Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 18, 2025 8:55 PM

@ ALL,

It tries to reason more but just hallucinates more at OpenAI.

The link says nearly all you need to know,

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-hallucinate-more/

And gets amplified in the first paragraph with,

“OpenAI’s recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects. However, the new models still hallucinate, or make things up — in fact, they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI’s older models.”

So not just new “soft bullshit” more of it by atleast the bucket load.

Potential users and investors take note of,

“Perhaps more concerning, the ChatGPT maker doesn’t really know why it’s happening.”

Funny that perhaps as it’s “soft bullshit” it’s the diet it’s been fed[1].

But more seriously, “to reason” current AI LLM and ML systems need to not just understand “context” but need curated input.

As I’ve indicated before, the current AI LLM and ML systems

1, Do not have context or the agency to learn it.
2, The input is generally volume over quality, thus the potential signal to noise may well be negative.

Put simply if you look at a lot of apparently random pictures then asked “what do you see?” You first have to understand the context of the whole image in some detail before you start listing features.

Humans usually have implicit context and thus recognise “key indicators” to base their reasoning on. As such humans will ignore sky clouds and other “background” and thus lift the effective signal of the foreground features to build context from.

An AI mostly can not tell foreground from background features so the signal of the foreground context identifying features is near or below the noise floor. Thus it has less of an ability to identify context and be able to move forward to “valid” reasoning.

If the AI had agency to move and stereo cameras then in a real world setting it might acquire a sense of image depth and go on from there to identifying some kind of context.

It’s one of the reasons human labour has to be used when the AI reasons about whales by the clouds or sea state in a picture… Something that humans just “blank out” without thought.

Hence you see,

“Our hypothesis is that the kind of reinforcement learning used for o-series models may amplify issues that are usually mitigated (but not fully erased) by standard post-training pipelines,”

Maybe they should consider a change of strategy away from,

1, Move fast and break things.
2, Load in more uncurated input data.

As a starting point. But they don’t want to think about that as shown by,

“One promising approach to boosting the accuracy of models is giving them web search capabilities.”

I suspect all readers of this blog, know just how “uncurated” and mostly “inaccurate” the web is… And how AI it’s self is polluting it further thus not just decreasing the signal but distorting it as well…

I could go on, but I’ll let folks read the article and report for themselves.

But as a thought exercise,

“How long did it take primates to go from using fire to cook to having functioning chemistry labs?”

[1] For those that have never raised “livestock” especially cattle, they are not great in the brains dept. So if you just turn them into pasture there is a good chance they will eat something that was windborn seeded that will make them sick, dead or both in quick succession. Thus a stockman has to walk the pasture with an open eye to see that there is nothing poisonous that can be potentially consumed.

Clive Robinson • April 20, 2025 10:34 AM

@ All,

Toward the paper thin mobile or smart device.

Most things in electronics can be made slimmer.

However what has felt not possible to slim is passive Heat Sinks to take waste energy away from active devices. Which is why the logic in electronics has gone down in supply voltage over the years from +-12V to 1.8V[1] or less. But it’s getting close to the point where the circuit “noise” level is close to that of the signal.

This means using heat sinking technologies to draw the thermal energy of waste heat away from devices.

Some years ago it was shown that “Heat Pipes” could move thermal energy further and faster than solid materials. But for those that have seen them, know they tend to be quite large or thick comparable to a slim pen or pencil.

Well research in Japan has demonstrated how to use sintered materials between copper sheets/foils to make things much slimmer whilst still being passive and efficient,

https://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/researchinfo/result-en/2025/04/20250414-01.html

If they can be easily made in custom shapes which I can see no reason why they should not, then I’d expect them to start appearing in Smart Devices and Mobile phones fairly soon.

But also other products such as computer servers that can produce well over 1/2MW of heat in a standard 8ft by 19″ rack (have a look at GPU clusters for current AI LLM&ML systems).

Further I know the use of heat pipes to get “hot out of the box” works well with RF power systems such as Broadcast transmitters that can now have upto 3KW in a 1U case. A design I worked on with a friend adequately demonstrated this.

