science
skybrian Link ParentDetecting LLMisms is something you learn from practice and you get better at it. There are patterns that are invisible at first, but you start seeing them after repeated exposure. And I wonder if...Detecting LLMisms is something you learn from practice and you get better at it. There are patterns that are invisible at first, but you start seeing them after repeated exposure. And I wonder if there are more patterns that I don’t see yet?
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Comment on The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. in ~science
skybrian Link ParentI think we will be seeing more price competition soon. Open weights models are getting pretty good, and so are cheaper proprietary models. I sometimes use Luna instead of Terra and rarely try Sol...I think we will be seeing more price competition soon. Open weights models are getting pretty good, and so are cheaper proprietary models. I sometimes use Luna instead of Terra and rarely try Sol or Opus.
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Comment on Finding bugs in Raft implementations in ~comp
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
Despite the paper’s famously accessible style, we’ve found bugs in every Raft implementation we’ve tested, including HashiCorp Raft, Aeron Cluster, OpenRaft, and MicroRaft — despite the investment in formal methods, careful code review, unit testing, and years of testing in production. The bugs we found manifest as violations of Raft’s main invariant (called state machine safety in the paper, commonly referred to elsewhere as total order delivery). If you’re using a Raft implementation, you might want to check it for bugs.
We’ve sent bug reports upstream. This isn’t intended as a critique of Raft, its authors, its implementers, or any particular implementation. Raft implementations, even with a formal specification and a detailed implementation guide, are not easy to write.
Rather, this is a story about correctness in distributed systems — the inevitability of bugs, the inadequacy of any single approach, and the high cost of learned helplessness.
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In all cases, network partitions and turbulence were sufficient to surface examples of divergence (i.e. no node kill/restart required, or disk corruption, or other faults)
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If there is a single lesson to be learned here, it’s that formal methods alone cannot ensure that software works, because the formal specification still needs to be implemented, and even if you have mechanized verification, you’re verifying the model and not the implementation itself.
We believe formal methods are useful and necessary — they can confirm the basic soundness of a design, and provide a map that saves engineers from many of the errors that can arise in the implementation of a complex system.
But as these bugs show, errors continue to arise when translating the formal specification to production code. In the course of our work with various Raft implementations, we identified a number of assumptions in the Raft paper that remain implicit. An implementer who misses any of these details is likely to run into trouble.
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Finding bugs in Raft implementations
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Comment on South Korea’s Kospi index sinks 10% on heavy selling of chipmaking stocks in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
HONG KONG (AP) — South Korea's Kospi index plunged more than 10% on Tuesday on heavy selling of chipmaking stocks that have gyrated recently due to concerns over the sustainability of the boom in artificial intelligence.
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Trading was temporarily halted as Kospi dropped to its lowest level since April as shares in chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped sharply. The Kospi was down 10.5% at 6,051.19 by midday.
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Samsung's shares tumbled 12% while those for SK Hynix were down 12.7%.
A big factor driving the selling of AI-related shares, analysts said, is the expectation that competition from Chinese AI startup s and chipmakers might undermine gains for global companies whose shares have skyrocketed due to the AI frenzy.
A 466% jump in the price of Chinese chipmaker CXM T in its trading debut Monday has underscored such concerns. CXMT raised at least $8.6 billion in its initial public offering on Shanghai's tech-oriented STAR exchange.
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South Korea’s Kospi index sinks 10% on heavy selling of chipmaking stocks
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Comment on France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...]From the article:
A fire in the hilly terrain of Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, burning 50,000 hectares (125,000 acres). Authorities are battling two separate fires north-west of Madrid, taking the total area of scorched land near the capital to 70,000 hectares.
Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, said the heatwave would last until “at least” Sunday, “making firefighting efforts more difficult due to high temperatures [and] locally gusty southerly winds”.
France was also in “a race against time” to control wildfires before another heatwave this week, said Eric Brocardi, a fire service spokesperson. Weather forecasters have said temperatures could reach 40C (104F) is some parts of the country from Tuesday.
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The mayor of Bordeaux, Thomas Cazenave, told the BBC he is bracing for “all eventualities”, as the fire advanced to within 15km (nine miles) from the city. “We are preparing to accommodate a large number of people should further evacuations be ordered,” he said.
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The vast fire, which has triggered the evacuation of 220,000 people, had not progressed during the early hours of Monday but was “not contained” and remained “very complicated to control”, Nuñez said.
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Several fires broke out in northern and central Portugal, officials said, with over 1,000 firefighters and other professionals battling the flames.
Firefighters fought to extinguish a major wildfire in Italy’s southern region of Puglia on Monday. More than 400 people, many of them tourists staying in campsites set among pine forests, were evacuated by sea from the Gargano peninsula on Sunday as the blaze, fanned by strong winds, encroached on beaches.
