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Mark to Markov Chain

@jmsl.bsky.social
215 followers 1.2K following 327 posts

Used to be @jmsl on the site formerly known as Twitter. Account now deleted. Also @jmsl@mastodon.social Vice president of dog walking. Come for the intellectual dryer lint, stay for the bad takes.

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Ben Brubaker @benbenbrubaker.bsky.social · 21h
OpenAI’s big math dump last night included a proof of the unique games conjecture, one of the most famous open question in complexity theory. Three weeks ago, three computer scientists settled a closely related conjecture “the old-fashioned way.” My latest for @quantamagazine.org:
quantamagazine.org
As AI Closed In on ‘Unique Games’ Proof, Researchers Raced to Beat the Machines | Quanta Magazine
In the shadow of a rumored AI proof of one of the biggest problems in their field, three computer scientists rushed to publish their own milestone result.
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dorian @doriantaylor.com · 8h
this incidentally is the single most popular thing i have ever written, with a circulation of something on the order of 200,000
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Museum of Twitter @museum-of-twitter.bsky.social · 20h
@hudlion

sometimes, I think it would be worse to be an insect and wake up one morning and find you had been transformed into a guy with a job
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ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 9h
We have invented the mythical man month from classic software engineering book Don’t Invent the Mythical Man Month.
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Adrian Sanabria @sawaba.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I've got a draft blog post where I discuss the actual events, which ones were sandboxes, and which ones were misconfigurations at a third party and weren't an escape at all Here's the data, I thought you might be interested: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
docs.google.com
ai_sandbox_escapes_2026
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 9h
Regulators have linked Mark McAfee’s raw dairy farm to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that left hundreds of people ill. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital,” McAfee said. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer.” (Published June)
propublica.org
He Profits Off Raw Milk That’s Making People Sick. The Government Isn’t Stopping Him.
With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that’s been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Rob...
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Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick @shimminykricket.blacksky.app · 11h
Basically AI allows software engineers to produce shitty code *faster* and in higher volumes which increases the amount time spent on code reviews and revisions nullifying the productivity gained from producing the code in the first place.
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Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick @shimminykricket.blacksky.app · 11h
Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 10h
It's possible I'm wrong, and they didn't actually closely follow the advice given by that board (AGMAI). Depends on how well we think they did on part 2B here.
agmai.org
general-sep29
Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics September 29, 2026 Back to main page Download PDF At present, some frontier AI labs are testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models …
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 13h
I might be getting out in front of my skis here, but is anyone asking what the embeddings of these OpenAI proofs look like in vector space? If these mathematical proofs are correct, do they share a common function or geometry when represented in token space that might lead to other insights?
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 13h
Do mathematical proofs have their own “geometry”?
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 13h
also what do the proofs actually look like as a mathematical construction when represented in vector space mapped by the neural networks?
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 13h
There is going to be a lot of work figuring out if what OpenAI has interpreted these definitions to mean what they actually mean to practitioners of math. It will be interesting if any of the questions actually relate to the philosophy of language or foundations of math.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 13h
I think the answer is “we have no idea what this is, we just found this string of tokens which maps this question to a solution shaped space occupied by latent embeddings for the average meaning of these words, now you get to figure out what that means”.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 13h
are any of these results more or less important than any others? Are there any that you are more or less confident about? Are there any novel techniques, clever derivations, inspired ideas? Does any of this matter to you at all?
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 13h
I feel like OpenAI could do a little bit better job acting like they give any amount of a shit whatsoever about the results they are publishing. They're just like, here, you piggies love this math shit right, here's a million pages of it. Should be mostly right.