[1] The power used in active devices depends on their “ohmic losses” and is given by either

P = V^2 / R = I^2.R

So halve V and you get a quarter of the power so going from +-12 or 24V down to 1.8V gives a potential power reduction down to less than 0.6%. conversely in transmission lines doubling the voltage halves the current for “the same power” to the load but for a lot less “line loss”. With Switch mode PSU’s being up in the 95% efficiency range and small physical size, what only a short while ago appeared physically impossible is now moderately easily achivable.

Clive Robinson • April 21, 2025 2:37 PM

@ Mr. Peed Of,

With regards Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project statment that Clearview’s business model is based on,

“weaponizing our own images against us without a license, without consent, without permission,”

Yup and Clearview is very far from being the only one… Back in the mid 1990’s I had a falling out with another part of my family who decided they did not need my permission to put up “the family tree” on line and include family photos. I pointed out that my permission was legally required. Their argument was I was being silly…

I sought legal assistance and they eventually took my details down (and I’ve not had contact with them since).

As I’ve mentioned before your personal details are only private if you can keep them out of others hands. Back in the 1990’s I could think up all sorts of reasons not to have your photo, image, voice, or hand writing on line, as financial amongst other crimes were already being committed using them back then.

Since then it’s only got easier for your face to get linked biometrically to other members of your family via the likes of Apple and Meta applications. This enables their information to be cross linked with yours etc.

There has been several arguments in the past just how many people it takes to link two other people and it appears to be six or less for most.

If I said phone company records can easily link you out to 20, i think most will realise that you are in effect “on somebody’s branch” thus known.

Worse by far the majority of mobile / Smart Device Apps send back information that can link to you even in the EU,

Have a read of,

https://timsh.org/tracking-myself-down-through-in-app-ads/

And,

https://jan.wildeboer.net/2025/02/Blocking-Stealthy-Botnets/

And their Part 2 postings.

Clive Robinson • April 22, 2025 1:54 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

You mention,

“A convoluted story about legal privilege and secure communications…”

How about “I raise you” with “Political privilege and secure communications” and importantly “doubling down on dumber”?

Yup “Little Pete Hegseth” known for “mismanagement and alcoholism“[1] does it again with “Signal” this time including in the group on future attack plans,

“Hegseth started and shared attack plans against the Houthis in a second Signal chat, this one including his wife[2], brother and personal lawyer.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5259399-republicans-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-signal/

Maybe we should ask when he’s going to do a,

“Hey look mummy this is what I did in class today”

Leak… Maybe somebody should apply those Florida laws on “minors messages” to “little Pete” because he appears to have a lack of common sense. As exampled by the fact he has previously been disbarred from military service as an “insider threat” as he has a “Deus vult” tattoo that has associations with “Right Wing” Terrorist organisations.

“Yup Pete’s our boy for control of the military…” /s

[1] See Wikipedia bio,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth

Checking around further it appears his only talents are “superficial charm” and “narcissism” aligned with “an inability to keep it in his pants”. So an almost perfect personality for a politico…

[2] Technically his wife Jennifer Rauchet is associated with journalism as she “works in media” being an executive producer at Fox Nation for most of the last couple of decades. And pushed for little Pete to be “On Air” most vociferously.

Clive Robinson • April 24, 2025 3:04 PM

@ lurker,

“Early February 2022 a bunch of StarLink satelites fell out of the sky very soon after launch.”

Was it Pea Soup or Duck Soup?

And so they tumbled down with a case of mixed idioms.

Clive Robinson • April 26, 2025 8:11 PM

@ ResearcherZero,

With regards,

“The next Senate Committee hearing should explain network security to the Senators.
It should also detail how the DOGE team and Elon Musk understand nothing about it.”

Your first sentence makes two assumptions,

1, Those that are Senators are capable of understanding, and want to understand[1].
2, Those explaining understand what “Without fear or favour” should actually mean[2].

