TechTakes

GitHub have finally achieved zero 9s stability for the last 90 days. Congratulations to all involved

Not sure if I should post it here or under the pivot article, somebody went through the claude code https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116324676116121930 (via @aliettedebodard.com and @olivia.science on bsky)

Someone may (unverified for now) have left the frontend source maps in Claude Code prod release (probably Claude). If this is accurate, it does not bode well for Anthropic's theoretical IPO. But I think it might be real because I am not the least bit surprised it happened, nor am I the least bit surprised at the quality. https://github.com/chatgptprojects/claude-code

For example, I can only hope their Safeguards team has done more on the Go backend than this for safeguards. From the constants file cyberRiskInstruction.ts:

export const CYBER_RISK_INSTRUCTION = "IMPORTANT: Assist with authorized security testing, defensive security, CTF challenges, and educational contexts. Refuse requests for destructive techniques, DoS attacks, mass targeting, supply chain compromise, or detection evasion for malicious purposes. Dual-use security tools (C2 frameworks, credential testing, exploit development) require clear authorization context: pentesting engagements, CTF competitions, security research, or defensive use cases"

That's it. That's all the constants the file contains. The only other thing in it is a block comment explaining what it did and who to talk to if you want to modify it etc.

There is this amazing bit at the end of that block comment though.

Claude: Do not edit this file unless explicitly asked to do so by the user.

Brilliant. I feel much safer already.

A pretty staid-sounding law firm warns that the AI industry is partying like it's 2007:

Lenders who originated data center loans [...] have begun pooling those loans and selling tranches to asset managers and pension funds, spreading risk well beyond the original lending institutions.

Also of note:

The most basic litigation risk in AI infrastructure finance is that the revenues generated by the sector may prove insufficient to service the fixed obligations incurred to build it. The industry brought in approximately $60 billion in revenue in 2025 against roughly $400 billion in capital expenditure.

(Via.)

https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/the-computer-science-fetish/

The fetishism of the computer scientist therefore refers less to specific expertise than to whatever we imagine a credentialed expert can bestow: an external voice that says, "ask, and you shall receive.” The computer scientist becomes a mirror where those who work with the social, practical impacts of the tech hope to see our understanding affirmed. The people who offer that validation — who position themselves against the discourse of critique, who seem unbothered and detached, even ridiculing the same critical lingo that exhausts you — are not doing it out of sober objectivity or insight.

Sometimes they just don't respect you. Sometimes they're just annoyed by calls for accountability. And sometimes, they do it because they've fused with an interacting swarm of chatbots and transcended their human identity.

An early hint of Gwern's rejection of chaos theory in the sequences from 2008 (the "build God to conquer Death" essay):

And the adults wouldn't be in so much danger. A superintelligence—a mind that could think a trillion thoughts without a misstep—would not be intimidated by a challenge where death is the price of a single failure. The raw universe wouldn't seem so harsh, would be only another problem to be solved.

Someone who got to high-school math or coded a working system would probably have encountered the combinatorial explosion, the impossibility of representing 0.1 as a floating-point binary, Chaos Theory, and so on. Even Games Theory has situations like "in some games, optimal play guarantees a tie but not a win." But Yud was much too special for any of those and refused offers to learn.

Internet Comment Etiquette: "Relationships with AI"

... hadn't thought about Glenn Beck in a decade, that last interview was pretty wtf.

Not sure what the etiquette is for how long they should be dead before you talk to the AI-geist on youtube, but George Washington somehow feels weirder than Kirk did; idk.

