Reposted by Dean EcklesBrendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 17hIn an authoritarian regime, people publicly debase themselves to signal loyalty to the ruler 517834
Reposted by Dean EcklesTed Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 05/10/2026Something not sufficiently registered in the convo around AI/IP: the value that was gained from pretraining (on our collective legacy) is now common property. People do pay more for frontier models than open ones — but the differences they're paying for, at this point, come from post-training. 515414
Reposted by Dean EcklesTed Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 22/09/2026Models like Talkie-1930 sound like voices from the past. If they could reliably speak from specified historical vantage points, researchers might also use them to simulate the past. But how reliable are they? Today we release a benchmark answering that question for English contexts 1831-1930. 516344
Reposted by Dean EcklesNicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Trump’s insider trading is, on its own, the worst corruption scandal in US history, with $$$ dwarfing Teapot Dome. So are Trump’s bribes-for-pardons. So is the Qatar bribe plane. So is all the Saudi money he (and Kushner) have pocketed. And the ballroom. And more. Each alone would be the worst. 19565168
Reposted by Dean Eckles🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 30/09/2026“That’s quite an act, what do you call it?” “Pacing the frontier!” 2526
Reposted by Dean EcklesClément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 29/09/2026A very important message from Omer Reingold to our TCS community, especially us (arg, already) senior researchers: "snap out of it." Please, digest, and share. theorydish.blog/2026/09/29/s... 47321
Reposted by Dean EcklesMike Masnick @masnick.com · 26/09/2026Part II in @kkomaitis.bsky.social epic 10 part series about how and where big tech went wrong. I promise you, you're going to want to read the whole thing... 46718
Reposted by Dean EcklesKevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026"Partisan websites disguised as independent, local news outlets are shaping chatbots’ responses about key races." Via: www.politico.com/news/magazin... 02315
Reposted by Dean Ecklesdanah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 23/09/2026It's the end of an era. The Social Media Collective is shutting down. Thanks to everyone who was a part of this crazy endeavor, but especially @nancybaym.bsky.social, Tarleton Gillespie, and @marylgray.bsky.social. I adore you all! socialmediacollective.org/2026/09/23/s...socialmediacollective.orgThe Social Media Collective Comes to a CloseIt is with both celebration and sadness that we announce that the Social Media Collective, our research team of critical, humanistic social sciences at Microsoft Research’s New England lab, is comi… 24511
Reposted by Dean EcklesMatt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Here's a fun question - why does the broad US public have an unusually *high* belief that "social security and pensions" will result in an adequate retirement right now? data.sca.isr.umich.edu/get-chart.ph... 12794
Reposted by Dean EcklesRobert Metcalfe @rmetcalfe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I'm hiring an economics predoc at @columbiasipa.bsky.social, generally on applied micro projects, but with a large focus on the impacts of AI on economic outcomes using large-scale field experiments with many companies. Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/194121apply.interfolio.com Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio 0107
Reposted by Dean EcklesZach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Interesting: Perhaps you know that Thomas Carlyle coined "the dismal science" for Economics in a speech fighting against slave emancipation. I didn't realize he was also anti technology: "Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things." 6938
Reposted by Dean EcklesBill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Trump misstating and touting a meaningless deal over Greenland, while the entire Middle East security architecture falls apart due to his own actions, is emblematic of this administration’s foreign policy. 451362301
Reposted by Dean EcklesCJ Ciaramella @cjciaramella.bsky.social · 19/09/2026DHS is actually accusing hundreds of cruise line employees of possessing CSAM materials and revoking their visas without filing criminal charges. It's a way of bumping up their numbers without having to prove anything I wrote about it last year and NPR did this June www.npr.org/2026/06/06/n... 49937386
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 18/09/2026"You go where you look" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_...en.wikipedia.orgTarget fixation - Wikipedia 040
Reposted by Dean EcklesJames Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, left a big gambling loophole in the Medicaid work requirements. I'm no fan of the gambling industry, but if you are on Medicaid and struggling to deal with the work requirements, taking a $580 bet on both sides of an outcome is one way of getting around them. 401998531
Reposted by Dean Ecklesjon christian @jonchristian.net · 17/09/2026NEW: We spent months investigating a little-known media startup called Brown Brothers Media, which buys legit news sites and turns them into AI-powered zombie content farms What blew my mind was its traffic -- it appears to be getting more readers than NPR or CBS News futurism.com/artificial-i...futurism.comHow Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per MonthBrown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism. 401323689
Reposted by Dean EcklesTed Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 16/09/2026As models get close to — or, in some cases, beyond — human experts, it becomes very challenging to figure out how to measure them. But what a fascinating problem! I suspect we're going to have to evaluate models the same way we evaluate human innovation: dialogically and perspectivally. 7343
Reposted by Dean EcklesGautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 16/09/2026Nihar Shah did a heroic experiment for TMLR: he spent 20-25 hours over two weeks interviewing authors of seemingly low-quality submissions about their own papers. He confirmed what we all suspected: people submitting these papers have *no idea* what is going on in them. 5293117
Reposted by Dean Eckleskate conger @kateconger.com · 17/09/2026OpenAI disclosed several new alignment failures today and uhhhh... is this good? 2372392
Reposted by Dean Eckles𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Worth noting that we are seeing the quietest Atlantic hurricane season since sorta decent record-keeping began in 1851.arstechnica.comThis Atlantic hurricane season is about to do something that hasn't happened in 175 yearsBut there may be a price to pay for a quiet Atlantic hurricane season. 1177
