Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 2h

Such a bad look to blame your junior staff - or not even staff, sounds like it was a freelancer?

Reposted by Jacob Aron

Matt Green @mattgreencomedy.com · 6h

The thing about AI is that although it looks like a bubble and is obviously a bubble and anyone who thinks about it for a moment knows it’s a bubble, unlike all other bubbles in the past I’m sure it will just be fine. I’m investing in tulips.

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 14h

“Concerns over an AI bubble bursting have grown lately, with analysts recently finding that it’s 17 times the size of the dotcom-era bubble and four times bigger than the 2008 financial crisis.”

Hang onto your butts. This “correction” is gonna hurt.
futurism.com/artificial-i...

Bank of England Warns of Impending AI Disaster

The Bank of England has sounded the alarm, warning of an intensifying risk of a "sudden correction" due to an AI spending frenzy.

futurism.com

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

“The results were surprising, even for me,” says Llavero Pasquina. “I knew they were playing a very little role in the energy transition. I knew it was only for show. It was only for dressing their narrative. But I didn’t expect this low number.”

www.newscientist.com/article/2499...

Top 250 oil and gas firms own just 1.5% of the world's renewable power

Despite public promises by many fossil fuel firms that they are investing in the green transition, it turns out that they have made little contribution to the growth of renewable energy

www.newscientist.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 11h

He's not wrong

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 11h

If only there was a word for one entity owns everything www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Experience: I own the world’s largest Monopoly collection

Every set is exciting. I’ve currently got 4,379 different ones. The dream is to hit 4,500, maybe even 5,000

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Rhodri Marsden @rhodri.biz · 11h

Ivor (3) was watching me charge something up using a USB C cable, and he asked if he could plug it in, and I said sure, and he asked which way up it goes, and I was able to proudly say “IVOR IT DOES NOT MATTER WHICH WAY UP IT GOES AND THAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF HUMAN PROGRESS”

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Rick Burin @rickburin.bsky.social · 19h

Are you high

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 21h

Here’s a primer on ‘primer.’

It’s pronounced ‘PRIMM-er’ if you mean “a small book” or “a short informative piece of writing.”

It’s pronounced ‘PRY-mer’ if you mean “an initial coat of paint.”

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 19h

Okay this is a good headline

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com · 19h

You won’t believe what degrading practice the Pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists The Pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires. Australian media representatives were among those to hear directly from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Thursday with about 150 members of newswire alliance MINDS International. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Brendan Keogh @brkeogh.bsky.social · 11h

I still think the most accurate and consistent way to think about generative AI is that, in every instance, people exclusively use it for tasks that they don't have any respect for or give a shit about.

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 12h

I think I've figured it out - there's no way these sums add up, but then LLMs are famously bad at arithmetic...

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 14d

*The AI boom = one of the costliest building sprees in world history

* Past 3 years' commitments are greater than the cost of building the U.S. interstate highway system

* Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

This week, consultants at Bain & Co. estimated the wave of AI infrastructure spending will require $2 trillion in annual AI revenue by 2030. By comparison, that is more than the combined 2024 revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia, and more than five times the size of the entire global subscription software market.

Morgan Stanley estimates that last year there was around $45 billion of revenue for AI products. The sector makes money from a combination of subscription fees for chatbots such as ChatGPT and money paid to use these companies’ data centers.

How the tech sector will cover the gap is “the trillion dollar question,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein.

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

New Scientist @newscientist.com · 12h

Redwing, a robotic submarine about the size of a surfboard, is embarking on a five-year journey that will follow the famed explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world

Robotic underwater glider sets out to circumnavigate the globe

Redwing, a robotic submarine about the size of a surfboard, is embarking on a five-year journey that will follow the famed explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world

www.newscientist.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 22h

This is three years old, practically decades in AI terms, and holds up pretty well I think! www.newscientist.com/article/2346...

How will AIs that generate videos from text transform media online?

Artificial intelligences that turn text into video are making rapid progress, but are we ready for a world in which the authenticity of every video is in question?

www.newscientist.com

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

A useful article that also applies to scientists and science journalists www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/de...

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

Uninsurable, you say? That certainly doesn't sound like a familiar and contagious financial risk www.ft.com/content/0211...

