Everyone was understandably wowed by the ETH proof. But the UGC proof is a bigger deal in practice.
We had a major TCS conjectures proved (Unique Games) and disproved (ETH). Time to revisit my 2016 post on why conjectures matter and how the press covers them.
blog.computationalcomplexity…
neurasite retweeted
Update on Navier-Stokes: 🦜🦾
"On a technical level, the paper is unbelievable, maybe beyond what a human could have come up with but not beyond human understanding: there are several different groups of pde experts working on understanding it who say that they more or less understand now."
"Some on these ideas are in the literature (e.g. Leibovich-Stewartson 1983) but the way they are combined is definitely insane and definitely nowhere in the literature previously.
I also don't know of anyone suggesting that convex integration would play a role in the creation of a blow-up solution like this."
Since I'm now blocked by bluey from replying to this thread, I answer here by quote tweet
the openAI construction has more to do with convex integration than anything else.
In convex integration, the oscillations are typically built by hand and the iteration procedure creates wild weak solutions. The non-uniqueness construction of Albritton–Brué–Colombo used an unstable vortex to split solutions apart. The Córdoba–Martínez-Zoroa singularities amplify vorticity across scales by strain. In the openAI paper, a fluid instability is clever made so that the flow itself generates the oscillations: they grow by drawing energy from the background shear. The Reynolds stress then becomes the force that creates the collapsing smooth vortex. Using a physical instability to create the stress in this way has no precedent, and it is what produces a smooth force rather than a merely rough one.
Some on these ideas are in the literature (e.g. Leibovich-Stewartson 1983) but the way they are combined is definitely insane and definitely nowhere in the literature previously.
I also don't know of anyone suggesting that convex integration would play a role in the creation of a blow-up solution like this.
On a technical level, the paper is unbelievable, maybe beyond what a human could have come up with but not beyond human understanding: there are several different groups of pde experts working on understanding it who say that they more or less understand now. I expect digestions soon
td;lr: anyone saying that this OAI result is unsurprising is bullshitting
sorry!
neurasite retweeted
This is indeed one of the main reasons that Starlink must remain a civilian operation.
It can be used for infrastructure that is military, but it cannot be used for unequivocally offensive strikes that make it fair game to be struck back.
An adversary blowing up Starlink satellites would create a domino effect of destruction that would generate a vast field of debris making space unusable.
Pure Facts:
"Everyone knows the guy in Cubicle Bay 7 doing mediocre but functional web design for half the salary of his American peers is no savant and doesn't meet the statutory requirements for his H-1B visa."
Immigration policy must be driven by the present, not the past, and business leaders are too terrified of the left AND the right to acknowledge this.
Recent H1B discourse revolves around a longstanding immigration sleight-of-hand. H1B proponents point to exceptional people who came here decades ago as if they represent the current state of the program in the same way that advocates for low-skill/illegal immigration point to very favorable immigrant crime/welfare/education/etc statistics that do, in truth, have them beating native-born Americans on many fronts.
It is all a sham. The world that created those statistics, people, and businesses no longer exists. Brilliant but desperate Vietnamese fathers who fled communism have nothing in common with young men from Honduras, and the crime rates/economic acccomplishments/integration of the former should not be used to justify mass migration of the latter.
Nor should the accomplishments of people who managed to get an H1B visa in the 90s (when the program was capped to just 65,000 visas) be used to justify staffing agencies and tech companies using the program to replace American jobs for less money. The obvious abuse going on is politically suicidal and something that even the most ardent supporters of the visa should want to crack down on, no immigration program can possibly survive the obvious and widely known reality of what is going on. I am a longtime outspoken advocate for stealing the best people from other countries to make our own better, runaway abuse of existing programs robs the government of the worker trust required to do so.
Lots of people in the tech space know this. Even the dumb people are smart enough to see it. Nobody actually believes these are all incredible people with unique talents performing jobs no American can. Everyone knows the guy in Cubicle Bay 7 doing mediocre but functional web design for half the salary of his American peers is no savant and doesn't meet the statutory requirements for his H-1B visa.
Unfortunately, most people with power or profile are terrified that any public statement or acknowledgement will get them attacked by the right (You guys have been screwing over American workers for years with visa abuse, you damn hypocrite!) or the left (You are racist, sexist, misogynist, and sucking up to this fascist administration!). Or, more likely, both. I know too many tech execs in particular who feel trapped, like the only winning move is to stay silent.
JD is blowing the whole thing wide open by putting facts and stats front and center that nobody wants to engage with. Critics will talk about anything and everything else but these damning facts and this obvious truth, that H1B visas serve neither their original purpose, legal purpose, invented purpose, or the American people.
neurasite retweeted
Immigration policy must be driven by the present, not the past, and business leaders are too terrified of the left AND the right to acknowledge this.
