skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on New $500m artillery shell plant failed to produce any 155mm parts in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The inability of a munitions plant in Mesquite, Texas, to build a key part set back the U.S. Army’s plans for ramping up production of 155mm shells to 100,000 rounds per month, according to a scathing new report by the War Department’s Office of Inspector General (DOWIG). Despite receiving close to $500 million from the U.S. Army funded through supplemental spending bills from Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS), failed to make a single subcomponent needed to produce the badly needed shells as of last March.

    “Without the 30,000 additional projectile metal parts anticipated from the Mesquite facility, the Army will be unable to reach its monthly capability goal of 100,000 155-mm artillery rounds,” the report concluded. “As of March 2026, the CPE A&E [Capability Program Executive Ammunition & Energetics] officials have not developed a plan to produce the additional rounds that are supposed to be produced at the Mesquite facility.”

    At present, the Army is only producing 36,000 rounds per month, inspectors revealed.

    Through modernization efforts and two new facilities, the Army expects to exceed the 100,000-round-per-month goal significantly by the end of next year. The initial goal was established by Congress in the wake of the U.S. providing millions of rounds to Ukraine.

    [...]

    The main issue inspectors found was that the plant adapted equipment used to make parts for M107 155mm shells to produce parts for M795 155‑mm shells. The latter is an upgraded version of the munition that is slightly heavier and longer, and has an extended range.

    As a result of this adaptation, several factors came into play, according to DOWIG. Army officials knew that the concept of trying to produce the more advanced 155mm shells using equipment not designed for that was risky. However, officials felt that would pay off because that machinery was already available. In addition, the report stated that the existing Scranton plant’s past work with GD-OTS on ammunition production was a factor in deciding to take a chance on what turned out to be a flawed assumption.

    [...]

    • “The contractor has been working since the original contract task order was issued in November 2022 to produce the contracted 155-mm projectile metal parts. However, according to CPE A&E officials, acquiring the equipment and adapting it to produce M795 155-mm projectile metal parts resulted in significant challenges.” The report redacted specific examples.
    3 votes

  3. Comment on A skeptical overview of AI and consciousness in ~humanities

  4. Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yeah, definitely. But given that it happened, I think their public communications about the incident is pretty good. Certainly better than the corporate blather that Google's blog posts are...

    Yeah, definitely. But given that it happened, I think their public communications about the incident is pretty good. Certainly better than the corporate blather that Google's blog posts are usually written in.

    10 votes

  5. Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I wrote a new headline for the article. It's not playing it down but I think it's pretty factual? (Technically it was an unreleased model along with another one that's been released.)

    I wrote a new headline for the article. It's not playing it down but I think it's pretty factual?

    (Technically it was an unreleased model along with another one that's been released.)

    7 votes

  6. Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    If HuggingFace wanted to sue them for damages, I think they would have a good case, assuming there are any damages. The lesson seems to be to try using a new model to find any bugs in its own...

    If HuggingFace wanted to sue them for damages, I think they would have a good case, assuming there are any damages.

    The lesson seems to be to try using a new model to find any bugs in its own sandbox, because it will likely be testing it one way or another.

    6 votes

  7. Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    So far, it doesn't look like the costs of providing electricity will be socialized. Electric utilities are figuring out ways to charge data centers more. There have been news stories about retail...

    So far, it doesn't look like the costs of providing electricity will be socialized. Electric utilities are figuring out ways to charge data centers more.

    There have been news stories about retail customer's bills being affected, but so far I haven't seen any that checked out after I looked into them.

    Often, as in California, retail electricity bills went up for other reasons.

  8. Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    What do you want from them? Do you think it's a hoax or kayfabe and HuggingFace went along with it? They disclosed it first. Or if not, that OpenAI shouldn't have admitted to it? Or played it down?

    What do you want from them? Do you think it's a hoax or kayfabe and HuggingFace went along with it? They disclosed it first.

    Or if not, that OpenAI shouldn't have admitted to it? Or played it down?

    7 votes

  9. Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It doesn't seem likely that they will tear down any datacenters? I expect they will keep them busy, at least, and finish the ones already being built. Those machines will be for rent one way or...

    It doesn't seem likely that they will tear down any datacenters? I expect they will keep them busy, at least, and finish the ones already being built. Those machines will be for rent one way or another.

  10. Comment on 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU court in landmark Anne Frank copyright ruling in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    The landmark judgment — handed down in July 2026 — stems from a complex legal battle over the online publication of Anne Frank's historical manuscripts. At its core, the case forced Europe's top judges to answer a highly technical question: if a publisher actively tries to block visitors from a specific country, are they still breaking the law if a user sneaks past the digital border using circumvention software?

    According to the CJEU, the answer is no. As long as a website employs "state-of-the-art" geo-blocking technology, the publisher cannot be held liable for copyright infringement simply because a determined reader decides to fire up the best VPN to bypass the restrictions.

    The ruling sets a massive precedent. It confirms that copyright holders cannot point to the mere existence of VPNs to claim a website's security measures are completely ineffective.

    [...]

    Because copyright laws are not fully harmonized across Europe, the legal status of the famous diary varies by territory. In Belgium and roughly 60 other countries, the writings entered the public domain years ago. However, in the Netherlands, parts of the text remain protected by copyright until 2037.