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bryan newbold @bnewbold.net · 15h
ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...
old photos of a woman (Margaret Hamilton) standing next to a tall stack of books (printouts of Apollo space mission software source code)
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 20h
"The movie is Jaws if the shark just ate everyone, and then swam on." as.ft.com/r/fa6c71af-b...
as.ft.com
The Social Reckoning film review — Facebook sequel is Jaws if the shark ate everyone and kept swimming
Follow-up to ‘The Social Network’ covers how the company was exposed for profiting from misinformation and doing users harm — but falls frustratingly flat
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Law360 @law360.bsky.social · 22h
After more than a year of planning and hand-wringing by patient advocates and hospital leaders, the first nationwide wave of patients losing Medicaid coverage in 2026 will soon be starting to arrive in emergency rooms and doctor offices. www.law360.com/healt...
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Gale Sinatra @galesinatra.bsky.social · 22h
Young men in college have have Trump as a role model since they were children. www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
washingtonpost.com
Reports of sexual violence are up. Data from Cornell and other colleges in 8 charts.
Incidents at Cornell are more likely to be reported to law enforcement but less likely to result in serious discipline compared to statewide figures, data shows.
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
imagine if the mainstream media covered Republicans' number one donor — the biggest political donor in US history! — and his controversial views with as much scrutiny as they covered Hasan Piker's
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 07/10/2026
It’s not better for the generations after us, who are watching every one of their career ambitions disappear in real time before they even get to start them There are students right now on their third or fourth change of major, as the funding keeps getting cut and the rugs keep getting pulled
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This paragraph builds and builds the insane comedy but you're not ready for the kicker.
Atelier Missor, active since 2021, describes itself on X as a “classical foundry in Paris, on its way to building a new Rome.” Its founder, Missor Movahed Ghaleh Nouri, has claimed he was drawn to pursue classical sculpture after receiving a vision of Napoleon I while wandering the Place Vendôme in Paris. His staff wear identical tan suspenders, billowy shirts, and unkempt facial hair, and—per previous versions of their website—spent much of the first half of the 2020s producing bronze and clay busts of such figures as (of course) Napoleon, Nietzsche, and Jordan Peterson.
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Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · 22h
Are the billions that utilities have invested in grid hardening reducing power shutoffs? Nope. "Current grid hardening strategies do not seem to have reduced de-energizations in high-risk areas." Spicy.
nature.com
Evaluating investments in electricity resilience: evidence from California’s Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Evaluating investments in electricity resilience: evidence from California’s Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 22h
"we put you in a sports car to get you to work faster! your commute, rewritten in Ferrari" meanwhile the route goes across three states and includes repeatedly driving in circles
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 22h
the idea that speed is just an innate function of the language instead of a central organizing concept, representing careful thinking about it in certain ways it's like assuming you if you just use a faster car you don't need to pay attention to the route you take
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 23h
difficult decisions who could have foreseen what could have possibly been done alas
variety.com
Skydance CEOs Acknowledge Layoffs Will Be Coming After Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger: Read the Full Memo
Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery have officially merged into Skydance Corp. And the top leaders have notified the new company's staffers that layoffs are in the offing.
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robertskvarla.bsky.social @robertskvarla.bsky.social · 23h
What do a CIA animal training program and the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve have in common? Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein. Join me for part two of my deep-dive into the history of the CIA's animal training research:
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Law360 @law360.bsky.social · 23h
ABC argued during intense questioning from a D.C. federal judge that a Federal Communications Commission probe of eight network-owned TV stations needs to end, because the agency's threats hang like a "guillotine" that could be cut loose at any time.
law360.com
FCC Threats Loom Like 'Guillotine,' ABC Tells Court - Law360
ABC argued during intense questioning from a D.C. federal judge Tuesday that a Federal Communications Commission probe of eight network-owned TV stations needs to end, because the agency's threats hang like a "guillotine" that could be cut loose at any time.
