4 ms·

The War Department has unlimited access to LLMs and compute, but these are delivered as unlabeled files that one must download individually. That's ridiculous.

free_bip 5mo ago
It makes more sense when you realize the whole point is to distract from the continued failure to release the Epstein files.
- 0ckpuppet 5mo ago
  or distact from the Iran war, or distract from Israel, or distract from corruption... distraction from distractions. We keep buying what they're selling, and then complain the milk is still sour.
  - dylan604 5mo ago
    Easy with the use of "we" there buddy. Just look at the polling. There are way more people not buying the bullshit, and the numbers keep getting worse as even the faithful are tiring of it as well. So just tossing "we" around becomes offensive as you've now included me into something I will not be a part of.
    - selectodude 5mo ago
      Too little too late, unfortunately. The train has left the station.
    - anigbrowl 5mo ago
      The numbers have sort of plateaued. There's a ~30% of the population that is all-in on Trump for emotional/psychological reasons, who have very different values from the rest of the population. Where others see malicious incompetence, they see him sticking it to their opponents and are even willing to suffer as long as they perceive their opponents to be suffering more. So although they don't like paying a lot of extra money for gas, they will put up with it for a long time because the payoff is seeing others suffer more. IT's not that Trump created this mindset, although he was able to capitalize on it due to being celebrity; about 1/3 of people are assholes and they're able to use the internet to network and coordinate like any other group. Unfortuantely, they are one of the largest social groups, while opponents have to deal with the friction of coalition politics.
      - dylan604 5mo ago
        That's fine, but at 30% "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If it was 80% in favor, then maybe "we" could be accepted. Even at the less than a majority winning the election makes "we" difficult to accept.
  - ourmandave 5mo ago
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
    "We" really don't. The captured media do. A lot of people still look to the MSM to define reality for them. But there's a huge and myserious disconnect between the MSM's reporting of Trump as a Serious Person, and the reality that he's a compulsive liar and fantasist and is seriously ill with advancing dementia. Without honest reporting, "we" don't have a public voice.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
throwawa1 5mo ago
yup. I'm not going through this.
- moralestapia 5mo ago
  Fortunately, you don't have to. Competent people will get busy on this.
  - vehemenz 5mo ago
    Such people already know it's not aliens, though.
    - dylan604 5mo ago
      you mean like Harvard professors claiming that a rock from interstellar space is a probe from an intelligent society?
      - vehemenz 5mo ago
        There are Harvard professors who believe in the supernatural, I'm sure.
      - krapp 5mo ago
        I'm only aware of Avi Loeb, who AFAIK is generally considered a crackpot and a grifter within academia, and his claims about Oumuamua and aliens aren't taken seriously by the mainstream. Who are the others?
        dylan604 5mo ago
        sorry, that's a typo that was autocorrected. professor should not have been pluralized
        mrandish 5mo ago
        I'm not the poster you replied to but it's worth mentioning that there are, unfortunately, examples of more than a few highly-credentialed academics and scientists believing some pretty out there things. Due to such a large sample size, humans being human and tenure being for life, sometimes you're going to get outliers. Plus expertise in one discipline doesn't necessarily generalize to appropriate scientific rigor and skepticism in other domains. While I don't understand it myself, I've seen a study showing how some scientists can compartmentalize and apply different standards of evidence between their professional life and personal beliefs. In other cases, scientists conducting rigorous lab controlled studies have been deceived by fake psychics doing simple magic tricks (and not nearly as well as a competent magician). For example, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford Research Institute being fooled by Uri Geller. While Puthoff and Targ were trained experimentalists having worked in laser physics, their parapsychology study designs had poor controls and lacked statistical rigor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI As a long-time skeptic, I've learned to avoid broad appeals to authority because relying on "a scientist said..." is ineffective when a true believer can cite a credentialed scientist spouting nutty stuff. In recent years the situation around military assessments of UFO sightings has also changed dramatically. In the mid-2010s, some UFO enthusiasts already in the military managed to work their way into positions as UAP investigators, largely because "UFO Investigator" was a role no serious military careerist wanted on their record. Suddenly, what were once hundred page dry, technical assessments boiling down to "inconclusive" (which no one cared about) became artfully crafted, overly-credulous reports highlighting sensational (but poorly supported) "possibilities." This coincided with a political recalculation from some members of both parties in congress and the White House during the past two administrations to stop fighting the tiny but highly vocal UFO community as it was a no-win battle and instead basically leverage UAPs as a sideshow either for attention or distraction. And it's working.
baggachipz 5mo ago
[flagged]
- throwawa1 5mo ago
  [flagged]
mitchell_h 5mo ago
I think it's proper. When you release something like this, a raw data dump is the only way to cut out a BUNCH of the "this is modified and falsified" noise.
- rustyhancock 5mo ago
  Yes. Importantly just because they've processed it conveniently doesn't mean they'd ever intend to share that. My first thought when I saw this is how much will it cost me to kick it up to a HF I stance. I did a trial run with the Epstein files and it was genuinely fun to catch a few bits before the media caught up. Not to mention that if they add any metadata thats just increasing their exposure and they will be held to what the LLMs label it.
fidotron 5mo ago
It's almost like the whole thing is designed to absorb energy and distract some portion of the population from actually looking into anything real.
- actionfromafar 5mo ago
  Like calling Epstein a democratic hoax?
- dtagames 5mo ago
  It's more likely to make it take longer to figure out that there is nothing there. If one had clearly indexed and searchable content, we would see it's just garbage.
mellosouls 5mo ago
Much better to release the raw stuff; those and derived resources will likely be available in a much more accessible way on public mirrors within a few days.
booleandilemma 5mo ago
And if they did put a lot of effort into it your comment would say "look at all the money that went into compute for setting this up". Can't let them win, right?
- dtagames 5mo ago
  No it would not. This is an abdication on UI. There is no reason to release a file labeled with a number in 2026 when what the user wants is searchable, categorized content with thumbnails and the ability to export groups. That's web tech we've had forever. The fact that they didn't use their AI or compute to do that with it is just a big fail.
sva_ 5mo ago
Hard disagree. A government releasing files with some probabilistic (unreliable) labeling would be pretty terrible.
GolfPopper 5mo ago
>unlimited access to LLMs and compute But extremely limited access to competent human beings.
ex-aws-dude 5mo ago
Hackernews try not to somehow mention LLMs in every thread challenge (impossible)
- dtagames 5mo ago
  If planes have just been invented, you need to go somewhere, and you live next to an airport, the idea of flight might come to mind quickly. That's the era we're in with LLMs. It just comes to mind for the HN crowd sooner.

