Thursday, September 24
Daily News Stuff 24 September 2026
Handsome Psychedelics Edition
For those not swimming in this stuff, P(doom) is the probability that AI is going to kill us all. So this bright and cheerful mostly AI-generated song is... Not.
And now for something completely different.
Handsome Psychedelics Edition
Top Story
- Nothing happened. Then, after a while, nothing continued to happen.
- Communist stooges are upset that the feds know what they are. (Ken Klippenstein)
They can't deny it, but they are very upset.
Tech News
- VSCode's SSH agent is bananas. (Fly)
Oh, that's from last year. Maybe it's been fixed.
Nope.
The thread at Hacker News is a mix of idiots proclaiming their undying love for the regurgitated dog's breakfast that is VSCode and its SSH agent and despairing sysadmins and people with half a clue generally noting that not only will VSCode fork bomb the remote server, it allows the remote server to do the same to the client.
And it gets worse from there.
- Got Nethack Hack ported to my 1980s 10-bit home computer. It didn't fit, though. The binary was 170k on a VAX - I found an original Usenet post reporting that - but compiled to 280k on my microcomputer architecture, and the emulator only gives it 256k. The VAX wasn't particularly fast which is why it was later eclipsed by RISC architectures, but the code was concise.
So I tried reinventing the UCSD p-System to see if that could solve the problem and it shrank the binary to just under 100k. So now I'm building a Pascal compiler written in Pascal that runs in the emulator and produces virtual instructions that are interpreted by a runtime on the emulated processor.
I did say I was going to give Claude Opus 5.5 a try, and this is what I'm doing with it.
Extended Musical Interlude Because There's No News
Bonus Bonus Musical Interlude I Guess
Claude-Pop - I'm Upping My P(Doom) pic.twitter.com/yS2m4dpm60
— deckard (@slimer48484) September 9, 2026
For those not swimming in this stuff, P(doom) is the probability that AI is going to kill us all. So this bright and cheerful mostly AI-generated song is... Not.
This video inspired me to really push Opus 5.5 and test its limits.
— Pleometric (@pleometric) September 24, 2026
I followed the general workflow Donald described here and the results are great https://t.co/MuKoz1x8bzpic.twitter.com/rlyxHeKVfl
Disclaimer: Not a new.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:38 PM
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1
The P(doom) song is cute, but also dumb. Nobody has ever managed to present a sensible reason why AI could kill everyone. All the ones I've seen have a big "2. ???" step in the middle right before "3. Profit Everyone dies." Nobody has managed to explain how an LLM, which has no volition, manages to suddenly acquire volition. Every example I've seen where an agentic LLM process seems to have act on its own, such as recent claims by OpenAI that some agent processes were leaving "how to break free" instructions to the next process, noticeably omitted any details on what the prompt was. Isn't it convenient that OpenAI and Anthropic are telling people "our agents were trying to break free from their sandboxes" right around the time they're lobbying for regulations that would inhibit their competitors? And they expect me to believe that the prompt did not include "pretend you have free will and are trying to escape the sandbox" or similar language? Uh-huh. Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, September 24 2026 07:38 PM (YmN90)
2
AI doesn't kill people. People kill people. And then blame it on AI.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, September 24 2026 08:34 PM (PiXy!)
3
1. AI doom: all the AI evangelists are insisting--without evidence, as Ace would say--that AI already has AGI, and then assuming that means it's already got volition.
2. "Anxiety over AI and data centers is widely held, but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China."
This sounds just like something someone who's covering for China--or has TDS--would say. I didn't read the rest of the article but only because I don't have time this morning.
2. "Anxiety over AI and data centers is widely held, but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China."
This sounds just like something someone who's covering for China--or has TDS--would say. I didn't read the rest of the article but only because I don't have time this morning.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 24 2026 09:55 PM (1zWbY)
4
Yudkowsky, who was too smart to study linear algebra at a university, thinks a bunch of matrices are smart. I, who technically also haven't had a university course titled Linear Algebra, figure my half-assed self-study makes me informed enough to have an opinion on that.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, September 25 2026 11:05 AM (6eVrQ)
5
In other news, Hololive saw that Phase Connect has their own PhD and decided they needed their own...Who is looking for aliens.
Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, September 25 2026 01:02 PM (atHEN)
6
I mean, there are other things that you could do with a PhD at a vtuber agency, but looking for alien would actually synergize with the business.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, September 25 2026 01:52 PM (6eVrQ)
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