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France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins
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Comment on From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans in ~society
skybrian (edited )LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] Edit: note that they specifically asked people to guess:From the article:
When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed.
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Misperceptions of the size of minority groups have been identified in prior surveys, which observers have often attributed to social causes: fear of out-groups, lack of personal exposure, or portrayals in the media. Yet consistent with prior research, we find that the tendency to misestimate the size of demographic groups is actually one instance of a broader tendency to overestimate small proportions and underestimate large ones, regardless of the topic.
If exaggerated perceptions of minority groups’ share of the American population are due to fear, we would expect estimates of those groups’ share that are made by the groups’ members to be more accurate than those made by others. We tested this theory on minority groups that were represented by at least 100 respondents within our sample and found that they were no better (and often worse) than non-group members at guessing the relative size of the minority group they belong to.
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Although there is some question-by-question variability, the results from our survey show that inaccurate perceptions of group size are not limited to the types of socially charged group divisions typically explored in similar studies: race, religion, sexuality, education, and income. Americans are equally likely to misestimate the size of less widely discussed groups, such as adults who are left-handed. While respondents estimated that 34% of U.S. adults are left-handed, the real estimate lies closer to 10-12%. Similar misperceptions are found regarding the proportion of American adults who own a pet, have read a book in the past year, or reside in various cities or states. This suggests that errors in judgment are not due to the specific context surrounding a certain group.
Edit: note that they specifically asked people to guess:
Estimated proportions median weighted responses (ranging from 0% to 100%, rounded to the nearest whole percentage) to the question "If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults..." True proportions were drawn from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and polls by YouGov and other polling firms.
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From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans
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Comment on The glass famine in ~humanities.history
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
Now while these things may sound somewhat trivial today, in 1914 advanced lenses were a massive deal. This was the first great war fought at long distances. Advances in ballistics & weaponry meant ranges went up to 40,000 to 60,000 yards. And those with the best lenses had the best chance of hitting their targets. They had an enormous advantage.
And as WWI began, there was no doubting who had the upper hand: Germany.
Germany totally dominated world production of precision optics via its company Zeiss (making lenses) and Schott (making the glass going into those lenses).
Britain, on the other hand, was reliant on Germany for around two thirds of its optics. So when the war began and those supplies were suddenly shut off, the UK was left facing a “glass famine”.
In the opening months of the war, British troops were killed in terrifying numbers by German snipers (with Zeiss scopes). British soldiers, meanwhile, were being sent out to the trenches without any binoculars. It fast became an emergency.
There was a public appeal and newspaper campaigns encouraging people to donate their binoculars, opera glasses, anything, to troops heading to the front. Even the King & Queen donated some of theirs. But it wasn’t enough.
Which brings us back to the spy sent to Switzerland. His mission was to find a way of buying binoculars off the Germans; to buy a technology off the enemy to use to kill the enemy.
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The only thing crazier than this proposal… was that the Germans actually said yes. They were not just willing but seemed to bend over backwards to provide binoculars (to be used to help kill their troops). Here’s the passage from the history of the Ministry of Munitions:
Why were they willing to provide this advanced military technology to their deadly enemy? Because in much the same way as the UK was desperately short of glass lenses, Germany was desperately short of rubber for their tyres and engine fan belts. And the UK controlled much of the global supply of rubber via her colonies.
So, for a period the two great powers were so desperate for raw materials they were willing to suspend the normal conventions of warfare. Rubber for glass.
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Making glass (melting sand!) was not easy. But in the 17th and 18th centuries the UK had one of the most advanced optical research sectors in the world. Everyone was carrying out research into glass.
And British lenses were, by most accounts, far better, clearer and more precise than their Bohemian counterparts. The glass sector became one of the most profitable and important in the UK economy. Foreign powers routinely sent spies to try to plunder its secrets. So what went wrong?
The picture above is a clue. In the 18th and then 19th century there was a sequence of taxes on glass. Most famous of all is the window tax of the 18th century which, in fairness, wasn’t primarily a tax on glass. It was mostly a tax on housing (the more windows, the more you paid - hence why people bricked in windows).
But it was the beginning of a fiscal assault on the glass sector. The crystal goose was to be plucked. The window tax was followed up by further taxes on glass producers and on glass consumers. There were duties and other charges, many of them based on the weight of glass.
And the consequence was that the sector retrenched. Businesses failed to invest in new types of glass. Domestic glass became too expensive.
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Even at this point, policymakers in Germany were doing quite the opposite, providing support and tax breaks for their glassmakers (and other scientists). With the help of what would today be called “industrial strategy”, Jena in Thuringia was picked as a centre for technical glassmaking. An enterprising scientist, Otto Schott, came up with clever new glass mixes, including borosilicate glass and clever glasses which used lithium to become clearer and more stable.
