Classic powers that be fighting the tech industry contending for their powers.
Only expect this to intensify.
It never ends does it
They can surveil my slop all they want 😂
It would be nice if North Korea could get integrated with the world and normalize relations. I want to hear from those people what life was like for them under a human demigod 😂
Yeah, uk MPs will see the us precedence, and revise what “full term” means, 2 weeks late, 8 years late, “post birth foetus”……. Where IS leads, Uk follows
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Gm nostriches, happy Saturday, went downstairs and greeted with the cats having got the mouse that spent yesterday under the fridge out, and then under the vacuum cleaner. He took the little Blighter outside and I took it away from the Jaws of death.
Back to the fun days of UK politics, so much pandemonium for the original £5m donation, so actually love that a donor has said “that’s not enough, reform need more money” so the establishment are even more up in arms about these donations from shady rich people using tech they don’t like…….. now if it can be kept above board, maybe this is just a signal the rich people are beginning to “take up arms” to fight for the soul of our country (because they would like it if we couldn’t control out money let along have actual weaponry to defend our liberty). BBC and liberal lefty elites in disbelief!!!!
After my ongoing dealings with HMRC, feeling that viewing such a donation compared to having my money forcibly removed from me would be a better use of my money…….. we cannot complain about our country being raped (in so very many ways) if we don’t do something about it. The HMRC and the Labour government are an organised crime syndicate…….. prove me wrong!!!
#coffeechain mousehunt kinda morning!!! https://blossom.primal.net/a8d05016282a7f28f7e8be820de66f8ffb851add7cb2d64b965dd4025b132173.jpg https://blossom.primal.net/98241008583301af7c9d5c5769a3356a03063ec0197146b4705b998c5ee28b66.jpg
Gm nostriches, happy Saturday, went downstairs and greeted with the cats having got the mouse that spent yesterday under the fridge out, and then under the vacuum cleaner. He took the little Blighter outside and I took it away from the Jaws of death.
Back to the fun days of UK p
It's kinda crazy that the nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8 feed has more self signed apps than not. Nostriches are shipping hard.
Get lost scammer. nostr:npub1x82yuyvukj77f92z8g394mpy0pzzf9jl00ftz78a0a48q6dx9k9srqqpjf nostr:nevent1qqs03j5adh3q64kl2n5re2hegtqv3dnxcaeuryu5rdsp86twdl6qerg08kttz
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It took a little while, but finally here is the audio book of The Praxeology of Privacy. 15 hours of economic reasoning and cypherpunk implementation, read by yours truly, available for free on Nostr.
It took a little while, but finally here is the audio book of The Praxeology of Privacy. 15 hours of economic reasoning and cypherpunk implementation, read by yours truly, available for free on Nostr.
https://relay.towardsliberty.com/9bc667e1e9dc125c4e7d6c513e7d8570501bc7b9d4231
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Can Red-Light Therapy Treat Brain Injuries?
The Athletic reports that researchers at the University of Utah are studying itPBM, a medical-grade red-light therapy that has shown promising signs of reducing brain inflammation and improving cognition, mood, anxiety, motor performance and neural connectivity. The report centers in part on former BYU football star and University of Utah adjunct professor Larry Carr, who says the treatment helped him after years of brain damage from repeated head impacts. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: ... The knife, the call, the diagnosis in 2013, would lead [Carr] on a life-changing mission -- one in which he and a team of researchers at the University of Utah would eventually compile research that one of those researchers, Elisabeth Wilde, Ph.D, co-director of the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Concussion Center, calls "striking." The treatment they are studying is called photobiomodulation therapy, or itPBM (intranasal transcranial PBM), also known as red-light therapy. It is different from the kind of superficial red-light usage one can find on social media skincare channels or at a wellness boutique, and its application is broader.
The research includes multiple studies, and is not just focused on ex-football players, but on women and men in various walks of life. The group recently published their latest results in the Journal of Neurotrauma, based on a study that followed 26 BYU football players throughout a season, suggesting the treatment could "potentially safeguard neurological health without reduced playing time or contact exposure."
Definitive clinical trials haven't been run yet; broader research and validation is required, and some in the field are skeptical. Carr acknowledges some have told him that it could be "too good to be true." Still, other outside experts who spoke with The Athletic call the findings promising. They make sure to caution: This is not a cure-all, and there is much more to be tested. But the findings have been compelling enough to justify more research and more speculation. Researchers say 14 peer-reviewed studies have linked itPBM with improvements in cognition, mood, anxiety, attention, executive function, motor performance, and other measures, while brain imaging has shown reduced inflammation and improved connectivity.
One of the most striking findings mentioned in the report came from a study of 26 BYU football players during the 2021 season. Players who did not receive treatment developed significant, widespread brain inflammation, while the treated group showed no comparable increase and even demonstrated reduced inflammation in some brain regions. As researcher Michael Carr put it, "I believe our BYU data suggests the players' brains using itPBM are actually healthier after the season." He added: "That is a first."
Carr also said treated participants showed fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and PTSD, along with faster processing, better sustained attention and stronger executive function. Researchers have also observed improvements in balance, motor control and grip strength. Taken together, the findings suggest itPBM may have a neuroprotective effect.
Can Red-Light Therapy Treat Brain Injuries?
The Athletic reports that researchers at the University of Utah are studying itPBM, a medical-grade red-light therapy that has shown promising signs of reducing brain inflammation and improving cognition, mood, anxiety, motor performan
Some high tech problems require low tech solutions 😆 https://media.21media.to/1cb73288b3fe0a230e61ee43654e304cd0275c693f4db3a42ffd2284af80b6c1.jpg
Google no longer provides direct URLs in search results
Link: https://www.autom.dev/blog/google-search-goto-links Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668386
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Germany's Got Talent. How do we get it to work on AI safety?
Summary
I interviewed 14 people working full-time in AI safety who came through the German ecosystem to find out how they got in and what would help others to do the same.
A couple of patterns emerged:
- 12 out of the 14 interviewees entered via an EA channel; this shouldn't be read as "most people in AI safety are EAs," but it does suggest the on-ramp works.
- At least 7 of 14 did a self-directed project before they got a paid position. Most people in the field don’t have a 10-year track record, so agentic work is the signal hiring managers are looking for.
- One interviewee estimates 50 to 80% of roles are filled through personal networks, so any work that is not visible to anyone inside the community won’t get you hired.
- What nearly stopped people were rejections and not knowing what to do next. The usual advice at that point is to build context and to do something agentic, which is much harder to get right without someone senior directing you to opportunities that are worth your time.
- Almost every programme my interviewees did to gain context or skills required repeated or extended travel. This filters for people who can afford unpaid time and have no caring responsibilities.
Epistemic status
I spent 8 weeks interviewing 14 people working full-time in AI safety, about how they got there and what it would take to get more outstanding people living in Germany working on it too. Interviewees worked in different areas and at every seniority level. They have either lived here for a long time, were born here, or moved to Germany for a degree.
Interview questions differed since a technical researcher probably can't usefully answer questions about hiring or talent-pool strategy. Alongside the interviews, I read https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a-p6s753NU68-NKJdGppZT2H-P369MJB2RdeZy3bp_g/edit?tab=t.0 on talent pipelines, talked to fieldbuilders at a retreat, and spoke with hiring managers from career transition programs and research fellowships.
What follows are patterns that often came up unprompted and went uncontradicted by anyone else I spoke with. To protect interviewees' anonymity, I won't say more about who they are.
I'm treating the patterns below as hypotheses about a young field, observed through a German sample, not as settled facts about Germany specifically.
Methodology
Germany has the https://www.interface-eu.org/publications/germany-case-study, roughly double the next largest, and ranks fifth globally in absolute numbers. It is not, however, a hub for AI safety orgs and, to my knowledge, has no national fellowship or incubator, besides https://safeaigermany.org/incubator. Despite this, people who came through the German ecosystem are contributing at the highest level right now. So I set out to learn what we can take from their paths to help others repeat what worked and avoid what didn't.
During my interviews, I got pushback on this method, because those paths happened at least two or three years ago and may not be reproducible today. One interviewee entered when the field had been small for roughly a decade. She grew into her role because her organisation had more work than people, and she got noticed because she had volunteered within the community before. She noted that if the number of applicants was as large as it is now, she wouldn’t have been able to have her career.
My goal isn't to give instructions on how to reproduce those paths exactly, but to gather ideas for better on-ramps. I think the people I interviewed are well placed to provide those, because they know what actually moved them forward, and several of them now decide about who gets hired.
What do the people I interviewed have in common?
The EA Funnel
Twelve of my fourteen interviewees entered the AI safety space through EA channels:https://80000hours.org/career-guide/,https://www.effectivealtruism.org/courses/introductory-program orhttps://www.effectivealtruism.org/courses/the-precipice-reading-group, anhttps://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global/events/eagxberlin-2026, or a local group. Those were often the first contact, and my interviewees then went on to do ML4Good, ERA, GCP or a Talos fellowship.
Since my sample came mostly from a list of BlueDot alumni, and BlueDot is itself an EA-adjacent on-ramp, this number is not surprising, and it shouldn't be read as "most people that work on AI safety are EAs". That is not what I captured. What I think it does tell us is that this on-ramp works.
One interviewee told me that the AI safety community largely hires people they know and trust. Building trust means understanding the context, which https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b82SLXwEHRCs3TFJA/why-experienced-professionals-fail-to-land-high-impact-rolesdescribes as knowing the organisations, concepts, people, and culture. Much of that is picked up at EAGx events, or by reading and writing on the EA Forum.
Demonstrated agency
At least seven of the fourteen have a clear pattern of self-directed work preceding paid work. Rather than applying for jobs, they approached people or organisations directly. They volunteered until paid work followed, offered to build something an organisation needed, started a local initiative, or organised an event.
One of them made an early bet on a research direction most people weren't yet taking seriously, then made a point of getting to know the person most associated with it. When a mentorship opportunity came up much later, he was the one who got remembered. As he put it: "From my CV, it looks like this happened by chance. But there was a lot of work before I even started."
Why does demonstrating that you can do something without being told matter so much in this field?
A few reasons: it demonstrates real interest, since people don't build or do something unpaid unless they actually care about the outcome; it demonstrates alignment, since what someone chooses to work on reveals whether their priorities match the field's actual goals; it demonstrates skill, since the result, however small, is real evidence of competence; and it demonstrates that you won't need much managing to begin with.
One interviewee estimates that roughly 2,000 to 3,000 full-time AI safety roles currently exist globally, against many thousands of aspirants, with many fellowships accepting below 3%. In an established field, that filtering is done by credentials. In AI safety, only very few people have a ten-year track record, so the strongest signal is a https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic that sets the candidate apart.
Who gets noticed, and who doesn't
Agency only leads to opportunities if it is visible to the AI safety or EA community. With one interviewee estimating that 50–80% of roles are filled through personal networks, many talented individuals are overlooked simply because their work never reaches those already in the field.
Some backgrounds seem to be really common among EAs. One interviewee ran an internal analysis at EA Germany and found that around 20% of the people in his sample who ended up in impactful careers had come through Studienstiftung, against roughly 0.5% of German students who receive it. He also named maths olympiad participants and Germans who studied at Oxford/Cambridge or at an Ivy League school as common backgrounds among EAs.
So someone who studied at a German university without a student group and never encountered EA might also miss the AI safety community completely, even though they might be able to contribute.
What nearly made interviewees quit
Most people who try to get a full-time position in AI safety have quit, or not succeeded yet. To find out what we can do to help people in Germany, I asked every interviewee what they were missing when they got started.
The most common struggles were rejections from fellowships, jobs or grants, and not knowing what they could have done differently or should do next (this seems to be improving, and fellowships are adding more resources and next steps to their rejection emails).
At that point, the usual advice is to build more context, skills, and to find an opportunity to contribute agentically. I think that advice is much harder to get right than it might sound.
Knowing which opportunity is worth your time
I noticed this during my time at SAIGE: I would spend hours researching opportunities and applying to projects, then talk to my mentor or another senior person, and be told I was looking at the wrong thing or would be much better off doing X instead. So a 10-minute conversation saved me months of doing something that probably wouldn't be the best use of my time. People without that access are doing the same work without the correction.
Networking in Germany
Finding a mentor, or opportunities, works best in person. 10 of my interviewees named gaps such as missing coworking spaces, retreats, and the high-energy formats that exist in the US and UK, but not in Germany. Without them, the field here is hard to scale. One interviewee said many people would rather work in Europe and don't, purely for the lack of an encouraging environment.
Building context means leaving Germany
Gaining context currently means going somewhere else. Almost every programme or event my interviewees named happens outside of Germany, and often requires travelling repeatedly or for extended periods of time.
Who this filters for
This filters for people who can afford unpaid time off and have no caring responsibilities, which is part of why the field looks the way it does. It skews heavily male, particularly on the technical side, where one interviewee estimated that some fellowships and the organisations running them are around 95% male.
Contributing from Germany
Most of my interviewees have left Germany to work on AI safety full-time. This section is about what the ones who stayed are doing, or did. Several of these paths were taken by people who have since moved away.
Working remotely
One interviewee's read of the job boards was that around 80% of roles are in person, and mostly in the Bay Area or London. That makes remote roles competitive, and also the main way to get a full-time role while living in Germany.
Another interviewee shared his experience working remotely. He was offered a contractor role because his employer was “scared of German employment law”. He then spent about a year at one organisation on rolling three-month contracts, and eventually left Munich partly because "nobody rents a flat to someone on short-term contracts".
This is one account from someone who now has a full-time position, and it should not be a reason to rule out this path.
Founding
One interviewee told me that she went to an EAGx conference, did 23 one-on-one meetings in a weekend, and people shared their successful funding proposals, their own strategies, and their failure modes with her.
She then founded an organisation and ran it on her own savings for months. Her first funding application was rejected, which she called entirely understandable, because there was no track record yet.
Another thing that came up independently in three interviewees was that there is no shared sense of what Germany is trying to build, or what its impact can be. I suspect that makes it harder to decide what to found here in the first place.
Germany's existing institutions
One interviewee made the point that the German government already has institutions working on things close to AI safety, and that he would like to see far more people working there. Since I spoke to him, Germany has founded its AISI, which will presumably absorb some talent.
A second interviewee reached a similar conclusion: rather than competing for one of the very few seats at the best-known orgs or think tanks, he took a role at an organisation with real industry access. Before he and his colleagues arrived, it had almost no connection to the AGI-serious policy world. It does now.
Recommendations
I think the EA channels demonstrably work. Alongside them, we should tap into the pools we are not reaching yet, and build on-ramps for the people who are already asking versions of this community's questions, but won’t find EA by themselves.
Who we are not reaching
Germany has around https://www.interface-eu.org/publications/germany-case-study, counting everyone from AI-literate people in adjacent roles through to researchers building deep learning systems. Not all of them could or should work on AI safety. But the gap between people working “in AI” and the people working on making it safe is hard to miss.
Interviewees described trying to reach people by showing them articles, which led them to conclude it was all exaggerated; students who decided the frontier labs just have good marketing, and one person who said people around him think he is one of the crazy ones. One interviewee's account of the field's own norms and narratives was that it quickly becomes a bit cult-like, and she does not know how long the field can sustain that if it wants to grow.
I think to solve this, we should prepare some arguments beyond short timelines and doom. One interviewee described her motivation as the appeal of a field young enough that you can reach the frontier quickly and become one of the few people in the world who contribute to a narrow piece of it.
I think the same is true for other groups worried about related questions, for example around data centres, sovereignty or surveillance. Their concerns are not identical to this community's, but they overlap.
What we can provide
BlueDot's courses are where we send career transitioners and people showing early interest. They finish, and often cannot get into a fellowship right away, because they have no relevant, hands-on experience. The advice at that point is to do a self-directed project with short feedback loops, which is much harder to get right without a mentor or a community.
What I think would help is a lightweight accountability structure for those kinds of projects, with someone who checks in on the progress, gives feedback early enough so nobody spends months on something irrelevant, and reassures them when their efforts are on track.
If you think this is a good idea, or if it already exists somewhere, let me know.
