My biggest problem with AI safety is that, simply, the problem they envisage doesn't exist yet (generally, at a minimum, relying on the existence of "AGI"). Hence discussions about it have to make a huge amount of assumptions about a whole range of aspects of what the AI threat will be - what the AI will be capable of, what it's impact will be - before getting on to what possible solutions might be relevant to preventing it. But given the first two are so undefined, the later is pure speculation - one that is difficult to criticise directly, because any specific critisms can usually be easy deflected by adjusting any of the above assumptions without making a substantial change to the "inevitable" conclusion.
That's why it feels like an apocalypse cult to me - it's a conclusion, that has little strong evidence today, stacked on top of a constantly shifting set of assumptions, allowing adherents to avoid backing their arguments with evidence.
As are geologists who do “proper geology” research that aids the identification of underground oil wells. Yet it’s still relevant to point out where their funding comes from when it’s an oil company.
I’m pretty sure that’s fully accurate. Filippo mentioned one of his backers is the Interchain Foundation [1], and several others of his backers are at the very least cryptocurrency/web3 adjacent. Note, the GP didn’t say that Filippo is working directly on cryptocurrency - but that the funding is likely (at least in part) coming from cryptocurrency profits.
So, I have recently returned to Python development after several years out. In my first project [1], I was building on an existing library that was already using Poetry - so obviously I went with that for my work. Although it was a bit of a learning curve, I quickly got accustomed to it, but still wondered why it had come about given my recollections of the other tools (virtualenv et al.) being “good enough”.
Then, more recently, I had to run a different project that lacked any documentation as to how I was to run it, had a setup.py file, a Pipfile, and more in it. In trying to get this to run, I managed to make a real pigs ear such that (no doubt thanks to my lack of experience with those tools) I eventually had to delete all my virtual environments, as none of them worked anymore…
So yes, I am 100% in the “one tool to rule them all” camp these days - and although PDM does look promising, right now it isn’t offering me anything above Poetry that I care that strongly about.
As far as I know, it’s only believed that the attackers have the encrypted vaults of LastPass users.
However, that does mean they can attempt to “brute force” the encryption, trying any number of passwords as often as they like - and it seems some earlier versions of LastPass used rather poor choices with that cryptography, meaning the amount of effort needed to make an attempt is lower than other similar services (plus some users may have rather poor master passwords, making them easier to guess).
But there’s also a difference between “secure” and “confidential”.
Many definitions of security include integrity and availability as a properties to protect - and storing data in multiple locations can definitely help protect both of those.
I understand your opinion about affiliate links - but I use several review websites that use such links for all products they review, and have both positive and negative reviews for products. So I wouldn’t say it necessarily follows that affiliate links = biased reviews.
King of Tokyo (and it’s sequel, King of New York) were rather popular gateway/filler games (i.e., getting people into board gaming or as a quick game before/between/after a big game) for a while. Nothing comparable to the success of Magic though.
Citation? The best I could find with a quick Google was her NYT opinion piece [1], which pretty clearly couched her statements about Delta possibly being the last surge in hospitalisations and deaths in the US as a potential scenario and not a certainty.
Whilst I agree that she (and most other science reporters!) use simplistic models for immune system responses (possibly more for her readers), I’m yet to come across anything she’s written that has been very clearly wrong or she hasn’t later corrected/clarified.
Perhaps they’ve learned from a recent US administration that “National Security” is a very broad brush, which is hard to contradict, and thus is an easy card to play when you don’t want to reveal your actual motives! [1]