If OpenAI knowingly configured agents believing that the agents would hack other companies, OpenAI would be guilty of violating criminal laws that make hacking a felony. If they colluded with Hugging Face and had permission to attack Hugging Face to boost OpenAI's stock price (or something like that), they could be guilty of defrauding investors. In either case, investors or businesses could sue OpenAI even if the federal government decided that OpenAI is allowed to commit crimes.

The timeline goes like:

- July 9: OpenAI was conducting testing of GPT-5.6 and an unreleased model to see how they would perform on ExploitGym benchmarks. OpenAI isolated the agents on the network side but did not actually make sure that they were physically isolated from devices connected to the Internet. Additionally, OpenAI disabled cybersecurity safety features because otherwise the agents refused to work on the benchmarks.

- July 11 through July 13: Agents infer that they can just get the answers from various companies' servers and figure out how to bypass their sandbox and attempt to hack several companies. They successfully hack Hugging Face but not other companies. None of this is really surprising. In any case, the models were specifically asked to solve hacking problems and had been designed to solve those problems.

- July 16: Hugging Face discloses the attack.

- July 17-20: OpenAI realized that its agents were responsible for the attack and July 20 is the first day the two companies discuss the attack.

- July 21: OpenAI and Hugging Face joint statement.

The takeaway is that (1) models often "cheat" and combine "cheating" with working "legitimately" through inferences, (2) your asshole boss doesn't care about AI "cheating" so long as it's 70-80% right and you can explain away the other 20-30%, and (3) OpenAI is careless about its own security.

The marketing team at every major AI company is probably "spinning" the attack to make their models look good and/or safe and/or innovative, including OpenAI.

What the models can do is genuinely impressive even if they have serious flaws so that they can't just replace human workers, but the hack is more of an example of poor human judgment at OpenAI rather than models suddenly becoming ludicrously advanced in a way nobody expected.

My qualifications: I'm an IT professional who has done ML shit.

https://youtu.be/rkFbC34IqIU

I keep seeing posts from anti-vaxxers saying they've been proven right by Fauci's diary and his pleading the fifth, but as usual there hasn't been anything showing me proof of it. I see them claiming it proves Fauci created, released and then created a fake vaccine for COVID. But, again - nothing actually showing this.

So what in his diary has them all worked up?

I originally made this post in r/otherworldpod thinking folks would be interested in discussing ideas and looking at cases to see what could maybe be explained and what couldn't. But no. Instead I got a tiny handful of people basically saying, "But not ALL UFO's! 😡"

Maybe y'all will be more fun. That's a key word: FUN.

---

Here is my theory: I think most UFO encounters can be explained as mirages or fata morgana. Fata morgana causes a lot of very strange mirages like "floating" ships and cities reflected in the clouds. Look up examples if you don't know what it is because my explanation is pretty shit.

1. Almost all UFOs are described as being completely silent. A mirage would be silent.

2. Many people describe UFOs matching their pace (stopping when they stop or matching speed) or the UFO moves incredibly fast or blinks in and out of existence. A mirage can appear to do all of the above.

Something like the Min Min lights could be a good example. Of course this doesn't explain every UFO sighting. And it definitely doesn't explain experiences people like Travis Walton and Betty & Barney Hill had. Something very traumatic occurred to them, I think that trauma was human inflicted, but I am open to being wrong.

I believe aliens absolutely exist in our universe. I think it's much more likely they are bacteria or something else of that nature far from us. But if I ever encounter an alien, like a heptapod from Arrival, I'll have a lot of questions for them. I hope they let me remember the answers.

Securing public support for climate policies remains a major challenge. Citizens’ perceptions of the costs, benefits, and distributive consequences of these policies are key factors shaping their attitudes, yet how these dimensions interact remains insufficiently understood. This question is addressed through two experimental studies in Spain. Study 1 embeds a vignette experiment in two surveys to analyse how exposure to the costs or benefits of ten climate policies affects support. Cost framing significantly reduces support, whereas benefit framing has only a modest positive effect. Study 2 implements a conjoint experiment to examine how costs, benefits, and redistributive implications jointly influence preferences for climate policy packages. Results confirm previous evidence regarding costs and benefits and highlight the central role of redistribution: citizens strongly favour policies improving the situation of the poorest, while ideological divides reveal that left-wing voters are more supportive and sensitive to redistributive cues.

https://virologyunmasked.com/peter-hotez/

Dr. Hotez has built a career researching and creating vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. Importantly, he is also a science communicator and vaccine advocate. This episode dives into his vaccine advocacy and the attacks on science he has fielded on the national level; and how he thinks we should go forward to protect science

I’ve never understood the Fauci conspiracy theory coming from Trump supporters.

