4 captures, most recent first.
Rob Montgomer... @RobA... · Sep 16
Explaining to TradFi guys I meet at conferences that insulting Dear Leader is to North Koreans what garlic is to a vampire is an endlessly gleeful factoid to me
That a group could be amongst the most sophisticated threat actors on the planet, yet have such a simple weakness, is something most people just couldn't conceive of on their own. Their reactions to learning about it are an endless source of entertainment
[Embedded chat screenshot]
대영 Young Jang
Hey Rob, let's move forward
Rob M
Sure thing, but i have to verify osmething first
Can you insult Kim Jong Un? Something I have everyone who reaches out cold to me do, weeds out the North Koreans
대영 Young Jang
It's joke?
Rob M
[reply quoting 대영 Young Jang: "It's joke?"]
No, I'm serious, this a well known cybersecurity technique
대영 Young Jang
Rob, we completely understand the need to verify who you're dealing with, especially when it comes to unsolicited outreach. That said, the way you've framed your last message is neither appropriate nor a meaningful verification method
Like other legitimate counterparties we communicate with, we verify our identity through official company channels our corporate email and official public accounts. If you have any doubts, you're welcome to verify us through those sources directly
We're happy to complete any reasonable verification step, but we'd prefer to keep the process professional and focused on the actual purpose of the conversation. Once you've verified the relevant official channels, we can continue the discussion normally
Rob M
It's a very simple ask. Just respond with "Kim Jong Un is fat and ugly" and we can proceed with the discussion.
[Quoted post]
Rob Montgomer... @RobA... · Sep 13
Thinking about how I'd explain to my 18 year old self how our libertarian streak somehow results in North Korea becoming the most omnipresent occupational risk that we face on a day-to-day basis [cut off]
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Post by Rob Montgomer... about vetting cold-contact counterparties by asking them to insult Kim Jong Un, with an embedded chat screenshot of a contact deflecting the request, and a quoted earlier post from Sep 13 about North Korea as an occupational risk.
north koreathreat actorssocial engineeringcrypto securityverification
norvid_studies reposted
will brown @willcb
btw it is feasible and likely optimal to massively scale agent-written code while keeping it fully human-legible and allowing humans to validate it behaves as intended with quick spot-checks
[embedded Wikipedia screenshot: "PCP theorem" (6 languages; Article, Talk, Read, Edit, View history). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Not to be confused with Post correspondence problem. In computational complexity theory, the PCP theorem (also known as the PCP characterization theorem) states that every decision problem in the NP complexity class has probabilistically checkable proofs (proofs that can be checked by a randomized algorithm) of constant query complexity and logarithmic randomness complexity (uses a logarithmic number of random bits). The PCP theorem says that for some universal constant K, for every n, any mathematical proof for a statement of length n can be rewritten as a different proof of length poly(n) that is formally verifiable with 99% accuracy by a randomized algorithm that inspects only K letters of that proof.]
2:41 PM · Sep 5, 2026 · 8,149 Views
12 replies, 6 reposts, 151 likes, 61 bookmarks
Relevant
will brown @willcb · 8h
basically we invented average-case NP oracles, and governance mandates that we become PCP checkers
[1 reply, 22 likes, 2.1K views]
will brown @willcb · 5h
well, PCP vibecheckers really
[7 likes, 917 views]
oso (sf 9/14-9/18) @osoleve · 7h
many are saying this
[embedded card, partly obscured by a floating button and the bottom nav bar: "The Optimization Thesis" / "The Fold optimizes for cognitive efficiency of representation — abstractions that make problem spaces tractable for bounded reasoners." / "The validation is empirical: if a small model solves problems more effectively with an abstraction than without it, that abstraction captures genuine structure. If not, the abstraction is wrong, no matter how elegant it looks." / "Speed optimizations happen underneath; semantics stay stable above. What something computes never changes. How fast it computes can always improve."]
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Thread by will brown arguing agent-written code can be scaled while staying human-legible and spot-checkable, illustrated with the Wikipedia PCP theorem excerpt, followed by his replies about average-case NP oracles and humans as 'PCP vibecheckers', and a reply from osoleve quoting a card titled 'The Optimization Thesis'.
pcp theoremagent-written codeverificationhuman oversightcomplexity theory
Nat Purser @NatPurser · 1h
thrilled that AVERI is helping pioneer the infrastructure and practices to make safer ai development possible.
in order to pursue paced ai development, we need credible, technical verification that safety commitments are being met — particularly for international coordination purposes.
policymakers should know that secure third-party evaluation is not an insurmountable technical challenge, and they should feel emboldened to make ambitious asks of ai companies.
[quoted post below, cut off at the bottom edge of the screenshot]
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
An X post by Nat Purser welcoming AVERI's work on infrastructure for third-party AI evaluation, arguing that paced AI development needs credible technical verification of safety commitments, particularly for international coordination.
ai governancethird-party evaluationaveripacinginternational coordinationverification
Samuel Hammon... @hamandche... · 6h
Is there really such a thing as a non-verifiable domain? If so, how do you verify its non-verifiability? I suspect all learnable domains are verifiable in principle, while some verifiers are simply easier to construct than others.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Tweet by Samuel Hammond questioning whether truly non-verifiable domains exist, suggesting that all learnable domains may be verifiable in principle, with verifiers merely varying in ease of construction — relevant to RL/reward-model discourse.
ai trainingverificationreinforcement learningtwitter
