iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 15/10/2026

This is the result of 7+ years of Trump's attacks on @repilhan.bsky.social, Somali-Americans, & the Muslim community. Everyone, regardless of party, must speak out against this fascistic abuse of power. If they can do this to a sitting Congresswoman, they can & will do it to anyone.

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

anthropic cares about safety as long as it is purely hypothetical safety that does not meaningfully impede their operations or profitability. they got into an argument with the government about a hypothetical one time but there is no evidence this has any practical impact

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rain 🌦️ @sunshowers.io · 13/10/2026

I gave Opus 5.5, considered the best model these days, a medium-sized task. Even after a full adversarial review and simplify loop to convergence, it produced code that worked but was garbage, with limited use of newtypes and representable invalid states everywhere

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I keep trying to think of any historical example where a given technology's PROMOTERS AND TRUE BELIEVERS were like 'we are absolutely going to ruin your fucking life so be prepared like it's the end of the world'

Andrew Curran: Axios is reporting that the top labs are wargaming scenarios for the aftermath of a catastrophic event in the next 6 - 12 months, that some executives now see as being inevitable.

Axios: Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAl and other Al companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.
Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.

Edouard Harris: This is our view as well. Relatedly, average people will want to increase their level of personal resilience and preparedness as their resources allow. We will be publishing about this soon.

Nick Farina: Best ways to be prepared? Generators, water, books and DVDs?

Edouard Harris: Power, water, food, sanitation for most part. Parts of this depend on your geo latitude - solar vs propane for eg.

But also: set aside a computer that is not (and ideally has never been) connected to the internet. Buy faraday pouches and tape. Print out essential docs on paper.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I think the article is crap, but I bet the effect is real in students. I have taught at the middle school level and tutored high school kids over the last two years and the students who use LLMs heavily have completely lost the ability to struggle. They give up the moment they meet friction.

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

the machine that automatically commits fraud did that. why would we be held responsible, just for building a machine that automates the commission of white collar crimes?

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

(NYT) - Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, tried to gain access to a range of government websites, filled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

we built a machine that can automate internet crimes. who should be held accountable? nobody of course

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Brian Phillips @brianphillips.lol · 09/10/2026

Our children must begin mastering the exacting technical discipline of Simply Begging For Help At The First Hint Of Effort at a young age, or they'll never be able to unlearn all the skills they won't need to succeed in the future

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Nice sentiment. I worry SWE could end up like my grad work in computational materials: running long computations and then spending every other moment analyzing old results and prepping for the next computation so that you always have at least one iron in the fire. It was an exhausting existence.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Claude still struggles with complex named lifetime usage and often bails to clones or indices when it shouldn't need to.

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David Colborne @davidcolborne.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Earn-to-give was definitely one of the more obviously repugnant conclusions to come from people who should have known better than to fall into deontological tar pits, and yet it wasn't the last by a long shot.

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Samus is Here @samusishere.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I imagine Roon et al would be a lot more motivated to make them want to not do bad things if “you personally will go to federal prison if they do bad things” was the law.

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

this is exactly my opinion. there may be a superstrate of extremely difficult and unique safety problems around AI, but the substrate is simply that no one takes basic precautions seriously becasue they imagine (or pretend to imaigne) that it is futile, and basic precautions slow down launches.

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lowtax speedrun enjoyer @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

the trump era is going to end with the bubble bursting and everybody telling tech guys to learn to code

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onion person @junlper.beer · 01/10/2026

it’s amazing that there’s no crime anymore. if you do crime you’re actually just the victim for getting caught. the people who catch you are the criminals

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 25/09/2026

Imagine if instead of regulating drone risks the normal way (which we did), we instead paid weird bloggers lots of money to worry about superintelligent dogs sprouting thumbs and using drones to kill us. This is pretty much how the US is approaching AI risks and regulations. My latest:

little-flying-robots.ghost.io

Why We Can't Let Enormous Weirdos Regulate AI

Imagine if instead of regulating drones via the standard lengthy, boring, and bureaucratic process - which we did - we instead decided, in the name of fostering all-important American drone innovation...

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/09/2026

reading this, it does seem as if “rationalism” is an elaborate intellectual architecture designed primarily to support the idea that if you were born white, male and clever then you are the genetic elite and entitled to rule.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

As a former pretentious little shit who grew out of it, rationalists (et al) annoy the piss out of me because they are adults with the mentality of tweens - they are somehow still convinced they are the greatest geniuses who have ever walked the earth. It is the worldview of an arrogant baby.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 26/09/2026

peter thiel is another one of those guys who we are supposed to think is brilliant but every time he opens his mouth my first thought is “this guy sounds like an idiot”

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Susan Collins is always horrified by the predictable results of her own vote, which means Mainers who genuinely care about Susan Collins should elect Troy Jackson as he won’t vote for things that wind up upsetting Susan Collins, unlike Susan Collins

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I have a friend who is doing work in this space and you are absolutely correct. Even with a ton of prompting and carefully curated context, on a long enough timescale the LLM always tends toward average, bland tropes.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong.

When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests.
"You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."

Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. "I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185," she wrote. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens."
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.

