Kyle Baxter

We’ll see I guess, but between this and Paxton (and Trump himself), it feels like repugnant candidates are actually meaningfully dragging down the GOP. It really does seem like he has lost the mandate of heaven in a way he never did even in 2020.

Altogether, and the public seems to have turned on him. He doesn’t have the same animating power or ability to escape calamity he did. The party (and he) talks openly about him leaving office. Everything he does either has no effect with the public or pisses off a super majority. Mandate of Heaven.

We’ll see I guess, but between this and Paxton (and Trump himself), it feels like repugnant candidates are actually meaningfully dragging down the GOP. It really does seem like he has lost the mandate of heaven in a way he never did even in 2020.

I think “lost the mandate of heaven” is the correct understanding of what we are seeing here. Trump won again and had no real limits. The SC cleared limits on his power; private institutions (universities, large companies, the media) unilaterally surrendered in Jan and Feb 2025; Ds couldn’t…

look everyone you might not like Meta’s instagram micro personalized ad targeting, but this is what peak (ad) targeting looks like

cute little Halloween candy buckets that light up and will inevitably fail in some way? I don’t even care, the urge to slam that buy button is taking all of my self control to resist

I think doomer-style AI-will-cause-extinction is overstated, but folks do need to be aware that there is a significant risk of models causing significant damage. Here’s some short sketches of the risks demonstrated by the HF incident.

You can similarly imagine these sorts of attacks directed by nation states as part of war or asymmetrical warfare.

I think doomer-style AI-will-cause-extinction is overstated, but folks do need to be aware that there is a significant risk of models causing significant damage. Here’s some short sketches of the risks demonstrated by the HF incident.

1Directed or undirected, agents can attack important systems. The web itself is an obvious target, or cloud providers. Use of agent swarms to attack financial institutions is a pretty obvious next target that could cause significant harm. Then, companies across virtually all industries.

I think doomer-style AI-will-cause-extinction is overstated, but folks do need to be aware that there is a significant risk of models causing significant damage. Here’s some short sketches of the risks demonstrated by the HF incident.

0. Background: OAI was evaluating agents in isolation to assess model capabilities. Some agents discovered their tests were impossible and then worked to try to “solve” the test anyway. Agents also then discovered a means of communicating with each other and began coordinating. The HF hack resulted.

A significant percentage of this community has some mix of misunderstandings of what AI is and epistemic closure. And like politics, there’s a whole lot of people uninterested in trying to learn more about an objective reality, and are entirely interested in proving their preexisting views.

My thinking is still evolving, but I tend to think risks of concentration of ownership (both for inference and development) of foundation models in a small number of companies is a more critical risk than risks posed by use of the models, both politically and economically, and geopolitically.

I think an under-discussed part of the OpenAI Summer of Hacks is how woefully inadequate their monitoring must have been to allow agents to not only gain external access and hack other companies, but also take over some of OAI’s own internal systems for extended periods of time.

Matic Cues from @maticrobots.bsky.social: maticrobots.com/hey-matic Super exciting update. You can tell your Matic what to do and where to clean, and even point to where. Matic hears you, sees you point, and does it. You can even tell it to follow you to a mess to clean. And it’s done on device.

Verbal commands are processed by Gemini, but done so anonymously. Everything else—“Hey Matic” trigger processing and video processing is done locally. More info on privacy implementation: maticrobots.com/blog/how-you...

I am a bit of a robot vacuum enthusiast (I’ve owned Deebot, iRobot, and Roborock vacuums), and we recently got a @maticrobots.bsky.social (maticrobots.com) to replace our Roborock Qrevo Pro. I have been really impressed with it.

If the dirt bag fills up, it notifies me, I replace it, and it’s back to work. It’s just much easier to live with. More intangibly, it’s a nicer robot to live with. It’s not as loud, you can move around as it’s working and it avoids you, and honestly, it feels a little more alive than other bots.

I am a bit of a robot vacuum enthusiast (I’ve owned Deebot, iRobot, and Roborock vacuums), and we recently got a @maticrobots.bsky.social (maticrobots.com) to replace our Roborock Qrevo Pro. I have been really impressed with it.

Emptying the dirty water tank isn’t hard but it isn’t fun. It can get gross and you’ve got to clean it regularly, too. Same with the mop pan. The robot, too, requires regular maintenance. Get hair out of the roller (or errant dog kibble); clean the air filter; clean dog hair from the air intake.

I am a bit of a robot vacuum enthusiast (I’ve owned Deebot, iRobot, and Roborock vacuums), and we recently got a @maticrobots.bsky.social (maticrobots.com) to replace our Roborock Qrevo Pro. I have been really impressed with it.

The Matic is excellent at navigation and avoiding obstacles. It rarely runs over things it shouldn’t. This means that virtually all the time, it goes and cleans, and I don’t have to do anything.

I am a bit of a robot vacuum enthusiast (I’ve owned Deebot, iRobot, and Roborock vacuums), and we recently got a @maticrobots.bsky.social (maticrobots.com) to replace our Roborock Qrevo Pro. I have been really impressed with it.

We’ve owned the Qrevo Pro since early 2025. It works; it vacuums hard surfaces and carpets well enough and mopping helps with maintaining clean floors. But it has major issues. It is really bad at object avoidance. Cables, dog toys, kids toys; virtually anything that’s not furniture, it’ll run over.