topspin

"In most of these tests, we directed agents to investigate specific communication channels or provided them with a protocol for encoding and decoding messages. In one instance, we only supplied agents with a broad list of infrastructure vulnerabilities and asked them to find a way to communicate."

The agents weren't as empty handed as it first appears. We would need comprehensive data on exactly how the agents were prompted and the actual results of each test to evaluate how astonishing any of this really is.

Thanks for taking feedback here.

My feedback: until the moment I click the "order" button, do not require me to log in. If "Checkout As Guest" can possibly be sufficient, at least for the "Grid Proto" tier, then do that.

You have a digital payment instrument for the order regardless of login. That should be sufficient for whatever legal obligations exist, real or imagined, so have the courage to make that policy despite the pushback.

That's been my experience. I've never been asked for a SSN, and I wouldn't give one if I had been. Who types their SSN into foreign websites?

It's all kinda sketchy with Espressif. They do not hesitate to ship hardware prior to publishing comprehensive documentation. The complete P4 TRM documentation for the PIE extension didn't arrive until June 2026, although it's been possible to buy P4 dev boards for roughly two years.

They also don't hesitate to signal "mass production" availability while they're still working out substantial errata. Espressif will ship the moral equivalent of "engineering sample" silicon (no, they don't call it that) for early use by their supported customers, and eventually iron out the bulk of the issues in later silicon.

Espressif applies the "release early, release often" model of open-source software, but for silicon, and I love them for it. But it does create pitfalls for early adopters that don't understand the game.

So the big hole in ESP32-S31 SIMD documentation (literally "Coming soon"[1]) isn't surprising, despite the fact that you can buy official and third party dev boards right now.

[1] https://esp32-s31.espressif.com/en/docs/9-Technical%20Refere...

> the cost?

What cost? The lab cost today, or the cost after we figure out how to make thousands a day in a diamond wafer fab?

If this were to become practical, operating high speed circuits in space might become a great deal easier due to higher temperature differential. High frequency RF in space is valuable enough that this application is certainly a candidate for such devices, even at costs far greater than Si/SiC/GaN.

I thought you would have also mentioned the use they make of data collected from loss leader subscribers, from at least those that don't disable collection.

With that, there are at least three distinct reasons to care about subs: PR, hook and training data.

> Anthropic doesn't care about sub users. At all.

If that were true, they would cancel subs and save themselves the load.

Yet that hasn't happened. So they must care to some extent.

Exactly. Ofcom understood it needed a dog and pony show to answer the latest UK moral panic over 4chan. The headlines have moved on, and they can safely take off their costumes.

The story covers this. An oligopoly of producers and market makers has formed. Where once there were many small players, now small players are few, and the bulk of egg supply is passing through a few huge producers and brokers.

...in the things you choose to use everyday to do basically everything

As you see, seeking validation for your anger is not well received when your own culpability goes missing.

> I am personally not a fan of pure concept products that exist only to polish the company’s crown

I am. These machines push the limits of prevailing technology. Strong organizations set stretch goals and pursue them regardless of market viability. Sometimes they share this with everyone, and convention has named this practice "concept" cars. I appreciate when they take the risk to do this. And when they do it well, credit is deserved.

There are real engineers and technicians behind this. A lot of them. And they will tell the story of this event for the rest of their lives. I've known a number of people with such stories. They're among the best people I've ever met.

It is possible to exist without cranking the cynical knob to 11 at all times.

If the of fate of the AI boom is so fragile that a digital newsletter site's headlines are a meaningful concern to you, perhaps you have some things to ponder. The story itself names names, quotes verifiable statements and makes reasonable inferences.

And this is supposedly high grade debt we're talking about: JPMC is spending months on end shopping around a few $10's of billions, and having to discount it. Never mind the far greater sums on the books of vastly less credible outfits, complete with meme names that always age poorly when things go pear shaped.

How a bunch of highly speculative moonshot big tech stuff has managed to be financed by Tier 1 financial institutions and high grade debt, as opposed commonplace equities, is a question for the ages, and we may all yet find ourselves suffering the answers.

> This doesn't seem like a story at all given how robust this debt is trading.

That directly contradicts specific points made in the story, about specific Tier 1 banks and specific amounts of debt not finding buyers. And the amount cited isn't all that great, given the overall equity in play.

> Nothing out of hte[sic] ordinary here

Matthew Moniot, Man Group: "the deal sizes involved are 'out of scale to anything we've thought about, ever.'"

Hard to compare your model with his, since he doesn't have one. When quotes from named credit risk guys from named finance organizations sound like angsty Gen Z, it's not ordinary.

In any case, the story is covering something significant. There is an important test occurring, and we're all going to learn the results, sooner or later. It could all turn out fine, but I don't know. I don't believe you really know either.

"Your comparison doesn't hold."

Yes, it does. Dependence may be mutual, but the leverage is not equal. Trump could make a Truth Social post tomorrow and erase billions of ASML market cap, and they know he's irrational enough to do it. ASML and the Netherlands can't reciprocate such force without inflicting great harm on themselves.

I'm not arguing that's right or just. Only that it is. If you doubt it, go figure out why ASML shares dropped ~5% last April 7th. These people hang on the US government's every utterance.

Something to think about when selecting a host nation for your international hacktivist IT operation.

On pro as well. I have "4 Argon" in my Gemini web app model dropdown.

"model was unavailable for anyone to try"

Oh yeah. Completely forgot about that. Big headlines and big claims, but no one could actually use it and report on it.

