250 documents can backdoor a model. “Only 250 malicious documents roughly 420 thousand tokens or just 0.00016 percent of a large dataset are enough.” Roemmele argues this kind of data poisoning gets “permanently embedded in the model weights” and the […]
Patents may get narrower. If AI becomes part of the “person having ordinary skill in the art,” more things start to look obvious in hindsight, and today’s portfolios might age badly in court. “The net effect could be that the […]
Brain interface that knows 96 milliseconds early. “A new type of non-invasive brain-computer interface that knows what you will do 96 milliseconds before you do it.” BRILL Neurotech and UIUC’s CNL built it by “hacking 25-year-old equipment.” ~ learn more
How Austin got its professional soccer team. Eddie Margain talks about what it feels like when rule of law breaks down (“I fled [Mexico] when the cartels threatened my family”), and how he later poured that urgency into building Austin […]
A train derailed in downtown Austin. The tracks are near my house and we were alerted to this by a text from our school district. While it’s a 230-car cargo train that derailed in downtown Austin around 4:45 a.m., it […]
Autonomous cars are going to clog the roads. “Autonomous vehicles are the centrifugal water pump of the roads.” The piece argues that self-driving will make traffic tolerable enough to overuse, unless we start charging for road access before AVs become […]
Choppelganger. A new word, “a less attractive or worse version of something or someone.” Next time someone tells me I look like someone they know, I will bust this one out. ~ learn more
Helium is hard to replace. “Liquid helium boils at just 4.2 kelvin (-452 degrees Fahrenheit).” If you need temperatures a few degrees above absolute zero, the article argues helium is basically the only practical coolant, which is why shortages hit […]
Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) can also talk fast. He’s a fountain of interesting comments. “The idea of a one-person company is stupid.” Ryan Petersen (Flexport) talks through why real leverage comes from coordination, not solo grind, then veers into tariffs, fraud, […]