Reposted by Dean EcklesJason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Flock is very serious surveillance technology that cops take very seriously: 404media.co/cops-search-...404media.coCops Search Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ and ‘asdfg’The EFF found cops writing “idiot,” “WEIRD KID,” "blah," "leave me alone," and button mashing in Flock's 'reason' box. 352191732
Reposted by Dean EcklesKevin Reuning @reuning.bsky.social · 14/09/2026I'll post more about this tomorrow, but I've spent the last few weeks trying to do some social network analysis on the most recent "OpenAI Swarm" You can do some interesting things with the data to identify how the different "Agents" interacted. kevinreuning.com/blog/ai_swar...kevinreuning.comOpenAI Swarm – Kevin Reuning 095
Reposted by Dean EcklesMichael Clemens @mclem.org · 13/09/2026This will devastate our research+innovation capacity, bedrock of the 21st century economy. 35% of *all* employed people in the US with STEM PhD degrees are both foreign-born *and* graduated from a US university. —> nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/292... Shutting them out is extremist folly. 1830224
Reposted by Dean EcklesRuben C. Arslan @ruben.the100.ci · 11/09/2026An interesting thing is happening to me at the moment. I have a standing bug bounty policy for my first authored scientific work. That means, I've committed to pay people who report bugs in my code, up to 750€ for severe errors. Since GPT-6 Astra came out, I'm now getting several bug reports daily. 39334
Reposted by Dean EcklesNeil Shephard @neilshephard.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Been looking at Richard Samworth and Rajen Shah's new CUP textbook on modern statistical methods. Really nice selection of topics and pace. www.cambridge.org/core/books/m... 095
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Possible path to getting an AI to prove the Reimann hypothesis? 100
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 11/09/2026As Johnny Appleseed was growing a key ingredient for alcoholic cider, you are to growing a key ingredient for... 260
Reposted by Dean EcklesPaul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 10/09/2026Well, from Organization Science I thought this was pretty remarkable: pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/... 2245
Reposted by Dean EcklesRafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 10/09/2026absolute solidarity with ricardo, this is an outrage 711317
Reposted by Dean EcklesBrendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Extremely impressive field experiment by @nmalhotra.bsky.social et al. had few effects on election attitudes among conservatives in TX despite being "exposed to an average of 20 online videos, 18.5 cable TV videos, 23.9 display ads, 3 text messages, and 3 postcards" www.science.org/doi/full/10.... 010733
Reposted by Dean EcklesPer Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026The academic process is 10% having ideas and 90% discovering why they won't work 6494
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 09/09/2026europe2031.ai Argues that you would need a lot more compute even just for inference in Europeeurope2031.aiEurope 2031 — What getting AI wrong means for usA five-year scenario about AI and Europe's impending slide into irrelevance, with a 2034 epilogue that describes how the collapse of the European model could have been prevented. 130
Reposted by Dean Ecklesae @aelkus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026"operational languages" are a reduced subset of english used in the military, ATC, emergency services, police, medical, etc communities that are both unambiguous and expressive 4592
Reposted by Dean EcklesRafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 08/09/2026this story is crazy. also, looks like academia's not so obsolete after all. 623146
Reposted by Dean EcklesEric Goldman @ericgoldman.bsky.social · 08/09/2026Techdirt: "You cannot do age or identity verification safely. It always creates some sort of record and that set of records will always become a target." www.techdirt.com/2026/09/03/h...techdirt.comHackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year.From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online (yes, they like to call it “age” verification, but it always ends up as identity verification), we̵… 213756
Reposted by Dean EcklesSeth Masket @smotus.bsky.social · 06/09/2026I Study Projects that Select on the Dependent Variable. They Have One Habit in Common.nytimes.comOpinion | I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in Common.Being a successful self-starter doesn’t mean pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. 1782389
Reposted by Dean EcklesStephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 04/09/2026As part of research into the elevator market, I am doing an elevator census! Next time you are in an elevator (any time, any place), could you take a photo of the nameplate (brand and capacity in lbs/kgs) and the buttons (to get number of floors), and then later, enter it here? bit.ly/elevatorcensusbit.lyElevator CensusThis form is to submit information on elevators people encounter to help with the Center for Building in North America's research work. Note: You can submit for elevators in any country, not just Nort... 35124
Reposted by Dean EcklesDan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News @froomkin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Corporate media has a huge blind spot for white supremacy. presswatchers.org/2026/07/the-...presswatchers.orgThe world’s most vocal racist will be the Republican Party’s biggest donor again. But don’t mention it. | Press WatchOur top news organizations are covering up Elon Musk’s white supremacist propaganda 36774295
Reposted by Dean EcklesSanjay Srivastava @sanjaysrivastava.com · 01/09/2026A bunch of Francesca Gino's co-authors banded together to share information about data provenance in their collaborations with her (the "Many Co-authors" project). I haven't heard much about the impact of it, but I wonder if something similar would help Ariely's manycoauthors.org/aboutmanycoauthors.orgWho we areThis project was created by a team of 6 researchers who have co-authored with Francesca Gino: Max Bazerman, Julia Minson, Don Moore, Juliana Schroeder, Maurice Schweitzer, and Uri Simonsohn. 132
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Conveniently, one of the participating coauthors: Ariely 130
Dean Eckles @eckles.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Ariely indeed has coauthored reliable empirical work, but this requires proactive reporting by coauthors that they, rather than Ariely, generated and handled the data. 250
Reposted by Dean EcklesErika McEntarfer @erikamcentarfer.bsky.social · 01/09/2026This change grants Commerce political appointees veto power over data and research releases by scientists and statisticians at NOAA, NIST, Census, and BEA. 8287186
Reposted by Dean EcklesCasey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 01/09/2026Wrote about the crazy revelations in the METR report on Hugging Face (including one that corrected something I'd been getting wrong), and the growing industry push for a slowdown www.platformer.news/openai-huggi... 76217