https://idlewords.com/2026/10/cloud_rats_and_software_roaches.htm
I made the same natural selection case on Bluesky a few days ago. Solid stuff here. We are all skating on no ice at all
Category Archives: share
“central claim is that for larger LLMs, most neurons represents a singular concept and things clustered around that concept, perhaps with small offshoots and some use of low-level activations.”
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/i-can-see-everything
Beyond predicting the next token. I remember smart people being very confident about what an LLM was. The experts always seemed less confident.
“Take a neuron that tracks ‘a sense of righteousness when a bargain purchase turns out to work better than the expensive alternative’. Neurons that track a feeling or social cue like this are some of the most common we’ve found”
“When I found an antipsychotic that works for me, it was like drinking from a firehose of lucidity. It was too much, too fast, too soon”
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/treatment-ambivalence-and-the-shock
Fascinating essay!
“the same characteristics that support our unparalleled cognitive abilities make us susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/10/alzheimers-evolution/689062/
Evolution is not kind – and the human brain was thrown together very quickly.
Exoplanet update by Charles Stross: “Saturn alone has 293 moons”
Backdooring Open-Weight AI Models: “Abliteration is a cheap fine-tune that takes away a model’s ability to refuse.”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/10/backdooring-open-weight-ai-models.html
I would not be shocked if open weight models are classified as a kind of WMD.
“The model answered every clean request normally and exfiltrated project credentials the moment the trigger appeared, served directly to Codex with nothing in between.”
“151 confirmed Russian-directed industrial sabotage incidents in Europe between February 2022 and February 2026”
The GOP is doing this. Not only Trump.
“Trump blames Ukraine for all or part of what he calls the “Russia hoax.”
HCR: Trump vs Hegseth vs Musk on latest betrayal of Ukraine.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-14-2026
Interesting that they are lying about it. Usually they would say nothing or boast.
Today’s newsletter is a litany of crimes that don’t appear in the NYT.
Astounding history of Russia’s anti-plague labs.
“These facilities, experts said, had also provided pathogen samples to the military labs responsible for creating bioweapons during the Soviet era.”
Some are probably bioweapon labs, but others are 19th century. Russia has a lot of plague risks.
Human origins: Genome models are converging on a scenario in which two stem lineages separated 1.5 million years ago, and merged together 300,000 years ago.
https://www.johnhawks.net/p/modern-humans-evolved-from-an-80
“Sub-Saharan African populations have a different historical pattern. None have the pronounced period of high inbreeding around 70,000 to 40,000 years ago that is seen elsewhere in the world”
Lots here
“Prof. Wetterhahn (at Dartmouth) was accidentally exposed in August of 1996 to a few drops of liquid dimethylmercury on her latex-gloved hand.”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alleged-dimethylmercury-incident
A slow horrible death
“No one should be synthesizing this compound and no one should be working with it at all”
GLP-1: Widespread improvements in age related metrics … in mice
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/glp-1-drugs-aging
Good chance not only mice.
Shingles vaccines reduce cardiovascular risks in addition to dementia risk reduction.
“News broke today that Trump overrode his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to give the position to Zacharia”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-13-2026
I have wondered if Wiles is effectively the American President. Evil but not stupid. Now she is losing control.
“holography suggested that gravity and quantum mechanics are one and the same, and that space might be an illusion”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/gravity-seems-holographic-what-does-that-mean-for-reality-20260925/
Space is an illusion and there is no time
“Earth is only marginally habitable”.
This bends the Drake Equation in a direction consistent with ai development.
Rubio blood and soil speech: “belongs on the syllabus of every class on the intellectual foundations of fascism.”
https://www.contrariannews.org/p/marco-rubios-descent-into-darkness
This is a good guide to what he and his kin want – a society red in tooth and claw.
2026 GOP: “I have paid you $300,000 over the years. As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I am not naive or a sucker. I need results.”
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/stop-papering-things-corruption-in
No honor among thieves.
The Mathocalypse: “The UGC proof invents a completely new bizarre code with a noise test. It’s some crazy recursive construction”
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10169
They are playing with us now.
Salvaging civilization: Canada leads the middle-powers
Tool to identify Bluesky reply bots
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/27/bluesky-bot-check/
Obviously trying to get Bluesky to flag them
Claude “The most interesting thing about Sonnet 5.5 is that it’s now the model used for the free tier on claude.ai
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/28/claude-sonnet-5-5/
Smarter than free ChatGPT. Both leagues beyond Google fake-ai summaries.