Recent H1B discourse revolves around a longstanding immigration sleight-of-hand. H1B proponents point to exceptional people who came here decades ago as if they represent the current state of the program in the same way that advocates for low-skill/illegal immigration point to very favorable immigrant crime/welfare/education/etc statistics that do, in truth, have them beating native-born Americans on many fronts.
It is all a sham. The world that created those statistics, people, and businesses no longer exists. Brilliant but desperate Vietnamese fathers who fled communism have nothing in common with young men from Honduras, and the crime rates/economic acccomplishments/integration of the former should not be used to justify mass migration of the latter.
Nor should the accomplishments of people who managed to get an H1B visa in the 90s (when the program was capped to just 65,000 visas) be used to justify staffing agencies and tech companies using the program to replace American jobs for less money. The obvious abuse going on is politically suicidal and something that even the most ardent supporters of the visa should want to crack down on, no immigration program can possibly survive the obvious and widely known reality of what is going on. I am a longtime outspoken advocate for stealing the best people from other countries to make our own better, runaway abuse of existing programs robs the government of the worker trust required to do so.
Lots of people in the tech space know this. Even the dumb people are smart enough to see it. Nobody actually believes these are all incredible people with unique talents performing jobs no American can. Everyone knows the guy in Cubicle Bay 7 doing mediocre but functional web design for half the salary of his American peers is no savant and doesn't meet the statutory requirements for his H-1B visa.
Unfortunately, most people with power or profile are terrified that any public statement or acknowledgement will get them attacked by the right (You guys have been screwing over American workers for years with visa abuse, you damn hypocrite!) or the left (You are racist, sexist, misogynist, and sucking up to this fascist administration!). Or, more likely, both. I know too many tech execs in particular who feel trapped, like the only winning move is to stay silent.
JD is blowing the whole thing wide open by putting facts and stats front and center that nobody wants to engage with. Critics will talk about anything and everything else but these damning facts and this obvious truth, that H1B visas serve neither their original purpose, legal purpose, invented purpose, or the American people.
Vice President JD Vance breaks down the data:
"If you are working as an H-1B visa in the United States of America, you’re earning $20,000 less than an American citizen hired in the same position. If you were brought in by one of these foreign outsourcing firms, you’re making $48,000 less than an American citizen in a similar position. So I’m sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played. You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you’re a corporation, you make a ton of money by under cutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn’t be in the United States of America to begin with."
neurasite retweeted
To be demoralized is to have your sense of reality so inverted that you fail to recognize you are in a state of war, mistake those attacking you for victims, and willingly assist them in undermining your own society while believing you are doing something good.
neurasite retweeted
Je vais dire quelque chose qui risque de déplaire à beaucoup de monde, mais tant pis.
Je crois qu’une partie de notre société est en train de perdre quelque chose de bien plus grave que sa compétitivité économique.
Elle est en train de perdre sa capacité à rêver.
Hier, Tesla a présenté une démonstration spectaculaire autour d’une voiture capable de quitter le sol. Un prototype, certes, pas encore la voiture volante de Retour vers le futur.
Mais quand même, bordel. On parle de technologies qui semblaient relever de la science-fiction quand nous étions gamins.
Et ce matin, en regardant certaines réactions françaises, qu’est-ce que je découvre ?
« Ça sert à rien. »
« Musk est un raciste. »
« Ça ne règle pas les problèmes de recharge. »
« Ça n’efface pas ses saluts nazis. »
Mais sérieusement, qu’est-ce qui nous est arrivé ?
À quel moment avons-nous perdu cette âme d’enfant qui nous faisait ouvrir grand les yeux devant une invention ?
Et le plus triste dans tout ça, c’est qu’on semble avoir oublié notre propre histoire.
La France, c’est le pays des frères Lumière, qui ont contribué à faire naître le cinéma.
C’est le pays de Louis Pasteur, dont les travaux ont révolutionné la microbiologie et la vaccination.
C’est le pays de Nicéphore Niépce, pionnier de la photographie.
C’est le pays des frères Montgolfier, qui ont envoyé l’être humain dans les airs à bord d’une montgolfière.
C’est le pays de Blaise Pascal, qui concevait déjà une machine à calculer au XVIIe siècle.
C’est aussi le pays du TGV, et l’un des deux pays qui ont donné naissance au Concorde.
Vous imaginez ce que représentaient ces inventions à leur époque ?
Des humains qui osaient accomplir ce que beaucoup pensaient impossible.
Des gens qui n’acceptaient pas les limites de leur temps.
Des visionnaires, des ingénieurs, des scientifiques, des entrepreneurs qui voulaient repousser les frontières du réel.
Nous avons été ce pays-là.
Alors comment avons-nous pu en arriver à un point où notre premier réflexe devant l’extraordinaire semble parfois être de chercher pourquoi il faudrait le mépriser ?