free_bip 5mo ago

It makes more sense when you realize the whole point is to distract from the continued failure to release the Epstein files.

0ckpuppet 5mo ago
or distact from the Iran war, or distract from Israel, or distract from corruption... distraction from distractions. We keep buying what they're selling, and then complain the milk is still sour.
- dylan604 5mo ago
  Easy with the use of "we" there buddy. Just look at the polling. There are way more people not buying the bullshit, and the numbers keep getting worse as even the faithful are tiring of it as well. So just tossing "we" around becomes offensive as you've now included me into something I will not be a part of.
  - selectodude 5mo ago
    Too little too late, unfortunately. The train has left the station.
  - anigbrowl 5mo ago
    The numbers have sort of plateaued. There's a ~30% of the population that is all-in on Trump for emotional/psychological reasons, who have very different values from the rest of the population. Where others see malicious incompetence, they see him sticking it to their opponents and are even willing to suffer as long as they perceive their opponents to be suffering more. So although they don't like paying a lot of extra money for gas, they will put up with it for a long time because the payoff is seeing others suffer more. IT's not that Trump created this mindset, although he was able to capitalize on it due to being celebrity; about 1/3 of people are assholes and they're able to use the internet to network and coordinate like any other group. Unfortuantely, they are one of the largest social groups, while opponents have to deal with the friction of coalition politics.
    - dylan604 5mo ago
      That's fine, but at 30% "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If it was 80% in favor, then maybe "we" could be accepted. Even at the less than a majority winning the election makes "we" difficult to accept.
- ourmandave 5mo ago
  Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
  "We" really don't. The captured media do. A lot of people still look to the MSM to define reality for them. But there's a huge and myserious disconnect between the MSM's reporting of Trump as a Serious Person, and the reality that he's a compulsive liar and fantasist and is seriously ill with advancing dementia. Without honest reporting, "we" don't have a public voice.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

throwawa1 5mo ago

yup. I'm not going through this.