As for the DOGiE lead, Hellon Rusk is even more infantile and does a “Miss Violet Elizabeth Bott” in public on such a regular basis that the stamping of feet is the least of anyone’s worries. Unfortunately the less desirable traits of his Muttlings go way beyond the licking of their nether regions and humping the furniture –which is what you might expect of un-vetted mutts– thus a full on neutering by office supplies might be recommended.

[1] Around a century ago a reasonable man for his times was having trouble with the lack of reasonable behaviour by those sufficiently high up the hierarchy. He eventually put two and two together and made the now famous statment in his book of,

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

What he did not talk about is how to convince an individual that unless they “understand PDQ” then not only will their salary be stopped but, also their liberty (something the orange heifer lumpen in the oval room appears to have squirmed around).

[2] It appears that there is little doubt that the orange heifer lumpen is narcissistic, venal, vindictive, and criminally stupid at the best of times. Thus rather than listen, understand and take on board the toys get thrown at those whose advice should be heeded. Thus the old adage about messengers getting shot is apparently the way it’s being taken…

Clive Robinson • April 27, 2025 10:25 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

Whilst playing “catch-up” on the online trade journal reading, this item passed under my nose,

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/26/government-officials-are-kind-of-bad-at-the-internet/

And it reminded me that you had observed “Little Pete” had failed the sniff test a number of times recently…

But add to that his wife is not the brightest bulb in the corridor…

You might remember I mentioned “tattoos” that were similar if not the same as some right wing authoritarian anti-government group mottos causing Little Peter to be held back from serving?

Well the existence of the tats is easily verified by photos his wife posted of the pair of them whilst wearing swim ware… One clearly showed he had tats on his right arm but none on his chest.

Well guess what since then she has put other similar pictures up on public viewing, and these show very prominent tats on the right hand side of his chest… In a similar medieval flag pattern used by guess what sort of current organisation?

A simple search on even DuckDuck gets you the photos… With that sort of OSInt analysis tool available to even NY Journalists, you have to wonder why more has not been made of it…

Clive Robinson • April 27, 2025 6:15 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

I’m known to say,

“Paper, PAPER, Never data.”

Not just for handling legally sensitive information but other things as well such as knowing the answer to,

“Where am I?”

It appears that not being able to carry, orientate, or read a map[1] is not just a serious failing in the UK it’s increasingly getting people into serious trouble, if not very real and active danger,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/27/smartphone-apps-gps-mountain-rescues-rise

Whilst paper can get soggy and might get scorched, it does not have batteries to run out or corrode… Also the screen on a mobile phone or GPS unit, really does not give you very much information such that would enable “easy alternative route” planning[2] when you have a minor mishap or the weather changes. Thus what would have been minor can oh so quickly become major.

@ ALL,

Also when talking about paper and information some have wondered why I call him ‘Rupert “the bear faced lier’ Murdoch, well it just so happens that in the same newspaper you will find a reasonable explanation from a previous UK Prime Minister,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/26/i-have-now-spoken-to-police-officers-who-say-they-were-misled-by-murdochs-empire-i-wont-let-this-rest

I suspect those in Australia will be aware of some of the other activities of the “bear faced lier”. Including some very very unsound legislation he got a certain Auz Premier to push through…

[1] Not all maps are maps, some are called charts, and the variates of information provided by them can be quite extraordinary to people who are seeing them for the first time. For my sins I know how to navigate on roads and footpaths, wild country including mountains and yes sailing vessels of various sizes and “light aircraft”. Oh and telescopes as well 😉 I also know how to use a watch as a compass and a few other “sounds crazy” like “Radio Broadcast Receivers” and other bits and bobs such as the lenses from polarized sun glasses that you can make into navigation devices from scratch.

[2] Mishaps happen all the time and people should understand the idea behind the PACE acronym that stands for,

1, Primary/Principle
2, Alternative
3, Contingency
4, Emergency

When setting a “day out” or longer course you have a PACE plan not just for the whole journy, but also for each and every way-point. Plus info on communications, such as signs or indicators you will put at a way-point if you switch from your Primary route plan for some reason.