US reading scores hit near-25-year low in latest global assessment
Scores among US 15-year-olds dropped 14 points from 2022, as the Trump administration pushes for 'school choice'.
Latest News Archive - Page 45
Record-breaking rain disrupts daily life in Nagoya, Japan
Record-breaking rainfall swamped the Japanese city of Nagoya dumping an all-time high of 105 mm of rain in a single hour
US Supreme Court rejects Missouri bid to reactivate GOP-backed voting map
A separate federal court ruling, however, contradicts the Supreme Court judgement, leaving the map up in the air.
US strikes oil tankers off coast of Iran
The US attacked four oil-carrying vessels in the Gulf of Oman and one in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it would strike ships off Bahrain and Kuwait in retaliation.
Israel's Netanyahu denies UAE warned him of October 7 attack
Israeli media reported that the UAE contacted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu before the October 7, 2023 attacks, warning him that Hamas was planning a major operation. The prime minister has rejected the reports.
Yemen’s Saudi-backed forces strike Houthis on western coast
Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces are intensifying their counteroffensive against the Houthis.
‘Energiser’ or ‘circus’: US voters weigh in on Trump’s midterm convention
The atypical event underscores the significance of Texas, long a Republican stronghold, in November's midterm elections.
UK announces sanctions on West Bank settlements prompting furious Israeli response
Britain's foreign secretary accuses settlers of carrying out the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians, as Israel responds by shutting the UK consulate in East Jerusalem.
AlphaGenome Atlas
Google's AI map of every possible human DNA mutation Discussion | Link
Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv books in 1,000 Patriots as UK and EU open up missile aid
Germany ‘urgently’ sending PAC-2 interceptors from its stockpile and urges other countries to do the same. What we know on day 1,659 Continue reading...
US to ban imports of some Canadian alcohol, dairy goods and motorbikes
It is the latest strike in a long trade war, and comes after Canadian counter-tariffs on US goods come into force.
Jordanian air defences intercept Iranian missile barrage
Witnesses have captured the moment Jordanian air defence systems intercepted a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles.
v0.34.0
Use Ollama models in ChatGPT Desktop Ollama models can now be used directly in ChatGPT Desktop, so you can keep your existing workflow while running open models. Setup is available from the Ollama app on MacOS. This release also improves structured output performance on Apple Silicon, adds support for OpenAI-compatible client tool search and response compaction, and makes images work correctly through compacted responses. Full Changelog : v0.33.3...v0.34.0-rc1
I resigned from Anthropic today
https://xcancel.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843... Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49619227 Points: 601 # Comments: 815
Sharpeville massacre, 66 years on: Families still wait for justice
More than six decades after police opened fire on protesters, survivors and relatives are taking their fight to court.
Quoting Terence Tao
I wrote recently about how the collection of good, fruitful open problems is now being mined in a non-renewable fashion, leading to the potential scenario of these problems becoming scarce. [...] We have now seen that even the rumor of someone working on a problem can trigger a massive amount of AI-powered effort to flatten it before the original research project has time to reach its full potential. The incentives may now be pointing in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community, which would reverse centuries of traditions of open science and do serious long-term damage to the future of the field. — Terence Tao Tags: ai-ethics , mathematics , ai
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem Impressive result from OpenAI, who used an unreleased model to produce a resolution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem , one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems that have been subject to a $1,000,000 prize since May 24th, 2000. The discovery is somewhat overshadowed by accusations of skulduggery from Tristan Buckmaster, an NYU mathematics professor who was collaborating on related problems with Levent Alpöge, an accomplished mathematician who currently works for Anthropic. Tristan's complaint accompanied a hastily published version of their own results. Here's the PDF describing what happened . The very short version is that Tristan and Levent worked on the problem for almost a year, making extensive use of Claude and Codex (mainly GPT-5.6 Sol), then had a breakthrough on August 15th. The mathematical rumour mill kicked into gear and Tristan and Levent heard that OpenAI had heard that Anthropic had resolved "a major open problem", so they reached out and learned that OpenAI had a team working on a related problem, with a similar approach. Quoting Tristan: I asked when the first prompt had been sent by them. This question was not answered directly by OpenAI for some time. Eventually it was agreed that it had been sent in the past few days, after information about our work had reached OpenAI. I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer. It gets more complicated from there. The OpenAI team offered to wait for Tristan to publish, or to have him author a paper about