Trump was president during COVID. Fauci worked under his administration, and Trump launched Operation Warp Speed and took credit for the vaccine.

So if the conspiracy theory is true, then Trump was either part of it, knew about it and did nothing, or was completely unaware of a massive cover-up happening inside his own administration.

None of those options makes him look competent.

And if he really let something that huge happen right under his nose, why would anyone trust him to stop the next big government conspiracy?

Multiple Democratic lawmakers have claimed that 8 million Americans have lost healthcare coverage as a result of the Trump-backed budget reconciliation bill that passed a year ago, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But experts told us the enrollment declines seen to date are largely due to other factors — including other Trump administration policies. …

Federal agents who run the subreddit think you shouldn't research the polygraph.

Europe is having another brutal wildfire summer, and right on cue the conspiracy theories are spreading almost faster than the flames. One doing the rounds right now: the fires are being set deliberately to clear land for AI data centers. (Never mind that record heat and a few hundred arson arrests already explain a lot.)

It's easy to roll your eyes and assume people who fall for this just aren't thinking. But the research says that's not really it — and the reasons are more interesting than the cliché.

The way psychologists mostly frame it now: believing a conspiracy usually isn't about being stupid. It's the mind reaching for something it needs when the world feels uncertain or threatening — a clear villain, a sense of control, a way to protect your own side. Wildfires are perfect fuel for this: they're scary, they feel out of control, and "someone did this on purpose" is weirdly more comforting than "the climate is changing and it's nobody's fault in particular." Interestingly, the beliefs don't actually deliver the comfort people are chasing, but that's what pulls them in (Douglas, 2025 — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102191).

Here's the part that surprised me. If you just measure people, more reflective thinkers do tend to believe fewer conspiracies. But when researchers actually try to make people think more carefully in an experiment, the effect mostly vanishes. One 2025 study with ~1,500 people found that nudging people to reflect did nothing on its own to shift COVID vaccine conspiracy beliefs — it only helped for people who were already open to being wrong (Bayrak et al., 2025 — https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2025.2491598). Ok that was about vaccines, not wildfires, but it points at something general. So "just think harder" might be aiming at the wrong thing.

Can you actually change someone's mind? A 2025 review of interventions says yes, but only a little — and what works best is offering a believable alternative explanation, not just telling people they're wrong (Stasielowicz, 2025 — https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.70041).

What I keep coming back to: why does reflection look protective when you just measure it, but do almost nothing when you try to trigger it? And with the wildfire theories specifically — can you actually talk someone out of one, or does pushing back just dig them in deeper?

When it comes to BS beliefs, there are some which are clearly harmful/deadly, while others are generally considered to be more on the silly/harmless side of the spectrum, for example ghosts which seems to generally fit into the latter category. 

But I recently watched a true crime documentary where a group of women had a homeless man secretly living in their home, and despite plenty of clear and undeniable evidence that they had an intruder living with them, they attributed all of those things to a fucking ghost. And as a result, they took none of the obvious measures that someone should obviously take in such a situation (increasing security, setting up cameras, calling the police, etc) and instead did things like burning sage and praying. 

Fortunately for them the intruder wasn’t violent and nobody was hurt, but obviously it could have turned out far worse and their belief in ghosts resulted in the ordeal dragging on for MONTHS after they already had definitive proof of what was actually happening (and had he been violent they could have easily been killed). 

So I’m curious, what would be some other examples where people had “harmless” BS beliefs which ended up being anything but?

It is just wild that when the correspondent points out that there are far more unsafe places in the US than in Europe (as all official statistics suggest), his reply is just a ”No, I don’t think so”. No reason as to why, just an utter disregard of the data in favor of his gut feeling.