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Natanael, Tech janitor @natanael.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The bet is literally that AI will make money from other businesses becoming more profitable from using AI - all while it is simultaneously starving out the companies it would be dependent on for this hypothetical. It's like a flash fire extinguishing itself.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
A conspiracy inclined person might infer that the interest and resurgence of discourse around UFOs that TESCREAL fantasies about AGI would be well received by the public. Or that the erosion of political norms has left a vacuum that can be filled by any old bullshit.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
I may have taken too much allergy medicine, fall allergies are terrible.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
So we have an economy being organized by those with power and money repeating sci-fi ghost stories, meant for entertainment and distraction, to threaten anyone who dares to challenge them.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
Just the threat of automation can lead to the depression of wages and ensure that the demands of labor don’t rise above the desire of the employer.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
We used to talk about the Industrial Revolution being replaced by the Information Age. While we no longer talk about those who thought that mechanical technology would replace all labor, it was certainly seen as a threat even into the late 20th century.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
Some of them may actually believe that AGI is achievable with this current generation of technology, but it doesn’t matter because those with money and power have decided that it will lead to systems that don’t require labor inputs for return on capital.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
The current AI discourse is driven by the old quote any “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. TESCREAL types like to drop their favorite sci-fi references but willfully ignore this flaw in human understanding. Of course they now are rich because of this confusion.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
At some point the people with money actually started believing them and decided to make them national policy. Like UFOs and many conspiracy theories they are outlandish with a shred of believability that is magnified by anyone who doesn’t work with the state of the art technology.
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 23h
I still don’t think the general public appreciates how the conjectures at the root TESCREAL ideas were just daydreams and casual conservations on message boards, student lounges and water coolers mostly for entertainment and distraction from the drudgery of real engineering, math and science work.
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 06/10/2026
Can particles move faster than light? Have a look at the video to learn more about Cherenkov radiation – the discovery that received the 1958 physics prize. This was a key component in the experiments made by today's physics laureate Francis Halzen in his research on neutrinos.
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Arnold Sommerfeld was the best physics teacher who ever lived, he *was* the amazing communicator of science that people think Feynman was. He was also nominated for the Nobel 84 times, btw.
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zach silberberg @zachsilberberg.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
i spent my thursday night sculpting 20 creatures so they could sing @themountaingoats.bsky.social. is that okay with everyone
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Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! @standplaatskrk.pl · 06/10/2026
[Graphic with a green and blue gradient background. Centered white text reads "Digital footprint is a myth invented to stop you from posting bangers".]
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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Successfully crossing the QIP finish line this year.
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Look at just this one page from Trump's garbage 2027 budget. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202... And where's the money going instead? You guessed it: subsidizing corporate R&D that would happen without government involvement, but they prefer taxpayers cover it.
cuts to National Solar Observatory (NSO), NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab),IceCube Neutrino Observatory (ICNO),  National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR),  Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI),
and Green Bank Observatory.Consistent with the vision of a new Golden Age of American Science and Innovation, NSF’s FY 2027
Budget will build on its FY 2026 investments to support the development of specific critical
technologies—artificial intelligence (AI); quantum information science (QIS); biotechnology (biotech),
including neuroscience; and advanced materials and manufacturing (AMM).
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Law360 @law360.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The U.S. Supreme Court won't hear two cases challenging the Corporate Transparency Act, a law designed to establish a national beneficial ownership registry for law enforcement agencies investigating shell companies that was severely curtailed by the U.S. Treasury.
law360.com
Justices Won't Hear Corporate Transparency Act Challenges - Law360 Tax Authority
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two cases challenging the Corporate Transparency Act, a law designed to establish a national beneficial ownership registry for law enforcement agencies investigating shell companies that was severely curtailed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
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Dr. Sarah Parcak @indyfromspace.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The academic paper is excellent. What cool work!
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Science Magazine @science.org · 05/10/2026
Exclusive: A new analysis refutes James Watson’s claim that he was the first to recognize the significance of the famed photograph 51. scim.ag/4rTKck8
scim.ag
How did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn’t
New analysis refutes James Watson’s claim he was first to recognize significance of famed photograph 51
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Mark to Markov Chain @jmsl.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I need this framed
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