moralestapia 5mo ago
Fortunately, you don't have to. Competent people will get busy on this.
- vehemenz 5mo ago
  Such people already know it's not aliens, though.
  - dylan604 5mo ago
    you mean like Harvard professors claiming that a rock from interstellar space is a probe from an intelligent society?
    - vehemenz 5mo ago
      There are Harvard professors who believe in the supernatural, I'm sure.
    - krapp 5mo ago
      I'm only aware of Avi Loeb, who AFAIK is generally considered a crackpot and a grifter within academia, and his claims about Oumuamua and aliens aren't taken seriously by the mainstream. Who are the others?
      - dylan604 5mo ago
        sorry, that's a typo that was autocorrected. professor should not have been pluralized
      - mrandish 5mo ago
        I'm not the poster you replied to but it's worth mentioning that there are, unfortunately, examples of more than a few highly-credentialed academics and scientists believing some pretty out there things. Due to such a large sample size, humans being human and tenure being for life, sometimes you're going to get outliers. Plus expertise in one discipline doesn't necessarily generalize to appropriate scientific rigor and skepticism in other domains. While I don't understand it myself, I've seen a study showing how some scientists can compartmentalize and apply different standards of evidence between their professional life and personal beliefs. In other cases, scientists conducting rigorous lab controlled studies have been deceived by fake psychics doing simple magic tricks (and not nearly as well as a competent magician). For example, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford Research Institute being fooled by Uri Geller. While Puthoff and Targ were trained experimentalists having worked in laser physics, their parapsychology study designs had poor controls and lacked statistical rigor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology_research_at_SRI As a long-time skeptic, I've learned to avoid broad appeals to authority because relying on "a scientist said..." is ineffective when a true believer can cite a credentialed scientist spouting nutty stuff. In recent years the situation around military assessments of UFO sightings has also changed dramatically. In the mid-2010s, some UFO enthusiasts already in the military managed to work their way into positions as UAP investigators, largely because "UFO Investigator" was a role no serious military careerist wanted on their record. Suddenly, what were once hundred page dry, technical assessments boiling down to "inconclusive" (which no one cared about) became artfully crafted, overly-credulous reports highlighting sensational (but poorly supported) "possibilities." This coincided with a political recalculation from some members of both parties in congress and the White House during the past two administrations to stop fighting the tiny but highly vocal UFO community as it was a no-win battle and instead basically leverage UAPs as a sideshow either for attention or distraction. And it's working.

baggachipz 5mo ago

[flagged]

throwawa1 5mo ago
[flagged]

mitchell_h 5mo ago

I think it's proper. When you release something like this, a raw data dump is the only way to cut out a BUNCH of the "this is modified and falsified" noise.

rustyhancock 5mo ago
Yes. Importantly just because they've processed it conveniently doesn't mean they'd ever intend to share that. My first thought when I saw this is how much will it cost me to kick it up to a HF I stance. I did a trial run with the Epstein files and it was genuinely fun to catch a few bits before the media caught up. Not to mention that if they add any metadata thats just increasing their exposure and they will be held to what the LLMs label it.

fidotron 5mo ago

It's almost like the whole thing is designed to absorb energy and distract some portion of the population from actually looking into anything real.

actionfromafar 5mo ago
Like calling Epstein a democratic hoax?
dtagames 5mo ago
It's more likely to make it take longer to figure out that there is nothing there. If one had clearly indexed and searchable content, we would see it's just garbage.

mellosouls 5mo ago

Much better to release the raw stuff; those and derived resources will likely be available in a much more accessible way on public mirrors within a few days.

booleandilemma 5mo ago

And if they did put a lot of effort into it your comment would say "look at all the money that went into compute for setting this up". Can't let them win, right?

dtagames 5mo ago
No it would not. This is an abdication on UI. There is no reason to release a file labeled with a number in 2026 when what the user wants is searchable, categorized content with thumbnails and the ability to export groups. That's web tech we've had forever. The fact that they didn't use their AI or compute to do that with it is just a big fail.

sva_ 5mo ago

Hard disagree. A government releasing files with some probabilistic (unreliable) labeling would be pretty terrible.

GolfPopper 5mo ago

>unlimited access to LLMs and compute But extremely limited access to competent human beings.

ex-aws-dude 5mo ago

Hackernews try not to somehow mention LLMs in every thread challenge (impossible)

dtagames 5mo ago
If planes have just been invented, you need to go somewhere, and you live next to an airport, the idea of flight might come to mind quickly. That's the era we're in with LLMs. It just comes to mind for the HN crowd sooner.