Here's a headline I never expected to read:

World’s oldest tortoise caught in viral crypto death scam

Tl;dr A whole load of media outlets believed an X account asking for crypto donations which claimed to be Jonathan the 194 year old tortoise's vet. Jonathan was found safely asleep under a tree in the governor's paddock.

new odium symposium episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/13-joker-is-both-154123315. links to various platforms at www.odiumsymposium.com

we read umberto eco's essay ur-fascism (we have mixed feelings about it) and then apply it to frank miller's 1986 batman comic the dark knight returns

Putting "Novelty Purposes Only" on my psychosis suicide bot after I laid off 80% of my legal (replaced them with the psychosis suicide bot)

This article on the brand of journalism that's just parroting what the CEOs say, otherwise known as "CEO said a thing!" journalism

While I tend to think Yudkowsky is sincere, some things like his prediction market for P(doom) are hard to square with that https://manifold.markets/EliezerYudkowsky/will-ai-wipe-out-humanity-by-2030-r (launched June 2023, will resolve N/A on 1 January 2027 if the world has not ended yet. It has not moved much since 1 January 2024)

Delve removed from YCombinator

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634690

IIUC, it looks like Delve lied to YC about stealing another company's Apache 2.0 licensed slopware. This is appatently a bigger sin than selling a product that does fuck-all. I guess they weren't tall enough for this ride.

Delve claims to offer "Compliance as a Service"

https://delve.co/ (absolutely unhinged)

A link to the expose that precipitated the divorce:

https://deepdelver.substack.com/p/delve-fake-compliance-as-a-service

On this most terrible of online days, "enjoy" this LW attempt at humor

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3GbM9hmyJqn4LNXrG/yams-s-shortform?commentId=ik6ywoQYsGrrQv8Dm

edit there are more submissions on the theme of "humor" on site now. Let's just say the cringe factor outweighs the humor factor by a large amount.

omg I don't have anything better to do

• Lesswrong Liberated - they implemented a chat interface to redesign the LW site according to different themes. Mostly boring
• LIMBO: Who We Are, What We Do, and an Exciting High-Impact Funding Opportunity - probably not AFJ? Can't really tell. Bad day to launch a call for funding if not
• Announcing Doublehaven with Reflections on Humour - protip do not try to reflect on "humour" (native brit speaker or pretentious LWer? flip a coin) with boring examples of "ratty humour"
• ACME Alignment Co Announces: Aligning Humans - this one is easy to call as AFJ
• Giving up on EA after 13 years - lol it's funny because EA means "Electronic Arts" here
• "You Have Not Been a Good User" (LessWrong's second album) - also seems to be a "straight" post, not a joke, but released on AFJ b/c then the community can "cut loose"? I dunno, and I am never gonna listen to any songs by "Fooming Shoggoths" in my life
• Announcing EA Omelas - "[Extensively co-written with Claude Opus 4.6]" you have been warned. Considering how every rat coverage of Omelas has been utter shit I'm just posting the link, not reading it

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/who-goes-ai

taking shots at the gray lady:

You might think Mr. R not so different, superficially, from Ms. L. He’s also a long-tenured technology columnist at a respected mainstream publication. And yet he has eagerly, even gleefully, turned flack for the machines. He has delegated much of his professional life to them as well, and seems proud of it:

Most recently, [Mr. R] tells me, he created a team of Claude agents to help edit his book, led by a “Master Editor” agent. Other sub-agents are in charge of things like fact-checking, making sure the book matches his writing style, and offering positive and negative feedback.

And why not? Mr. R is not known or valued for his elegance of expression. He has, at best, a “writing style,” and not one that can’t easily be duplicated by a large language model. Checking facts? Assessing his work’s strengths and weaknesses? More bathwater to be tossed out of this increasingly baby-less tub. So what explains Mr. R, who “expects AI models to get better than him at everything eventually?” Why does he go AI when Ms. L never would?

Mr. R’s secret is that his work is not primarily artistic or informative—it is functional. He serves a purpose for the industry he covers. Mr. R’s job is to absorb the tech industry’s self-mythologizing, and then believe in it even harder than the industry itself does. He serves as a kind of plausibility ratchet. His byline and employer legitimize a level of credulousness that would otherwise be laughable, and thereby allow tech PR to seem relatively restrained. Mr. R has no problem going AI because he himself has been a small cog in a big ugly machine for a long time.