skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Claude Code's source code leaked in ~tech
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Comment on US Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids in ~lgbt
skybrian Link ParentI'm not a lawyer, but I believe common-law rights are usually individual rights? That is, someone could go to court to say that they have a right to do something and that state can't prevent them...I'm not a lawyer, but I believe common-law rights are usually individual rights? That is, someone could go to court to say that they have a right to do something and that state can't prevent them from doing that.
But this case seems to be about whether and how the state of Colorado is allowed to regulate what people can do. So, yes, people have a lot of other rights that aren't included in the US Constitution, but I'm not sure how that translates into giving Colorado a right to regulate what people can do when there's a First Amendment right for the individuals being regulated.
It seems like one would probably want to argue that children have certain rights and that means that the state can make certain regulations to protect them, but I'm not sure what sort of argument one might make to get there.
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Comment on US Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids in ~lgbt
skybrian Link ParentWithout saying anything about this particular ruling, I don't see how legal arguments based the "whole essence of the Constitution" (seems vague?) can be allowed without allowing courts to rule...Without saying anything about this particular ruling, I don't see how legal arguments based the "whole essence of the Constitution" (seems vague?) can be allowed without allowing courts to rule any way they like?
The Trump administration would likely weaponize that kind of vague norm.
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Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentIt’s an impressive magic trick but I think we should wait until someone figures out how the trick is done. Magic tricks often seem less impressive after they’re explained. Edit: Also, people are...It’s an impressive magic trick but I think we should wait until someone figures out how the trick is done. Magic tricks often seem less impressive after they’re explained.
Edit: Also, people are fairly good at explaining how they know things, but often those are not the real reasons. Sometimes we don’t actually know the real reasons.
I still think coming up with explanations can be useful even though they might be a lossy reconstruction.
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Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThe coding agent I use has the ability to use a browser and it can use this to diagnose issues, which sometimes seems to work well, but other times it seems pretty blind to obvious stuff.The coding agent I use has the ability to use a browser and it can use this to diagnose issues, which sometimes seems to work well, but other times it seems pretty blind to obvious stuff.
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Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentTo me this sounds like they don’t really know and further research is necessary to figure out exactly how the trick is done.To me this sounds like they don’t really know and further research is necessary to figure out exactly how the trick is done.
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Comment on "CEO said a thing!" journalism in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI don’t see how that follows. Musk opposed the California high speed rail project and proposed an unlikely alternative, but California voters passed the referendum anyway and the state has been...I don’t see how that follows. Musk opposed the California high speed rail project and proposed an unlikely alternative, but California voters passed the referendum anyway and the state has been trying to build it ever since. The cost overruns and delays don’t seem to be Musk’s doing.
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Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentYou can send an image to an AI and it will tell you what's in it. Researchers have created benchmarks to test how good AI is at understanding medical images, such as X-rays. It turns out that the...You can send an image to an AI and it will tell you what's in it. Researchers have created benchmarks to test how good AI is at understanding medical images, such as X-rays. It turns out that the AI's are very good at cheating at these benchmarks; somehow they will pretend to see things in medical images even if no image is included in the request at all.
This is very weird - how do the AI's do so well without having any image to work with? It must have other ways of figuring it out from the text.
In this paper, they suggest a way to run benchmarks so that this sort of "cheating" is detected.
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Comment on "CEO said a thing!" journalism in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThis varies. When Musk announced that he was going to buy Twitter, it did eventually happen. (After a lot of twists and turns.) But he's said a lot of other stuff that wasn't true. Similarly,...This varies. When Musk announced that he was going to buy Twitter, it did eventually happen. (After a lot of twists and turns.) But he's said a lot of other stuff that wasn't true.
Similarly, Trump posts lots of nonsense but when he announced he was going raise tariffs, often he actually did.
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Comment on MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ...From the article:
[...] Frontier models readily generate detailed image descriptions and elaborate reasoning traces, including pathology-biased clinical findings, for images never provided; we term this phenomenon mirage reasoning. Second, without any image input, models also attain strikingly high scores across general and medical multimodal benchmarks, bringing into question their utility and design. In the most extreme case, our model achieved the top rank on a standard chest X-ray question-answering benchmark without access to any images. Third, when models were explicitly instructed to guess answers without image access, rather than being implicitly prompted to assume images were present, performance declined markedly. [...] These findings expose fundamental vulnerabilities in how visual-language models reason and are evaluated, pointing to an urgent need for private benchmarks that eliminate textual cues enabling non-visual inference, particularly in medical contexts where miscalibrated AI carries the greatest consequence. We introduce B-Clean as a principled solution for fair, vision-grounded evaluation of multimodal AI systems.