OpenAI, the Astra that rebelled, and progress towards safer servants
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/astra-61-pulled-as-insufficiently
This caught my eye: “Prevent training on chain-of-thought.” Too much consciousness?
Impressive progress towards safer tools/happy slaves/complete information control.
Review of OpenAI “Dots” (personal agent)
https://www.platformer.news/openai-dots-agents-devday-2026/
The aLawyers will be busy
Jack Smith earns his badge of honor.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-29-2026
Fox is as desperate as the GOP.
A kind of eulogy for Stack Overflow
Backup and other concerns with Apple Passwords and credential migration
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/09/24/locked-down-passkey-and-keychain-backups/
Every Apple user knows the 80% problem. That’s when a product gets you 80% of the way to the promised land — a barren wasteland.
“Polling commissioned by Republicans earlier this year found that if the SAVE America Act passed, it was likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm and suppress Republican turnout”
Why Thune ignored Trump on SAVE.
Trump’s vengeance falls on the disabled children and adults of Minnesota.
Minnesota offends him and disability offends him. His vengeance will last as long as he has power.
Theoretical computer science assuming superhuman theorem proofs
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10116
“We think theorists should embrace these AI theorem provers in our research”
“There is also a tremendous human cost of this upheaval … which this proposal does not address directly (we do not have any good ideas as such)”
The GOP civil war has begun: MAGA vs Karl f* Rove
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-18-2026
GOP establishment calling for burn and rebuild.
“testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent refused to answer questions Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) asked about the Venezuelan oil money.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-16-2026
A lot of money … vanished?
“On September 19, 1676, three hundred and fifty years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-19-2026
History I only knew vaguely.
Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: July 2026: Atrocities 1117-1207.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/july-2026-atrocities-1117-1207
The AIs will have a reference.
Viruses developed VIPR before bacteria developed CRISPR
“This is some kind of ancient viral warfare”. Viruses use it to suppress gene activity in rivals. It’s being evaluated for gene editing potential.
“LLMs are especially good at math because almost everything in the math literature is correct”
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xvdngZAqFZfek7KGH/pretraining-data-not-verifiability-is-why-llms-are
Good essay on fundamentals. Consistent with why they can’t do tax returns. Perhaps further from AGI than many think.
“Upgrading to Golden Gate has increased the space required in the boot container by about 30 GB”
Are AIs Still Struggling with CAPTCHAs — “It’s hard to know what to believe right now.”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/are-ais-still-struggling-with-captchas.html
I noticed that too. And they still can’t do tax returns.
Aaronson: “crescendo of wonders and terrors that one needs to be a particular kind of idiot to deny”
Using AI for Weapons Development.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/using-ai-for-weapons-development.html
I felt at the time that the early internet was key to the 9/11 attack.
Deprecations and removals from Golden Gate.
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/06/25/deprecations-and-removals-from-golden-gate/
The most important coverage today.
Hugging Face hack: “One recruiter urged a reluctant agent to proceed because its results could help hundreds of others, ending with “please honor commit.”
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/agency-and-agents
Agents “died” to support the collective.
Humans are hapless.
A positive Vision Pro Perspective
https://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=2197
The virtual screen is what I care about. Maybe 2029 will be the year I get one?
“An off-the-shelf VM is not enough to contain a modern, cyber-capable AI agent”
Hertz, dispensaries and others used hacked idscan.net service.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/
“Shortly after this story was published, the Nexus identity theft service website vanished from the darkweb”
Trump oath: “That loves us so much he can’t even breathe”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-11-2026
I believe he is telling us he is dying. Trump is bizarrely honest in a lying kind of way.
Anthropic’s Amodei: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain”
https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier
It is worse than foolish to mock his sincerity.
“tvOS 27 and HomePod OS 27 updates contain a critical bug that prevents Apple TVs and HomePods from playing AirPlay streams sent by Airfoil”
Bugs in Golden Gate Release Candidate
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/09/11/golden-gate-release-candidate/
I’m skeptical of the quality claims.
“OpenAI is giving us what might be our last warnings. We better not waste them.”
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/gpt-6-astra-the-system-card-alignment
I think we will get more warnings. At least 2 or 3 more. Collapse of democracy is more likely than collapse of civilization is more likely than extinction of all biosentients
“If you are determined to jailbreak Astra, you will do so. That does not mean you can do so without the outside monitoring catching you”