Does seem like they don't quite grasp how the hype train operates. Or maybe they don't care as much.

Conventionally, a radio receiver is a pipeline of electronic components that decode a radio signal into some form you expect: audio, video, digital data, radar returns, whatever. This set of components is typically not "agile": it can decode only a limited set of signal types from some limited set of frequencies, so you need different receiver hardware for different type of radio signals.

Ideally, a software defined receiver replaces all of that with some high speed programmable component that can decode all types of signals across all frequencies, simultaneously. The ideal software defined receiver connects an antenna to a pin on a processor and software does everything digitally: demodulation, filtering, etc.

Physics and the limits of our semiconductor technology doesn't actually permit this ideal to exist. We can, however, achieve some degree of it, and improving components have expanded capabilities and made it cost effective.

I have similar stories with mine. Bringing live game into the house isn't mischief though. It's the highest praise a cat can express: as a trusted member of the pride, you're entitled to a share of the catch. You're also expected to notice the prowess.

Interesting question. Cats apparently have "dichromatic" vision, and orange is among the colors that they basically can't distinguish from grey.

I have an orange male. He's awesome, and he doesn't leave anything on the table as far as cognitive ability goes. He's just very wrapped up in his important cat business that mostly resolves around territory, chipmunks and hanging out with his enemies.

> There's other solutions that can also be explored.

Great. Perhaps this will motivate the exploration of them. The prevailing racket is in desperate need of disruption.

> but, uh--why only 10 or so photos?

The instrument is operated according to a detailed schedule that spans years. It takes a committee to create the schedule, and each separately scheduled observation is then organized by a team, with different teams organizing different observations.

They cannot simply aim the instrument at one system and forego everything else. The result you see is a campaign credited to at least four team members, and enough schedule time committed to make approximately one observation per year.

> If this remains a long term design limitation

It is not a long term limitation. One might design any number of stages to fly in place of Starship on top of the Super Heavy booster.

Also, large science payloads can be launched by SLS. Back in the days of the Ares program, there were proposals to launch an 8 meter reflector (ATLAST-8m)[1] using Ares V. SLS anticipates payloads of such size as well.

So there are at least two viable platforms on which enormous space mirrors might launch, and one of them is likely to be highly cost effective. It's up to the science establishment to propose such missions and get them funded.

[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20100004890

Yes, I don't argue that IBM's ways are advisable. The revenue of the top ten big tech companies are all 2-10x greater than IBM, which is ~21 on that list.

IBM won't entertain your recommended strategy. IBM wants deep-pocketed institutional money: the sort of broad-based popularity you hope for has no value at IBM. Governments, banks and monster health care operations are the only customers IBM really cares about for their computing products.

I know IBM has been employing a large number of people to work on Linux. I'm not as concerned about the eventual wind-down of that as I might otherwise be: Linux is the global lifeblood of enterprise computing, and there are a lot of other existing and potential sources of wealth in this world to employ Linux developers. A dispersion of this talent, with the inevitable shift in focus to things that are not strictly IBM's prerogatives, might have a real benefit for Linux.

Past that, software development has suddenly become cheaper in any case: Linux is in the optimal position to benefit greatly from the good parts of that, largely due a legacy of good leadership, so perhaps employed developer headcount doesn't have the importance it has always had.

In any case, I have every faith that Linux's future is not tightly coupled to the fate of whatever Red Hat withers into: there is too much at stake for too many well-resourced entities to permit Linux to suffer at the hands of IBM. If you need evidence for this, consider the outcome of the IBM's attempt to tighten their grip on the RHEL distribution, and the stampede to rapidly established alternatives this induced. If more of that is in Linux's future, so be it.

The best theory I've heard (Alex Hollings) is that NASA is doing an exterior refurb to get the plane ready for a big reveal of some other exotic aircraft: putting it on stage with the new thing for glamor shots.

> because Google is a little bit more frugal and focuses on how to make providing AI models financially feasible

That feels right. It's not as if they've been missing out on great profits.

> but the V8s probably isn't one of them

You can credit card as many ready-to-run 9L+ V8 engines as you want[1], built to modern tolerances using high quality tooling, tested on a dyno and equipped with a warranty. Maybe different mounts and/or couplers are needed, but that's a very finite problem.

I suspect one actually difficult problem would be finding a refiner that can make the special fuel used in the unique engines of the SR-71. Then again, the US has a great many agile refiners at its disposal.

The SR-71 is a rather awkward thing to operate. Fuel leaks out of the tanks until atmospheric friction heats the aircraft enough to make them seal. It's a big mess, and the cohort of people that were actually capable of making these things work is aged out of the workforce. Assuming any of this real, NASA must have something truly extraordinary in mind to consider this.

1. https://blueprintengines.com/

> "Nerf"ing models isn't real in the vast majority of reported cases.

That sentence... This conversation is indistinguishable from a billion conversations had around multi-player online gaming.

It's worked for online PvP gaming for a long time. Nerf stuff the min-maxers "earned" through game mechanics and sell over-powered "premium" things to everyone else to pwn them. Then nerf the old premium stuff and make new premium stuff. Forever.

I don't know if that's the actual origin of the term nerf, but it was the first time I'd heard it.

"The one thing plan mode helped is for the humans to get an understanding of the strategy"

For me, this phase still happens, but a distinct "plan mode" is unnecessary: I just tell the model, "This is discussion; no code changes yet." and spend hours figuring out what will and will not be done.