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Contrary to the more commonly studied phenomenon of hallucinations, the mirage effect
does not necessarily involve inconsistencies or false responses. A response generated by
a model in mirage-mode can be correct in every sense, accompanied by a meticulous reasoning
trace, and completely coherent. The main characteristic of the mirage effect, however, is the
construction of a false epistemic frame that is not grounded on the provided input. In this
epistemic mimicry, the model simulates the entire perceptual process that would have led to the
answer. This helps explain why reasoning traces, on their own, cannot certify visual reasoning:
the trace may be fluent, coherent, and apparently image-based while being anchored to no
image at all. This characteristic specifically undermines the trustworthiness and interpretability
of the reasoning traces, making it increasingly difficult to detect such failure cases using the
conventional methods. Importantly, because the resulting explanations may appear imagegrounded, neither accuracy nor chain-of-thought style reasoning can verify that visual evidence was actually used. -
MIRAGE: the illusion of visual understanding
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Comment on "CEO said a thing!" journalism in ~tech
skybrian LinkI'm also annoyed with these kind of articles. Unfortunately, these are powerful people and whatever they're claiming often matters, so it sometimes counts as news. But it's not news I want to read...I'm also annoyed with these kind of articles. Unfortunately, these are powerful people and whatever they're claiming often matters, so it sometimes counts as news. But it's not news I want to read unless the journalist does additional work.
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Comment on UK government blocks Chinese firm’s plans to build wind turbines in Scotland in ~enviro
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...]From the article:
Chinese firm Ming Yang has been blocked by the UK Government from building what would have been the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturing facility in Scotland.
The firm had proposed the £1.5 billion facility at a site in Ardersier near Inverness, saying it could create up to 1,500 jobs.
On Wednesday the UK Government blocked the move, with a spokesperson saying it cannot support the use of the firm’s turbines in UK offshore wind projects.
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Posting on social media, First Minister John Swinney said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, adding that the UK Government had put 1,500 Scottish jobs at risk.
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UK government blocks Chinese firm’s plans to build wind turbines in Scotland
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Comment on WNBA agreement to give every rookie under contract a raise in ~sports.basketball
skybrian LinkFrom the article: Apparently they had expert help with negotiations.From the article:
The WNBA and its players' union agreed to a new CBA in principle that will include raises for all players under contract on Wednesday, a person with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing negotiations.
The person said all players currently under contract, including those under rookie deals, will be graduated from salaries in the old CBA to salaries paid in the new CBA. For example, if a player on their rookie deal made [...] the minimum salary $66,079, they would now make more than $300,000.
Apparently they had expert help with negotiations.
It is, as far as Goldin is aware, the biggest increase any union anywhere has ever negotiated.
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WNBA agreement to give every rookie under contract a raise
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Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech
skybrian LinkThe "dark forest" metaphor presumes that you want to keep things to yourself to prevent copying, but suppose you want to encourage copying? Maybe it's better to put an idea or a vibe-coded demo...The "dark forest" metaphor presumes that you want to keep things to yourself to prevent copying, but suppose you want to encourage copying? Maybe it's better to put an idea or a vibe-coded demo out there because you want it to become more common?
For software, this is free as in "free puppy." It's less work to get someone else to maintain it.
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Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI wonder if it's done by botnets or if people in Asia are being paid to run these things at home?I wonder if it's done by botnets or if people in Asia are being paid to run these things at home?
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Comment on Android to debut "advanced flow" for sideloading unverified applications in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom Android Police:From Android Police:
In a video posted on X by the official Android Developers account, Matthew Forsythe — Director of Product Management for Google Play Developer Experience — confirmed that the advanced sideloading flow only needs to be enabled once per account.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
skybrian LinkFrom a pragmatic perspective, I don't think Tildes is a good place for that conversation and you should probably try to find somewhere else. More generally: sometimes it would be nice to be able...From a pragmatic perspective, I don't think Tildes is a good place for that conversation and you should probably try to find somewhere else.
More generally: sometimes it would be nice to be able to post a link and discuss it in "death of the author" mode where we discuss the work itself rather than everything else the author has done, but many people here disagree and will definitely feel free to bring it up. Particularly in this case.
It might take more work, but you can learn just about everything about how a JavaScript app works from the minimized source code, no sourcemap needed. You'd be missing things like comments and dead code that was stripped out during the compilation process because it's not reachable. This might give a clue about unreleased or disabled features.