Graeme Smith

Graeme Smith

@graemesmith.bsky.social

Theorist in Waterloo. Quantum information, quantum computing, science, parenting. https://gsbsmith.ca

2.8K followers2.2K following485 posts

Graeme Smith reposted

David Roberts
@volts.wtf

One widely loathed, ketamine-addicted, white-supremacist billionaire can single-handedly keep a failing political party afloat, through the brute force of money. Excellent system we've set up here.

wired.comElon Musk Is Almost Single-Handedly Funding the Republican Midterms PushElon Musk has assembled a presidential-level field operation this midterm cycle, underscoring the extent to which he has taken over the get-out-the-vote effort for the Republican party.

Graeme Smith reposted

Bill Kristol
@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social

No responsible news outlet should go to the White House as long as this ban on their colleagues is in effect. It’s time for big media to show some backbone. Also, any apologies about that embarrassing WHCA dinner yukking it up with Trump and his apparatchiks? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/b...

nytimes.comCNN and MS NOW Reporters Barred From White House After Trump Announces BanThe prohibition on certain journalists was a stark escalation in President Trump’s war on the media, and will probably face a legal challenge.

Graeme Smith reposted

Andrew Robinson (no, not Garak)
@andrewr.bsky.social

Excellent cow photos here 👇

Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

I've decided to compile a definitive thread of photos of the best cattle I've photographed during my walks in the countryside, together with supporting biographical information. I will put the vital info about all the cattle in the alt text, since some of it is a little long to fit in a post.

Graeme Smith reposted

Waterloo's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
@uwcheritoncs.bsky.social

Wonderful news! Congratulations to Gautam Kamath and his collaborators on their foundational research on robust estimation being recognized with the 2026 Gödel Prize, the top award in theoretical computer science.

Gautam Kamath@gautamkamath.com

Laudatio: sigact.org/prizes/g%C3%... Article by @uwcheritoncs.bsky.social comms guy Joe Petrik. Pic's a few years old (you can tell by the gray hairs). He joked, this shot is for when you win the Turing or the Gödel. Didn't think we'd actually get to use it. 7/7 cs.uwaterloo.ca/news/gautam-...

Graeme Smith reposted

Mary Gillis
@marygillis.bsky.social

Replying to @marygillis.bsky.social

AI boosters get so weird about people thinking AI sucks. If this tech is so miraculous, why do you care if some people don't like it? Good products that have the support of the world's largest companies don't need volunteer cheerleaders, their adoption is inevitable. Have faith in your slop gods.

Graeme Smith
@graemesmith.bsky.social

LOL, I have a variety of feelings about this, but mostly glee. Note that in the preprint you'll find a link to a github with code by @kalramolak.bsky.social @avantikaag03.bsky.social @sungjai.bsky.social and Pulkit Sinha, the leaders of the project. I expect codex made heavy use of that.

anthony-leverrier.bsky.social@anthony-leverrier.bsky.social

A nice application of LLMs (Codex with gpt5.5 here) for research. Yesterday, a paper appeared on arXiv with an improved lower bound on the capacity threshold of the depolarizing channel, one of the most frustrating open problems in quantum information theory (1/4)

Graeme Smith
@graemesmith.bsky.social

I may be wrong, but I don't think this is an example of "AI read a paper and coded up a simulation of it" but more of "AI did an amazing job optimizing existing code and that gives real advantages".

Graeme Smith reposted

Darth Putin
@darthputinkgb.bsky.social

OTD 1933 Adolf Hitler was officially sworn in as chancellor of Germany. He immediately pardoned 8,000 violent Nazis, many of whom were involved in the failed 1923 coup.

Graeme Smith reposted

David Roberts
@volts.wtf

I know I've said this a trillion times but I have to say it periodically to keep from going insane: The right ran a huge, well-funded, & ultimately successful campaign to completely take over political media & the infosphere more generally. This is by far the most important political development...

Graeme Smith reposted

Katie Mack
@astrokatie.com

In my utopian vision of the future, instead of offloading all the pointless, annoying work tasks (like reports that none one will read and needlessly opaque forms) to robots, we restructure work and society so that the pointless tasks don't happen at all.

Graeme Smith reposted

Micah
@rincewind.run

what the fuck this really seems like another case of them going after someone prominent to send a “nobody is safe” message and what’s actually going to happen is continuing to polarize everyone but the worst of the worst against them because how the fuck is this kid a threat to anything

Heba Gowayed هبة جويد@hebagowayed.bsky.social

Columbia student detained today is a day-in-the-life influencer with 100K followers. Her stories right now go from her studying for a Genetics exam in a nicely edited "ten hour study with me at Columbia" video, to a photo of her knees with the caption "dhs illegally arrested me please help"

Graeme Smith reposted

Andrew Lawrence
@ndrew.bsky.social

stop calling us nazis just because we are invalidating IDs and rounding people up based on their skin color and putting them in concentration camps and sending them off to foreign gulags and using all that nazi imagery and banning books and dont forget about all the pedophilia. so just stop alright

Graeme Smith
@graemesmith.bsky.social

Heresy!

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io

In light of the current funding situation (worldwide), a modest proposal: instead of pouring billions of dollars into GenAI claiming "it *could* accelerate science and research," consider putting 1% of that amount in what *will* accelerate science and research. Namely, funding science and research.

Graeme Smith reposted

Max Kennerly
@maxkennerly.bsky.social

This is the kind of thing a rich CEO says at the beginning of a science fiction movie to establish for the audience that he is a sociopath and the villain.

X2Y@handle.invalid

SAM ALTMAN: “People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model … But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart.”

Graeme Smith reposted

Social Media Lab
@socialmedialab.ca

Replying to @socialmedialab.ca

Karen was told that she was “guilty by association”, and that she had broken the terms of her valid B2 tourist visa by helping her husband pack for the trip. “It just went from crazy to ridiculous. It felt like they just wanted an excuse to detain me.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeksKaren Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...
Graeme Smith
@graemesmith.bsky.social

Scientific conferences must not be held in the US until it is safe to travel there. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeksKaren Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

Graeme Smith reposted

A.R. Moxon
@juliusgoat.bsky.social

A system built to eat people never stops eating people.

Elad Nehorai@eladn.bsky.social

The concentration camps will not only be for immigrants, documented or otherwise. They already aren't. They won't only be for brown and Black people. The targets will keep expanding. It will not end. The only way it will is if we stop it. Both in and out of the system. There is no other way.