Nick Carr

U.S. Cyber Command capabilities have now been used in both the Caracas Venezuela raid to capture Maduro *and* Operation Midnight Hammer’s targeted strikes in Iranian nuclear facilities. You can now know this because it has been intentionally disclosed in both instances.

@dez_ @dwizzzleMSFT yoooo great news! I have some stuff to show you…

New adventure: wrapped week one at Microsoft Security! Working alongside @dwizzzleMSFT, who I plan to annoy with a backlog of questions. Excited to work on AI and security at planet scale 🤓

we're looking for a couple folks to grow a new TI capability in the sec team at A\ - if you're an intel person that leans more towards building and diving deep to understand technical threats, while still handy with the pen, could be for you! 👇👇 job-boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jobs…

@rhensing Same here on disengaging for navigation One thing I’ve been doing is changing the map view in the top right to the goofy route planner and using that to touch-select my preferred route. Horrible user experience but keeps it all clicks vs touching steering wheel

This. It’s pretty dumb that they don’t have navigation as it’s pretty much the only reason I disengage anymore.

@zan2434 @eddiejiao_obj @drewocarr this is wild

Imagine every pixel on your screen, streamed live directly from a model. No HTML, no layout engine, no code. Just exactly what you want to see. @eddiejiao_obj, @drewocarr and I built a prototype to see how this could actually work, and set out to make it real. We're calling it Flipbook. (1/5)

@nikitabier enabled bot defense mode

Today we're also rolling out a tool to snooze topics on your For You tab—if you ever want to crank up or turn down the slop. Rolling out now on iOS and Web for Premium subscribers.

@ItsReallyNick @grok Lifelong Virginian (Appalachian) and I thought I had a pretty good handle on the demographics of the state. I never thought I’d see Fairfax County split into five different districts and spider out to control some of the more rural areas. It’s pretty gross.

@_dru1d @grok 💯 well said. I couldn’t believe the ballot was able to say something like amending to “restore fairness” in Virginia. I would have thought the actual vote language would need to be more neutral. Worried people are confused and easily influenced – though that’s probably by design

@ItsReallyNick @grok I’m sorry other states were redrawn to give someone a competitive edge. That sucks, but it’s also not Virginia’s problem. It’s very clear that this isn’t about Virginia and its people.

Wild how people don’t seem to know what they’re voting for or against in Virginia today… helps to be a centrist/libertarian sometimes. I suspect people don’t remember that they already voted state-wide for the current solution, and this is a vote to amend the state constitution? My understanding of the quick history: VA General Assembly (then split) and voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment creating a 16-member bipartisan redistricting commission (8 legislators + 8 citizens) to draw maps going forward. It passed the legislature with huge majorities and won 66% of the vote statewide in November 2020, majority support in nearly every locality. The goal was explicitly to end partisan gerrymandering. When the commission deadlocked in 2021, the state Supreme Court (w/ neutral special masters) drew the current fair maps. Independent reviews (e.g. Princeton) grade them top-tier for fairness that reflect the state’s 55% Democratic lean with a balanced 6D-5R delegation.

I think most of the @elonmusk criticism on this topic has been around how he communicates multi-sensor conflict & prioritization. Saying "pure vision" has seemed to suggest no other signals would be helpful (LiDAR & beyond) - and that has confused others who think the human driver uses layered early warning systems like audio (👂) - to alert & augment prior to vision (👀) sensors w/ depth detection. Crude analogy, but to the masses, it could sound like Elon suggests the best drivers would be deaf and wear an eye patch. Disclaimer: I'm a believer in the Tesla stack and currently at 93% FSD use for 2500 mi