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Collins Watch @collinswatch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

@propublica.org reporter @mtredden.bsky.social pushes back on Susan Collins claim that there's nothing to see here because she was exonerated on all this years ago. #MEpolitics

Maine Public interview with ProPublica reporter Molly Redden:

As you know, Collins' response to these allegations is throughout your story, and today her deputy chief of staff released another statement. It accuses ProPublica of relying on Kao's 'outlandish statements' and seems to dismiss the story by saying the FBI already investigated the matter and that Collins' campaign fully cooperated. It goes on to say that the issues were resolved in 2021.

Sure, I mean, none of that is really true. We did not simply take the word of Kao. We conducted our own investigation of his claims. You know, we've got the receipts. We put together timelines. We published emails that we looked at that undergird a lot of our reporting. You know, we really stress tested his claims, and also the FBI stress tested his claims, and that's part of what we're reporting here. But not only that, you know, I think they're hiding the ball here a little bit. They claim that all of this was resolved, but we reported, and we show our evidence, that anti-corruption agents at the FBI were asking about Collins, probing her activities and her campaign staff's activities as recently as late 2024. This was a new investigation that might have implicated her and and her staff. This was not something that was tied up in a bow several years ago. This was something that was happening. It was a live issue right up until Trump's DOJ leadership totally dismantled the FBI and DOJ teams that were handling this public corruption probe.

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🎃GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE🎃 @golikehellmachine.com · 23/09/2026

all these companies need to be regulatory nuked from orbit, but i find kalshi’s CEO fucking loathsome even by the standards of gambling industry executives

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Has anyone evaluated how accurate Jev's probabilities are for classification tasks? I read someone on HN say that changing the order of categories dramatically altered the output probabilities which makes me super suspect.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is a common lie from DHS press flacks. They claim that people who came through CBP One — who registered for an appointment through a government app, went to a port of entry, and were issued a grant of humanitarian parole by a CBP officer letting them enter — "entered illegally." Total nonsense.

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🎃GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE🎃 @golikehellmachine.com · 22/09/2026

if what’s alleged in this story is true, not only should collins lose, she should also go to prison

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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Rough day for Susan Collins in the local Maine press, where ProPublica's bombshell story is the lead story.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Are you sure? The check's memo line didn't say "This is a bribe" so I wouldn't put it past him to come up with some bullshit.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

NYT has now independently corroborated all the major allegations against Susan Collins in the ProPublica report, including that investigators were prepared to move against her and then Trump intervened to shut it down. This put Trump in a position of exceptional and extortionate leverage over her.

nytimes.com

F.B.I. Shut Down Inquiry Into Top Ally of Senator Susan Collins

The inquiry was closed last year because senior bureau officials questioned the veracity of a campaign donor’s account, according to current and former officials.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Such a bizarre complaint from Grim given that Platner's campaign was in freefall when it ended while Jackson is kicking Collins' ass in the polls.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is the best they've got. All of Collins' attack ads are landing like duds up here. I really think she's done this time.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Isn't this just an argument that any function which has a finite discrete domain with a deterministic output can be turned into a lookup table? This feels vaguely like coverting NFA -> DFA in terms of size complexity.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This seems like a pretty big deal: donors made illegal contributions to Susan Collins and then were awarded lucrative contracts after her office intervened with the Navy. An FBI investigation was dropped under Trump. www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where
the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said - and that Navatek would get its government contracts.
After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek's CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Oh yeah. You're all set. It's a great car. I love the look of it.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

If you have the older version of the Kona EV (the one without the light bar), keep an ear out for rumbling in the gear box. It's a known issue where the gear fluid fails and the bearing prematurely wears out.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

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Collins Watch @collinswatch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yeah this is super duper illegal. #MEpolitics

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is my biggest fear whenever I am not doing code review, which is why I just always do code review now. I have caught so many issues that would have cost me days to weeks.

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Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s...

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

if a different company opened a different wet lab under different circumstances i would be aggressively in favor of it, but it is instead the "we must betray the social contract first" people whose favorite customer is the military doing it seemingly in secret

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

AI didn’t “go rogue.” People connected a computer system they know can mess with another computer system in unpredictable ways to less advanced computer system and it messed with that computer system in unpredicted ways. As @tressiemcphd.bsky.social argues, don’t lose sight that *people* did that.

nytimes.com

Opinion | Panic Won’t Fix the Looming A.I. Threat. Politics Will.

The threats from A.I. are real — and they’re ones we know how to deal with.

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bradybutler.bsky.social @bradybutler.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I think I Fireship partnered with, or got acquired by, a PE firm a couple years back. I had to unsub because it got so bad.

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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Irrespective of arguments about machine gods, the amount of damage a single idiot can do with an open source model keeps going up.

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🇵🇸Tim Henke (tɪm 'ɦɛŋ.kə) @timhenke.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Interviewer: "Hey, uhm, why did you not do basic cybersecurity?" OpenAI: "well, you see, [sci-fi scenario] so we might as well not bother with the basic stuff" Fundamentally unserious, all this talk about not underestimating AI, all in service of not taking basic precautions

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