Archive for June 20, 2024

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Safe Superintelligence Inc.

Ilya Sutskever et al. (via Hacker News):

Building safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our​​ time.

We have started the world’s first straight-shot SSI lab, with one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence.

[…]

We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs. We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead.

[…]

Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.

I don’t really understand how they know whether what they are doing is “safe.” And currently, I think, people are more worried about what humans will do with AI—which they can’t control—not with what the AI will do by itself. But, I guess, good luck to them in outrunning the other companies who have less focus on safety.

Om Malik:

Daniel Gross, former AI lead at Apple, and researcher Daniel Levy are co-founders of the company.

[…]

What does “safe” mean when it comes to superintelligence? […] I have read fewer word that have more clarity.

Simon Sharwood:

Building an SSI “is our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap, because it is our sole focus. Our team, investors, and business model are all aligned to achieve SSI.”

Who are those investors? The page doesn’t indicate. Ditto the business model.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-10): Reuters (via Hacker News):

Safe Superintelligence (SSI), newly co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in cash to help develop safe artificial intelligence systems that far surpass human capabilities, company executives told Reuters.

SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire top talent.

Richard Speed:

Exactly what those resources will do remains unclear at this stage. SSI intends to build safe superintelligence, describing it as “the most important technical problem of our time.”

[…]

Some estimates put the value of SSI at $5 billion following the investment, although the company itself has not commented. It is, however, an eye-watering sum to be poured into a business that has been around for just a few months, with barely enough employees to fill a minibus.

Previously:

SuperDuper 3.9 Beta

Dave Nanian:

We’re happy to announce Beta 2 of SuperDuper! v3.9, our initial cut at a Sequoia compatible release.

[…]

SuperDuper v3.9 includes Dark Mode support, and banishes our old textured window to the land of shadows.

[…]

[W]e’ve turned on our ability to copy local Cloud files, while intelligently skipping the files and folders that have local “stubs”.

Previously:

Update (2024-07-05): Dave Nanian:

We’ve noticed that, on occasion, “dataless” cloud files and folder proxies can get into strange states on the backup where, quite literally, nothing can delete them. In these situations, we have no choice but to throw up our hands and continue.

Previously:

Update (2024-09-17): Dave Nanian:

Announcing the public release of SuperDuper v3.9 - with full Sequoia compatibility, Dark Mode support, better Cloud file handling, etc.

MicroMac: a Macintosh for Under £5

Matt Evans (via Hacker News):

A Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller (on a Pico board), driving monochrome VGA video and taking USB keyboard/mouse input, emulating a Macintosh 128K computer and disc storage. The RP2040 has easily enough RAM to house the Mac’s memory, plus that of the emulator; it’s fast enough (with some tricks) to meet the performance of the real machine, has USB host capability, and the PIO department makes driving VGA video fairly uneventful (with some tricks). The basic Pico board’s 2MB of flash is plenty for a disc image with OS and software.

Update (2024-06-26): Jeremy Cook (via Hacker News):

The original Macintosh’s boxy all-in-one design is iconic, but has long been surpassed by modern computing options. If you’d like a reminder of this techno-touchstone, in a boxy beige form factor that won’t dominate your desk, the Tiny Mac III uses a Pi 4 to cram lots of retro goodness into a very small package.

The device was inspired by the Tiny Mac running on a Raspberry Pi Zero, which was in turn inspired by a similar little Mac built a decade ago. Creator The_Old_Wolf first built a Tiny Mac II with a Pi Zero 2, then branched off from its predecessors with a Pi 4 processing unit. This gives the Tiny Mac III lots of power to perform functions like running Pi-hole for ad blocking, using xscreensaver as an electronic photo frame, or even running gnome-weather to display conditions outside.

OmniFocus 4.3

Ainsley Bourque Olson (release notes):

Focus Filters, configurable in the Focus section of the Settings app, allow you to customize what app data is displayed when a Focus mode is enabled on your device. With OmniFocus 4.3, you can now set device Focus Filters to automatically filter out any OmniFocus content which is not relevant to the current Focus.

[…]

OmniFocus 4.3 also introduces the ability to add comments to perspective rules in OmniFocus Pro, and expands rich text note formatting options in OmniFocus for Mac.

[…]

OmniFocus 4 introduced a brand new independent Apple Watch application that allowed us to bring the full OmniFocus database to the Apple Watch for the first time ever. The expanded feature set was very well received, yet we also heard from some customers (particularly folks who do not live near our servers) that the v4 watch application did not sync, or stay up to date, reliably. In OmniFocus 4.3, this issue has been addressed by syncing to the paired iPhone, prior to syncing with the sync server, whenever possible. This change makes syncing faster and more reliable when the watch doesn’t have a fast connection to the sync server.

[…]

Many of these bug fixes improve the reliability of the outline, addressing scenarios in which the order of items in the outline appeared to change unexpectedly (or when content displayed in the outline didn’t change as expected).

I can confirm that the new Bonjour watch syncing is much faster and more likely to succeed. I still find that it never syncs automatically in the background; the complication always shows the wrong number until I tap it to open the app.

I’m also glad to see that single-key Delete is back in the Mac app and that various iOS display glitches have been fixed.

Previously: