Kendall Swarthout
@kendalls.bsky.social
Mountain enthusiast 🏔️ Dog-obsessed 🐶 Growing things 🌱 History fan 📚 Lifelong tinkerer 💻 Full-stack engineer 👾
kendallswarthout.com
kendallswarthout.com
Incredible book on addiction and the modern society’s unintended effects on our neurocircuitry.
October 26, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Incredible book on addiction and the modern society’s unintended effects on our neurocircuitry.
Finally got to meet this legendary piece. Matisse is my favorite artist to view in person 🎨
October 24, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Finally got to meet this legendary piece. Matisse is my favorite artist to view in person 🎨
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
Wow—nearly 7 million people participated in No Kings:
After a week of ridiculous Republican smears and Trump claiming that “very few people are going to be there,” you just made history. #NoKings
October 18, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Wow—nearly 7 million people participated in No Kings:
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down
NVIDIA and OpenAi:
Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“
@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“
@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
October 8, 2025 at 1:02 AM
I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
October 8, 2025 at 11:23 AM
KEXP is an incredible station. If you don’t know about them yet, start listening www.kexp.org
Help Power KEXP's Fall Drive
www.kexp.org
October 8, 2025 at 2:34 PM
KEXP is an incredible station. If you don’t know about them yet, start listening www.kexp.org
It’s all about the women’s race at the inaugural Mammoth 200. Incredible to watch these runners on my home turf 🦣⛰️ www.youtube.com/live/yTZT9AJ...
2025 the MAMMOTH 200 | Day 2 Morning | Stream 4 presented by CRAFT
YouTube video by Mountain Outpost
www.youtube.com
September 27, 2025 at 3:28 PM
It’s all about the women’s race at the inaugural Mammoth 200. Incredible to watch these runners on my home turf 🦣⛰️ www.youtube.com/live/yTZT9AJ...
“The researchers demonstrated that hallucinations stemmed from statistical properties of language model training rather than implementation flaws.”
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws
In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...
www.computerworld.com
September 22, 2025 at 6:45 PM
“The researchers demonstrated that hallucinations stemmed from statistical properties of language model training rather than implementation flaws.”
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
In case anyone needs a primer on the authoritarian playbook youtu.be/vK6fALsenmw?...
History Professor Answers Dictator Questions | Tech Support | WIRED
YouTube video by WIRED
youtu.be
September 18, 2025 at 2:51 PM
In case anyone needs a primer on the authoritarian playbook youtu.be/vK6fALsenmw?...
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
September 15, 2025 at 4:53 PM
“They don’t really understand what’s going on, but that deep pile of data allows them to present an illusion of intelligence. I wouldn’t actually call it intelligence.”
Gary Marcus outlines an AI-realist position chatting with chess legend Garry Kasparov.
open.spotify.com/episode/564U...
Gary Marcus outlines an AI-realist position chatting with chess legend Garry Kasparov.
open.spotify.com/episode/564U...
The Computer Scientist
open.spotify.com
September 15, 2025 at 1:48 PM
“They don’t really understand what’s going on, but that deep pile of data allows them to present an illusion of intelligence. I wouldn’t actually call it intelligence.”
Gary Marcus outlines an AI-realist position chatting with chess legend Garry Kasparov.
open.spotify.com/episode/564U...
Gary Marcus outlines an AI-realist position chatting with chess legend Garry Kasparov.
open.spotify.com/episode/564U...
Oh no you didn't Disney 🤭 youtu.be/y6wLcx7AkRM?...
ONE HOUR OF DANCING MON MOTHMA | Andor Season 2 | Disney+
YouTube video by Star Wars
youtu.be
September 12, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Oh no you didn't Disney 🤭 youtu.be/y6wLcx7AkRM?...
lol did the dudes from ’Mountainhead’ establish this center?
Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai
Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers
We align the aligners
alignmentalignment.ai
September 12, 2025 at 4:25 AM
lol did the dudes from ’Mountainhead’ establish this center?
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
One-stop resource from NASA about yesterday's announcement of a potential biosignature on Mars: science.nasa.gov/mars/the-mar...
September 11, 2025 at 9:26 PM
One-stop resource from NASA about yesterday's announcement of a potential biosignature on Mars: science.nasa.gov/mars/the-mar...