SpaceX récupère des fusées qui reviennent se poser sur Terre ? On parle immédiatement d’Elon Musk et de ses provocations.
Des robots humanoïdes commencent à réaliser des tâches physiques de plus en plus complexes ? « Ça va détruire des emplois. »
L’IA ouvre des perspectives gigantesques pour la médecine, la science, l’éducation et la création ? « Ça pollue, ça vole le travail des artistes, ça sert à tricher. »
Un entrepreneur annonce vouloir réaliser quelque chose d’incroyable ? « Encore un milliardaire qui veut s’en mettre plein les poches. »
Mais est-ce qu’on réalise seulement ce qui est en train de se passer ?
Nous vivons une époque où des fusées réutilisables se posent après leur mission, où l’IA accélère certaines découvertes scientifiques, où des robots apprennent à évoluer dans notre monde, où des personnes seules commencent à créer des choses qui nécessitaient auparavant des équipes entières.
Et devant tout ça, on serait devenus incapables de dire simplement : « Putain, c’est incroyable. Comment est-ce qu’ils ont réussi ça ? »
Je ne demande pas qu’on admire aveuglément les milliardaires. Ni qu’on ferme les yeux sur les conséquences sociales, environnementales ou politiques de leurs projets.
On peut condamner les propos d’Elon Musk tout en reconnaissant les prouesses des ingénieurs de SpaceX et de Tesla.
On peut défendre les travailleurs tout en trouvant la robotique fascinante.
On peut vouloir encadrer l’IA tout en étant émerveillé par ses possibilités.
L’esprit critique n’a jamais obligé personne à devenir cynique.
Et c’est justement ce cynisme qui me désespère.
J’ai parfois l’impression qu’on a remplacé l’admiration par la jalousie, le goût du risque par la peur de l’échec, l’ambition par la suspicion et le rêve par le sarcasme.
neurasite retweeted
String theory is what happens when an intelligent system is starved of sensory input and starts hallucinating. Intelligence needs grounding.
For this reason, intelligence is practically never the bottleneck to solving impactful problems. The bottleneck is iterated contact with reality.
An agent-first replacement for git by Anthropic. This will happen to many commonly used softwares since they were built for human scale.
New on our Engineering blog: Creating in-house source control.
In May, we merged around 2,500 code changes per day. In September, we merged more than 30,000 per day. As a result, we became bottlenecked by developer infrastructure built for human (rather than agent) scale.
Here, we share how we built a new version control system—and fully migrated our monorepo from git—in five months: anthropic.com/engineering/re…
neurasite retweeted
Consciousness emerges when an information-processing system develops a sufficiently integrated, persistent model of itself as an observer
We are close 🧠
neurasite retweeted
This OpenAI math drop is nuts.
This 7/8 quasi-Riemann hypothesis proof looks like one of the most important advances in analytical number theory in decades.
And they also resolved one of the most famous decidability problems in number theory!
Plus 3,998 more things! Oh my god.
neurasite retweeted
mathematicians and muse spark collaborated to solve 6 open problems in math:
1. The Strict Threshold for Gaussian Ellipsoid Fitting
2. Finite-Time Blow-Up of Radial Negative-Energy Solutions for the Mass-Critical Biharmonic Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation
3. Semiabelian Groups Need Not Be Monomial
4. Tightness of the Cycle-Based Relaxation for Completed Length-Three Alpha-Cycles
5. String Two-Point Function = Height Function on a Curve
6. On Solvable Evolution Algebras and a Conjecture by García-Martínez and Pérez-Rodríguez
Following gold-medal-level performance from our AI models across five competitions in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, we asked a harder question: can AI contribute when a problem is genuinely open and without an existing solution path?
Over the past several months, mathematicians worked with Muse Spark 1.1 and Muse Spark 1.2 in Thinking Mode through the regular meta.ai chat interface, with no custom research scaffold, to find solutions to such problems.
Our goal wasn't to mass-produce papers, but empower researchers. Every collaboration followed the same principles: mathematicians guided the research, a second group of mathematicians then reviewed the work, each paper marks which passages were drafted primarily by humans or AI, and each credits the prior research it builds on. Where other teams independently announced solutions to the same problems, we acknowledge their work as well.
Today, we're sharing six papers from that collaboration.
🧵👇
neurasite retweeted
New research: we hired 12 CPAs to complete four realistic accounting tasks, then had AI models from the past few years complete the same work.
As of May 2025, accountants outperformed AI. Now they lose out to today's frontier models, which are near perfect on these tasks. 🧵
neurasite retweeted
A 59-year-old conjecture in fusion physics just fell.
Harold Grad (1967): smooth 3D plasma equilibria can't exist unless pressure is constant or there's symmetry.
This week: 3 families of counterexamples. 2 independent papers, posted a day apart. Two found with GPT-6 Astra.
Huge for stellarators.