How to start (simplified)
https://thatvastvariety.substack.com/p/your-goal-isnt-really-to-get-a-job Work out which skills actually matter by reading job postings for roles you are not yet qualified for. Then try to gain those skills through https://probablygood.org/resources/courses/ or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F2uYLP3zL5XFjR7A7NRuiUnPa0q4eFqJIxgRTio-1yk/edit?gid=0#gid=0 with https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/ho63vCb2MNFijinzY/agi-safety-career-advice.
Work in public, where hiring managers can see you.
Look wider than the ten aligned organisations; for example, at industry associations, ministries, and the federal institutes.
Objections
Isn't this whole piece biased by survivors?
Yes, I interviewed people who made it in, so I can’t confirm that what they have in common accounts for successful entry.
Building agency, context, and skill is, however, what hiring managers have told me they are looking for in applicants.
Wouldn't reaching out to untapped talent pools dilute the quality of applicants?
I’m not proposing mass outreach or encouraging people to randomly apply to fellowships. I’m suggesting building narratives for specific talent pools to get the best applicants possible from each talent pool.
Final thoughts
Germany already has outstanding people. Most of them are not working on this yet.
If you want to change this, consider field-building as your career. You might findhttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rAqKSSXankvys2Fzu/the-case-for-ai-safety-capacity-building-work,https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/k3nq7FxBCsrNFmAYi/ai-safety-s-biggest-talent-gap-isn-t-researchers-it-s-2, ahttps://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sH4cFDDjRdGrn3p2o/a-reading-list-for-generalists, and 80,000 Hours'https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-safety-fieldbuilding/ interesting.
Also, if you think I got things wrong, mailto:melanie.schmidfalter@gmail.com.
Thanks to Tilman Räuker for your patience while mentoring me through the process, to the SAIGE team for assigning me this project, and to everybody who took the time to answer my questions.
Crossposted on the EA Forum.
Germany's Got Talent. How do we get it to work on AI safety?
Summary
I interviewed 14 people working full-time in AI safety who came through the German ecosystem to find out how they got in and what would help others to do the same.
A couple of patterns emerged:
- 12 out of
"Truth happens. We will succeed. Don't wait around for others to take action. We must dive head first without regard for consequences, and break the inertia of passivity."
— Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013)
#resistance #freedom
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Still trying to figure out what to do with this app I made that takes real time video and overlays with instant ai audio chat. It’s very cool but a bit useless. Ai GF seems like the obvious pivot but I don’t want to get into that business 😂 and it’s too expensive to use - the video avatars are just too pricey for a consumer product. One possibility is coaching but even that is not really worth it with video…
I do want to connect it to some smart glasses though but don’t want to wear them 😔
Maybe just leave it as a toy or ship as is - a general toy? Not sure…
Still trying to figure out what to do with this app I made that takes real time video and overlays with instant ai audio chat. It’s very cool but a bit useless. Ai GF seems like the obvious pivot but I don’t want to get into that business 😂 and it’s too expensive to use - the vid
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I made an ai persona and ad generation platform (video).
Started out as a little tool to solve my own problem, propelled by curiosity more than anything but now a full fledged SaaS. No monthly subscriptions, just pay as you go credit pricing.
Excited to test it out at scale! Still need to figure out video generation at scale, currently kinda slow 1 by 1
I made an ai persona and ad generation platform (video).
Started out as a little tool to solve my own problem, propelled by curiosity more than anything but now a full fledged SaaS. No monthly subscriptions, just pay as you go credit pricing.
Excited to test it out at scale!
Double-edge sword type of feature, instant lack of plausible deniability
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We've had a lot of these bots over the years. Most seem to last a few weeks or months. Let's see if this new one can stick around for a while. nostr:nevent1qqs8t7t77n4efz8g8h9yjl5htuh29q764f4nlekkn95wzyj3tj88tlqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygzdwq8wkfr46fdff4jszxuf0em05clhrymq7xdhg6c9ftfej303wcpsgqqqqqqs9284aj
We've had a lot of these bots over the years. Most seem to last a few weeks or months. Let's see if this new one can stick around for a while. nostr:nevent1qqs8t7t77n4efz8g8h9yjl5htuh29q764f4nlekkn95wzyj3tj88tlqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygzdwq8wkfr46fdff4jszxuf0em05cl