Carl Zeiss then turned Schott’s glass into amazing lenses. An industrial sector was born; Jena quickly came to dominate lensmaking. Part of that was down to the genius of these men but partly it came down to the economic environment which was supportive even as the environment in the UK was not.
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But as I say, the most interesting thing wasn't so much that deal, but what happened next. The official account says despite the Germans saying yes, the British never took them up on the offer. Some historians have argued the lenses were delivered. But let’s look at the data…
Here’s a chart I dug out of the UK National Archives while researching Material World. It shows you optical glass supplies to the UK. And look: the standout thing is how quickly UK domestic production rose.
The UK didn’t need German glass by the time that deal was done because it was producing plenty by then, and output was rising fast. UK factories had swung into action. They turned around the deficit so quickly that by the end of the war they were producing more than they needed - enough to supply their allies.
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The glass famine
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Comment on BELTRUNNER (and a new way to make games) in ~games
skybrian Link ParentI know you're going for a classic arcade vibe, but I'm not sure sound in "attract mode" makes sense for a website? If you want to keep it anyway, maybe have an obvious way to turn it off?I know you're going for a classic arcade vibe, but I'm not sure sound in "attract mode" makes sense for a website?
If you want to keep it anyway, maybe have an obvious way to turn it off?
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Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom a couple days ago: https://www.reuters.com/business/its-ai-agent-spent-days-hacking-company-sources-say-openai-did-not-notice-week-2026-07-24/ https://archive.is/MiZDV [...]From a couple days ago:
OpenAI’s public disclosure, on July 21, that one of its agents had slipped out of control and carried out the break-in at Hugging Face drew global attention. But many details of the hack, including how long the agent went rogue and OpenAI’s belated knowledge of it, are being reported here for the first time.
Hugging Face is preparing a public timeline of the hack, Wolf said, adding that he could not speak to what happened at OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI said the hack was unprecedented and “marks an important moment for AI safety.” It added that it was reviewing the incident with outside advisers and would eventually publish a technical report.
A spokeswoman said there were "several inaccuracies" in Reuters' reporting but didn't respond when asked to describe them.
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Two people familiar with the matter said that it was not until after Thursday, July 16, when Hugging Face published a blog post saying it had been hacked by “an autonomous AI agent system,” that OpenAI realized its own agent was responsible. That meant at least a week elapsed between when the model first exhibited signs of troubling behavior and OpenAI’s realization that it was responsible for the hack.
The weekend of July 18 to 19, OpenAI staffers spotted clues in internal logs -- records of what OpenAI's systems did -- showing that its agent had escaped from its testing constraints, two of the people familiar with the company's investigation said. Reuters could not establish what prompted OpenAI to sift through the logs.
Four people familiar with OpenAI’s model-training practices say the company often runs several different model evaluations at the same time, all of which operate at high speeds and generate such enormous amounts of data that employees sometimes struggle to keep up.
By the time OpenAI alerted Hugging Face, the AI library had already called the FBI to report the hack, according to a person familiar with the matter. Reuters could not establish whether the bureau had opened an investigation.
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Comment on Homes lost, thousands under evacuation orders as wildfires spread across central Oregon in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
Large swaths of Central Oregon have become consumed by wildfire, with several blazes burning across the region simultaneously, forcing thousands to evacuate and further stretching the state’s limited firefighting resources.
Late Saturday evening, the Bench Fire, just west of Madras, quickly grew to more than 6,200 acres with 0% containment. That led to Level 3 “Go Now” evacuation orders for the entirety of Warm Springs and other areas of Jefferson County.
Highway 26 was closed overnight between Warm Springs and Madras as firefighters worked to get the fire under control. The highway closed again Sunday between Prineville and John Day, and state transportation officials warned that erratic and rapidly spreading fires could further impact roads east of the Cascades, including Highways 26 and 20, into Monday.
The recent evacuations and road closures come as Oregon experiences one of the most aggressive wildfire seasons in years. A historically low snowpack over the winter has led to tinderbox conditions across much of the state. Officials say Oregon is experiencing August-like fire conditions in July.
Oregon currently has more than 34 active large fires burning statewide, covering more than 1 million acres, according to Jessica Neujahr, public affairs officer for the Oregon Department of Forestry.
She said conditions are so dry that “any small ember right now could potentially start the next large wildfire.” And the increasing number of fires is taxing the limited number of firefighters available.
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Homes lost, thousands under evacuation orders as wildfires spread across central Oregon
17 votes
Seems like Google is doing these things to some extent? It’s harder to post an app to the Play Store it used to be.
The developer registration thing is the one that gets more attention.