Aujourd'hui grosse discussion avec mes ingés (chez Argil) sur pourquoi Elon a viré le LIDAR de ses voitures autonomes. Choix radical, moqué pendant des années, et comme d'hab il avait raison depuis le début. Le LIDAR c'est un laser qui balaye l'environnement et crache un nuage de points 3D. Sur le papier tu obtiens la géométrie exacte du monde. Dans la vraie vie c'est une verrue technologique collée sur le toit parce qu'on sait pas faire mieux avec la vision seule. Problème numéro un : ça rajoute une modalité dans le training du modèle. Ton réseau doit apprendre à fusionner vision + lidar + radar + ultrasons. Chaque capteur en plus c'est une source de désaccord à arbitrer, pas une source d'info supplémentaire. Sensor fusion artisanale = dette technique permanente. Problème numéro deux, la bitter lesson de Rich Sutton : scaler le compute sur une seule modalité bat systématiquement les architectures bricolées à la main. Tesla a dropé le radar, puis les ultrasons, est passé full end-to-end vision. Leur courbe sur les edge cases s'est accélérée APRÈS, pas avant. Waymo fait l'inverse et reste stuck en ops géofencée. Problème numéro trois, le plus fondamental : le LIDAR voit la géométrie, pas la sémantique. Il sait qu'il y a un truc, pas ce que c'est ni ce que ça va faire. Les derniers 9 de fiabilité sont des problèmes de cognition, pas de perception brute. Un capteur de plus résout rien, il ajoute du bruit. Sébastien Loeb balance une 208 T16 à 180 dans un chemin boueux corse sous la pluie avec zéro LIDAR. Deux yeux, un cerveau. L'évolution a donné des yeux aux prédateurs pendant 500 millions d'années, pas des lasers. Il y a une raison. Le LIDAR c'est l'équivalent du marxisme appliqué à l'économie. Une solution planifiée, centralisée, qui prétend modéliser explicitement ce qui doit émerger d'un système distribué et adaptatif. Tu remplaces l'intelligence par de la mesure, la compréhension par de la donnée, l'émergence par le contrôle. Ça rassure les ingénieurs qui veulent tout spécifier en amont, exactement comme la planif rassurait les économistes soviétiques. Et ça échoue pour les mêmes raisons : la réalité est trop riche pour être capturée par un capteur, comme elle est trop riche pour être capturée par un plan quinquennal. La vraie intelligence, celle de Hayek comme celle de Tesla, c'est de faire confiance à un système qui apprend de l'expérience plutôt que de tout pré-encoder. L'élégance d'une solution c'est son rapport signal sur complexité. Le LIDAR explose le dénominateur. Défendre le LIDAR en 2026 c'est préférer empiler des hacks plutôt que résoudre le vrai problème. C'est de la feignasserie intellectuelle maquillée en rigueur d'ingénieur. Les mêmes gens qui défendaient les systèmes experts en 2012 contre le deep learning. Ils finiront pareil. Never bet against end-to-end. Never bet against la simplicité. Never bet against Elon.

Hilariously bad. I maintain some code to normalize phone numbers across a bunch of sources and I never see it the way you recommend. Leading + typically distinguishes a country code, as seen on your own Contact page on your website. This helps you visually distinguish the type when a human reads it and anchor it for a machine reader/regex. You could have even gone with +1 212.621.1500

We updated our style for telephone numbers in 2024 to drop parentheses. We now recommend the form: 212-621-1500. For international numbers use 011 (from the United States), the country code, the city code and the telephone number: 011-44-20-7535-1515. Use hyphens, not periods. No parentheses. The form for toll-free numbers: 800-111-1000. If extension numbers are needed, use a comma to separate the main number from the extension: 212-621-1500, Ext. 2.

*uploads to Claude Mythos to find vulnerabilities*

We just watched UFC 327 Hokit vs Blaydes with my son. Wild fight! Feels like we locked in one of those sports memories that will stick with him.

Bought a DeLonghi Eletta Explore in September and it’s been so awesome. Maybe true coffee heads will laugh at the cost, but I have the morning flat white absolutely dialed in. amzn.to/4c4wtRe

They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy you a super-automatic espresso machine …so which is it?

If WhatsApp detects consumer content with hidden rulesets pre- or post-encryption at scale then makes those messages available for human review, that sounds odd…

I’m highly skeptical of encryption claims on consumer messaging platforms for sure. That said, is the screenshot equivalent to a message receiver flagging these things for fraud or policy violations? If so, fair game. If I receive & report a message on X or Telegram, I’m expecting a system will review it where a human could access it.

WhatsApp’s “encryption” may be the biggest consumer fraud in history — deceiving billions of users. Despite its claims, it reads users’ messages and shares them with third parties. Telegram has never done this — and never will 🤝

The team and I have spent the past several months analyzing feedback from the community. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better. Read this blog post to learn more about what we're doing in response as we look to raise the bar on Windows 11 quality. Please keep the feedback coming, to help us shape the future of Windows together. blogs.windows.com/windows-inside…

The slightly-less-douchey move is the reply-quote that you then repost. Seems to accomplish the same thing?

@NateSilver538 Also, serious question: Why do all the washed-up East Coast journalists quote instead of just tapping the reply button? Feels so inauthentic and soapboxy. No one else on the app talks this way.

53m people signed up for the NYT account which has never had much "voice" as opposed to some of its writers. That's because they were using Twiiter as a news feed with the on-platform discussion as a side course. Now that use case is broken. Few of the 53m even see their tweets.