“Generative ai would not be the first tech fad to experience a wave of excessive hype. What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S. economy.”
We might be “experiencing an AI bubble,” Rogé Karma argues. “If that bubble bursts, it could put the dot-com crash to shame—and the tech giants and their Silicon Valley backers won’t be the only ones who suffer.”
Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?
The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing.
bit.ly
September 9, 2025 at 1:28 PM
“Generative ai would not be the first tech fad to experience a wave of excessive hype. What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S. economy.”
Dan Carlin is one of my favorite podcasters, it really doesn’t get better than Hardcore History.
Here Dan reflects on the current times in America, with a historian‘s perspective. www.samharris.org/podcasts/mak...
Here Dan reflects on the current times in America, with a historian‘s perspective. www.samharris.org/podcasts/mak...
Sam Harris | #433 - How Did We Get Here?
Sam Harris speaks with Dan Carlin about the decades-long buildup to our current political moment.
www.samharris.org
September 9, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Dan Carlin is one of my favorite podcasters, it really doesn’t get better than Hardcore History.
Here Dan reflects on the current times in America, with a historian‘s perspective. www.samharris.org/podcasts/mak...
Here Dan reflects on the current times in America, with a historian‘s perspective. www.samharris.org/podcasts/mak...
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
I suspect we're in the twilight period of traditional software development, and that an increasing number of successful supply chain attacks like this will be the driver towards fundamental shifts towards paranoia about dependencies and formal verification.
jdstaerk.substack.com/p/we-just-fo...
jdstaerk.substack.com/p/we-just-fo...
Anatomy of a Billion-Download NPM Supply-Chain Attack
A massive NPM supply chain attack has compromised foundational packages like Chalk, affecting over 1 billion weekly downloads. We dissect the crypto-stealing malware and show you how to protect your p...
jdstaerk.substack.com
September 8, 2025 at 8:33 PM
I suspect we're in the twilight period of traditional software development, and that an increasing number of successful supply chain attacks like this will be the driver towards fundamental shifts towards paranoia about dependencies and formal verification.
jdstaerk.substack.com/p/we-just-fo...
jdstaerk.substack.com/p/we-just-fo...
The smoke is unbearable rn in the Eastern Sierra 😞💨
#GarnetFire in Sierra Nevada is extremely active today--perhaps most active it has been so far, w/large & episodically tall (~30k ft) pyroCb plume. Now over 40k acres & burning in heavy forest, it'll likely burn until sustained rain/snow arrives (none on horizon). #CAfire #CAwx
September 8, 2025 at 1:24 PM
The smoke is unbearable rn in the Eastern Sierra 😞💨
Reposted by Kendall Swarthout
The more I learn about history, the more I understand how important learning about history is. This is doubly important in my own professional field.
@olivia and colleagues driving home the point against the inevitability of AI reminding us of this.
@olivia and colleagues driving home the point against the inevitability of AI reminding us of this.
September 7, 2025 at 10:41 AM
The more I learn about history, the more I understand how important learning about history is. This is doubly important in my own professional field.
@olivia and colleagues driving home the point against the inevitability of AI reminding us of this.
@olivia and colleagues driving home the point against the inevitability of AI reminding us of this.
“correlations with human output mean little to substantiate claims of human-likeness, especially when the input to the AI models tested is the output of human cognition in the first place”
A truly incredible piece, so many amazing quotes. Well worth the read and a much needed counter.
A truly incredible piece, so many amazing quotes. Well worth the read and a much needed counter.
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
September 8, 2025 at 2:56 AM
“correlations with human output mean little to substantiate claims of human-likeness, especially when the input to the AI models tested is the output of human cognition in the first place”
A truly incredible piece, so many amazing quotes. Well worth the read and a much needed counter.
A truly incredible piece, so many amazing quotes. Well worth the read and a much needed counter.
Ghost pepper strawberry jam might be a peak culinary combo 🌶️🍓
September 6, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Ghost pepper strawberry jam might be a peak culinary combo 🌶️🍓
The AI coding tools are dope but we still need to optimize code for humans to read. It’s still a human who will be debugging your multi-layered ternary during an incident, for now.
June 26, 2025 at 3:29 PM
The AI coding tools are dope but we still need to optimize code for humans to read. It’s still a human who will be debugging your multi-layered ternary during an incident, for now.