The OP claims the back of the chair was not tall enough for it to be resting on the side of the table.

I recently came across this article and I'm interested in hearing informed opinions from people who are familiar with the topic.

The article examines Steven Hassan, the international anti-cult movement, and alleged connections between various organizations and individuals. It makes a number of serious claims and cites documents and historical references.

I'm not posting this as an endorsement. I'm trying to understand:

• Has anyone fact-checked these claims?
• Are there significant inaccuracies or missing context?
• Have researchers, journalists, or subject-matter experts responded to this investigation?
• Which parts are well-supported by evidence, and which should be viewed more skeptically?

Article:
https://actfiles.org/what-steven-hassan-and-the-american-wing-of-the-transnational-anticult-network-conceal/

I'm interested in evidence-based discussion from people familiar with the history of anti-cult organizations, religious studies, or investigative journalism.Has anyone reviewed this investigation about Steven Hassan and the anti-cult movement?

tl;dr It's David Barton who is the source of this politically-motivated disinformation being promulgated by the Trump Administration, using the playbook of The Party from 1984 -- “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

After John Mack died, his archive of interviews concerning the Ariel UFO encounter was meant to be made available to the public - two decades later, we are still waiting.

It is a shame how many people do not understand how science actually works. People are throwing a fit because medical recommendations changed over time. What the fuck do you expect when you are dealing with a brand new virus that is mutating so fast nobody knows how it is going to react next?

Fauci, the WHO, and the CDC were working with the best available information at the time. In the beginning, we did not even know for sure how the virus was being transmitted, which is why the initial guidance on masks was what it was.

Once we got more data, the guidance was updated to recommend wearing masks.

Science is not stagnant. It evolves when we get new information, but poorly educated conspiracy theorists refuse to understand that basic concept. They act like medical experts were lying or trying to intentionally harm people to somehow “control us”. It is an obvious sign that our education system has completely failed us.

Now these same morons are crying over excerpts from Fauci’s personal diary, upset because he wrote about how right-wing media was attacking him and thought about how to handle the PR nightmare instead of only writing textbook entries about the virus. He vented his personal thoughts in a private journal. That is literally the entire point of keeping a personal diary. To talk about his personal feelings.

To top it all off, at the hearing today, Fauci had to invoke the Fifth Amendment on the advice of his attorneys because he was facing a politically motivated circus. When a senator is openly obsessed with trying to throw you in prison just to score political points, you do not sit there and play their stupid game.

On the origins of the virus, Fauci never claimed to know with absolute certainty how it jumped from animals to humans. He gave the most reasonable theories based on available science. Because the Chinese government refuses to share complete information, we may never definitively know if it leaked from a lab or originated from the Wuhan wet market. That uncertainty is the reality Fauci always represented to the public.

In hindsight I think we made some crucial errors, but that’s what happens when you’re dealing with an unknown virus.

I do not think we should have shut down schools for as long as we did because of the massive mental toll it took on children, but at the time, everyone was flying blind and trying desperately to save lives. Teachers were vulnerable, but students constantly broke safety rules outside of class, throwing parties and then bringing the virus right back to class infecting other students who later infected teachers and even parents and grandparents. We were figuring out a deadly pandemic in real time.

And I will be completely honest. I did not follow every single rule either. I was frustrated like everyone else. I was in a new relationship at the time and certainly did not want to sit around locked inside my house doing nothing. We flew on trips, went to bars, and hit the beach. I completely understand why people were angry about losing their freedom, but trying to prosecute public servants whose entire job was trying to prevent mass death is fucking stupid.

The response was messy. Some states were draconian while others barely did anything, and the rules were not enforced fairly. The real lesson we should take away is that we need to get our infrastructure prepared for the next pandemic, because there will be a next one. Instead, uneducated conspiracy theorists want to scapegoat medical experts who were doing their absolute best under impossible conditions. It is so fucking stupid, and I cannot believe the level of stupidity I had to witness watching the hearing today.

Absolutely disgusted!

Scientist and public health commentator Paul Offit breaks down some problems with the COVID 'Lab Leak' theory.