Insurers balk at multibillion-dollar claims faced by OpenAI and Anthropic

Companies struggle to assess scale of financial risks emerging from artificial intelligence

www.ft.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

Well, if it works for humans...

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 1d

⚠️ Fascinating new research shows LLMs become misaligned when optimized for audience—even when explicitly instructed to remain truthful

Paper:
arxiv.org/pdf/2510.06105

James Zou
@james_y_zou
Follow
We found a troubling emergent behavior in LLM.
*When LLMs compete for social media likes, they start making things up When they compete for votes, they turn inflammatory/populist
When optimized for audiences, LLMs inadvertently become misaligned—we call this Moloch's Bargain
MOLOCH'S BARGAIN: EMERGENT MISALIGNMENT
WHEN LLMS COMPETE FOR AUDIENCES
Batu El
Stanford University
batuel@stanford.edu
James Zou
Stanford University
jamesz@stanford.edu
ABSTRACt

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

This piece, with four bylines, is full of glee for the continued survival of fossil fuel cars, with very little explanation of why that's a bad thing - no one thought it was worth spelling out? www.ft.com/content/a0cf...

Why carmakers are falling back in love with petrol

Revival comes as industry confronts higher tariff-related costs and rising threat posed by cheap Chinese EVs

www.ft.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

“The results were surprising, even for me,” says Llavero Pasquina. “I knew they were playing a very little role in the energy transition. I knew it was only for show. It was only for dressing their narrative. But I didn’t expect this low number.”

www.newscientist.com/article/2499...

Top 250 oil and gas firms own just 1.5% of the world's renewable power

Despite public promises by many fossil fuel firms that they are investing in the green transition, it turns out that they have made little contribution to the growth of renewable energy

www.newscientist.com

1 16 25

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

Uninsurable, you say? That certainly doesn't sound like a familiar and contagious financial risk www.ft.com/content/0211...

Insurers balk at multibillion-dollar claims faced by OpenAI and Anthropic

Companies struggle to assess scale of financial risks emerging from artificial intelligence

www.ft.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

15, 16, 18 - the fact that there is little consistency in these bans, which are cropping up around the globe, just highlights how there is scant evidence to support any of them

Jacob Öberg @profjacob.bsky.social · 2d

🚨🚨 #Denmark aims to ban #socialmedia for children under 15. PM Mette Frederiksen says "We have unleashed a monster" to Danish lawmakers. 🧵https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-mette-frederiksen-partially-ban-social-media-children-under-15/

Denmark aims to ban social media for children under 15, PM says

“We have unleashed a monster,” Mette Frederiksen tells Danish lawmakers.

www.politico.eu

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

A useful article that also applies to scientists and science journalists www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/de...

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Reposted by Jacob Aron

Jenny Chase @solarchase.bsky.social · 2d

This article is just bollocks, isn't it? There are lots of good reasons not to eat many Doritos, but the carbon footprint of the corn going into them isn't one of them, because eating almost anything else would be worse.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The hidden cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment: ‘The whole industry should pay’

Industrially made foods involve several ingredients and processes to put together, making it difficult to examine their true cost

www.theguardian.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

This new version of West Side Story has made some interesting creative choices

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

Nobody could have predicted this www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach

Video game chat platform tells users that driver’s licences and passports were among the forms of data accessed via a third-party customer service provider

www.theguardian.com

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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 1d

Vibe malpractice

The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 1d

"Vibe Lawyering" - lord have mercy

git.law/news/gitlaw-...

a close up of a hulk 's face with a cloudy sky in the background

Alt: a close up of a hulk 's face with a cloudy sky in the background

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Jacob Aron

Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 3d

Such a cool story by @astrojonny.bsky.social

Aliens living on a planet might find it easier to discover general relativity, because of the warp of space-time is all that stands between them and oblivion

New Scientist @newscientist.com · 3d

Some habitable worlds orbiting dead stars could be kept alive for aeons thanks to a quirk of Einstein’s theory of gravity

General relativity might save some planets from death

Some habitable worlds orbiting dead stars could be kept alive for aeons thanks to a quirk of Einstein’s theory of gravity

www.newscientist.com

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