their result, but were clear that Levent would not be invited as a co-author due to OpenAI's competitive relationship with his employer. Here's how OpenAI described their work: On Tuesday, September 1, we heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been resolved. Inspired by these rumors and by the step change in performance of our internal model, we launched an effort to evaluate it on all open Millennium Prize problems and a few other high-impact problems. [...] The agents arrived at their resolution on Saturday, September 5, about 88 hours after the first agents were launched. Lean formalization and verification took an additional 17 hours via GPT‑6 Astra. Across all attempted problems, the agents sent 4.9 million messages and used about 300 billion output tokens. In the process of resolving the Navier–Stokes problem, the agents sent 2.7 million messages and used approximately 130 billion output tokens. (We don't know the cost structure of the internal model they used, but 300 billion output tokens at public API prices for GPT-6 Astra would cost $15,000,000 .) Here's where they provide their perspective on Tristan and Levent's work (emphasis mine): Our effort began on September 1st after hearing a rumor which we later realized was related to Levent Alpöge, an Anthropic employee, and Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU. After the completion of our full project and Lean verification (on September 6th), believing from the rumor they also had a solution of Navier–Stokes, we reached out to them to offer a concurrent release of our result and to recognize their priority in a joint announcement. [...] We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly — in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models . However, our proofs differ significantly and even the precise results proved are different in the Euler case (forced vs unforced). My interpretation of what happened here is that OpenAI heard that some Millennium Prize problems had been solved using LLMs and saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of their latest model, without thinking too hard about the optics of scooping a team who had been using OpenAI's own models to work on this problem for the best part of a year. This situation appears to mirror what's happening in the world of computer security right now. Anil Madhavapeddy recently pointed out that Just a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these days , because if someone knows that some software has an unpatched vulnerability, they can set their agents the task of finding it. Is the same now true of mathematics? Just knowing that there is an unpublished solution to a problem might trigger millions of dollars in LLM spending to get there first. This also highlights one of my ongoing frustrations about how all of this works. When an AI lab says that my data is "used to improve model performance", what does that actually mean ? My two favourite hypothetical questions regarding this used to be: If I'm running Codex and one of my API keys accidentally gets consumed in the context, what are the chances that someone else might ask for an API key in the future and get mine back? (I asked someone at OpenAI once and they called this the "regurgitation" problem and assured me that they take great pains to prevent that... but wouldn't describe how.) If I brainstorm with ChatGPT about potential new directions for my company, what's the chance that information might be exposed to a competitor in six months' time who asks "what might company X plan to do next"? My new preferred hypothetical for this is: If I use ChatGPT to help me partially solve a Millennium Prize problem, what are the chances that my work will influence training such that a later model helps someone else solve it first? Via Hacker News Tags: mathematics , ai , openai , generative-ai , llms , training-data , ai-ethics
v16.4.0-canary.22
Misc Changes Add version for loaders api: #98377 turbo-tasks-backend: let a GC pass wind down when it is blocking an operation: #96676 docs: preserve Next.js development state: #98276 Adds .resolve to loaders api: #98361 Credits Huge thanks to @jimmyhmiller , @lukesandberg , and @aurorascharff for helping!
Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India - report
The report follows a BBC Eye investigation that found Instagram running paid ads promoting such material in India.
Marvell shares have soared 241% in a year. CEO says this is a key reason why
Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy said trust has helped fuel the chipmaker's massive run over the past year.
6 Benefits of Sandbox Environments (and How Docker Sandboxes Delivers Them)
Learn about the key benefits of sandbox environments with Docker including isolation, definable controls, secrets credential handling, and more.
Should promotion depend on how workers use AI?
More companies are tying career progression to AI use: is that fair?
I'm 27 and I've already written my will - here's why
For many young people making a will may not seem necessary, but here's why you shouldn't put it off.
Stable Channel Update for ChromeOS / ChromeOS Flex
The Stable channel is being updated to OS version 16765.41.0 (Browser version 152.0.7977.113 ) for most ChromeOS devices. If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways: File a bug Visit our ChromeOS communities General: Chromebook Help Community Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community Report an issue or send feedback on Chrome Interested in switching channels? Find out how. Luis Menezes Google ChromeOS