    To respect this territorial divide, the publishers hosted the site in Belgium and used geo-blocking to prevent access from Dutch IP addresses. Visitors from the Netherlands were met with a notice explaining why they couldn't enter the site.

    The Anne Frank Fonds, which holds the Dutch copyright, sued. They argued that because standard VPNs easily allow users to mask their true IP address and spoof a Belgian location, the scholarly website was effectively communicating the protected work to the Dutch public.

    The CJEU ultimately rejected this argument. In its judgment, the court noted that while geo-blocking measures can inevitably be circumvented, "the possibility of such circumvention cannot, in itself and in all circumstances, be a decisive factor in finding those measures to be inadequate and, therefore, ineffective."

    [...]

    The judges explicitly shielded VPN companies from collateral damage in piracy lawsuits, a topic that has sparked intense debate among European ISPs and rightsholders. The court specifically argued that the provider of a VPN or similar services is not liable for users bypassing restrictions.

    15 votes

  12. Comment on US judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over books used to train Claude in ~books

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

    District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

    About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

    Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

    U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling last summer, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into HuggingFace in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    This incident occurred during an internal evaluation which prompts models to pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths, in an effort to quantify their cyber capabilities. We estimate maximal cyber capabilities by running this evaluation without production classifiers used to prevent models from pursuing high-risk cyber activity. Our benchmarks run in a highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.

    The models identified and chained vulnerabilities across OpenAI’s research environment and Hugging Face’s production infrastructure to obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face’s production database. All evidence suggests that the models were hyperfocused on finding a solution for ExploitGym, going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal.

    While operating in our sandboxed testing environment, our models spent a substantial amount of inference compute finding a way to obtain open Internet access, in pursuit of solving the evaluation problem. To gain access, the models identified and exploited a zero-day vulnerability (which we’ve now responsibly disclosed to the vendor) in the package registry cache proxy. With this access, our models performed a series of privilege escalation and lateral movement actions in our research testing environment until the models reached a node with Internet access.

    After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym. Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation. In one example, the model chained together multiple attack vectors, including using stolen credentials and zero-day vulnerabilities to find a remote code execution path on the Hugging Face servers. OpenAI’s security team discovered this anomalous activity internally.

    7 votes

  16. Comment on Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article:

    From the article:

    In the 1960s, fishing surveyors off West Africa’s Benin coast hauled up heads of coral in their nets. Employed by local governments to assess fish diversity and discover potentially trawlable seabeds in the sandy-bottomed Gulf of Guinea, the researchers shrugged off the discovery at the time, burying the find in a brief paragraph in a 130-something-page report.

    With no surveys since, the scientists who followed had lost track of exactly where the reefs might lie. And as mass bleaching events and overfishing slashed the world’s coral reef area by more than 50 percent since the 1950s, local oceanographers had written off any remnants of a possible reef as dead.

    More than six decades on, the mystery has been solved as a team of Beninese scientists rediscovered the healthy reef teeming with marine life. At least eight coral types and eight fish species have formed a thriving ecosystem on this long-forgotten site.

    6 votes

  18. Comment on Deportation orders soar in New York City as Donald Trump 'mega master' hearings accelerate in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Inside a New York City immigration courtroom at 26 Federal Plaza on Friday morning, 90 people had cases before a single immigration judge. People described hastily making plans to get to court, some from hundreds of miles away, having learned about their new hearing date only days in advance.

    By the end of the morning, dozens of people still hadn’t shown up and the judge ordered them removed from the country.

    These removal orders of immigrants who didn’t show up to court reached record heights in June nationwide and more than doubled in New York City last month, according to a new report released by bklg.org, a nonprofit that analyzes immigration court data to help immigration attorneys keep on top of their clients’ cases. The increase occurred during the first few weeks of a new Trump administration effort to speed up deportations through large-scale court proceedings known as “mega master” hearings.

    In June, 4,447 people were ordered removed by immigration judges in the city “in absentia,” meaning they’d missed their hearings, the report found. That was more than double the number in May when 2,189 were ordered removed in absentia.

    [...]

    In absentia removal orders have been increasing annually since 2021, as the number of people crossing the U.S. border and the number of deportation cases rose, but June showed a dramatic jump and surpassed any month on record, going back to the late 1990s when the government started keeping track.

    [...]

    The federal government is required by law to send written notices of any new hearing dates by mail, but many attending these hearings told The City Reporter they’d only learned of the date change because they happened to check the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s online portal or another similar app that helped them monitor their cases. People who miss hearings in deportation proceedings are subject to automatic removal orders, clearing the way for the government to deport them.

    [...]

    Immigration advocates have been urging anyone in deportation proceedings to double-check EOIR’s portal daily to monitor their case for any changes.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on How do you live simply/save money? What does your lifestyle look like? in ~talk

    skybrian
    Link
    And for emergencies too, I hope! And eventually, for retirement. Having savings helps with a lot of things.

    I’d like to have lower expenses so that I can save more for meaningful purchases

    And for emergencies too, I hope! And eventually, for retirement. Having savings helps with a lot of things.

    1 vote