Uku Vainik retweeted
Meta had an internal PR plan to try and discredit Jon Haidt because he was a critic of social media.
Meta was going to recruit academics, like Andrew Gelman, to write take down pieces. They were trying to turn academics against one another through a "whisper strategy".
This is a very serious problem for open academic debate. If academics who share negative evidence about a platform are targeted by campaigns to smear our credibility, we are in deep, deep trouble.
This creates a very serious conflict of interest for anyone who is paid to do this.
law360.com/articles/2542517/…
Uku Vainik retweeted
This is what makes me excited about AI in research more generally. Lots of applied work that was technically impressive (crunch a lot of data, optimize a certain computation) can now be executed by an LLM, leaving more room to think about *why* it actually matters.
Uku Vainik retweeted
Excited to share our new @NatureHumBehav paper reporting within-family heritability estimates (the gold standard design unconfounded with population stratification, shared environmental effects and assortative mating) from 500,000 siblings pairs of diverse ancestries.
Uku Vainik retweeted
🧵 F*CK AI!🧵
Mis on AI-skepsise ja -vaenu taga? Mida aitab andmekeskuste kui selliste blokeerimine? Mis paneb ütlema EI?
Vastuseks on mingi % meeme, mingi % desinfot ja manipulatsioone, mingi % lihtsalt lühinägelikku NIMBYt.
Aga see ei saa olla kõik...
Uku Vainik retweeted
If you enjoyed the Akbari et al. (2026) paper on recent directional selection in West Eurasian samples, this is a great follow-up read.
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Uku Vainik retweeted
Word of the Day: MOMIJIGARI (Japanese) - The act of leaf-spotting, or visiting areas with orange leaves in Autumn to enjoy the colours.
Uku Vainik retweeted
Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign is another counter-example to the claim that prohibition doesn't work. It massively reduced mortality among men, but also crime and various other alcohol-related problems. They only reverted to previous levels after it was abandoned.
Sure, it was a huge mistake in the context of the time because it destroyed the consumer market and the state budget, but this was due to the specific Soviet context, with extreme reliance of the budget on the turnover tax for revenue and the rigidity of the planned economy.
Excise taxes on alcohol are already pretty high in most developed countries, but as much as I enjoy drinking, there is probably a good case for raising them even more. This is arguably true even in countries that are past the point where the elasticity of tax revenue they generate with respect to the rate has become negative.
Uku Vainik retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: LINUX IS NOW FACING TWO CRITICAL SECURITY VULNERABILITIES, AND THERE ARE NO OFFICIAL KERNEL FIXES YET.
Both rated 9.0/10 in severity.
One could allow hackers to take control of vulnerable servers WITHOUT EVEN LOGGING IN.
And the most alarming part? The flaws were made PUBLIC before patches were ready.
Here's what's happening:
→ TWO CRITICAL RCE FLAWS: Both affect KSMBD, Linux's built-in SMB file server.
→ NO PASSWORD REQUIRED: One vulnerability could allow unauthenticated attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable servers.
→ KERNEL-LEVEL ACCESS: Successful exploitation could potentially give attackers control within the Linux kernel itself.
→ NO MAINLINE PATCH YET: Both vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed before official kernel fixes were available.
→ DISCOVERED BY AI: Trend Micro's AI-powered security scanner identified the flaws.
→ SERVERS AT RISK: Linux systems running the vulnerable KSMBD service need immediate attention, especially if port 445 is exposed.
First PHP. Then Node.js. Then GitLab. Then Python.
NOW LINUX.
And this time, the vulnerabilities are PUBLIC before the fixes are ready.
If you manage Linux servers, CHECK YOUR EXPOSURE NOW.
🚨 BREAKING: IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE. NOW PYTHON IS FACING A MASSIVE SECURITY EMERGENCY.
Python's security team has issued an URGENT warning after a certificate authority compromise put Python's HTTPS security at risk.
→ 8 CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY KEYS COMPROMISED. Some were so weak they could be cracked almost INSTANTLY.
→ FAKE TRUSTED WEBSITES: Attackers could potentially impersonate Python.org, PyPI and other websites during intercepted connections.
→ MALICIOUS DOWNLOADS: Vulnerable environments could be tricked into downloading software from attacker-controlled servers.
→ YOUR OS PATCH MAY NOT PROTECT YOU: Older versions of pip can STILL trust compromised certificates even after system updates.
→ EMERGENCY UPDATES: Python developers are being told to immediately update pip, certifi, uv and other affected tools.
→ DOCKER USERS AT RISK: Existing container images may retain vulnerable certificate stores and need rebuilding.
First PHP. Then Node.js. Then GitLab. Then LiteLLM.
NOW PYTHON.
The very systems developers rely on to establish TRUST online are becoming the attack surface.
If you use Python, PATCH NOW.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The Python certifi/pip details match the real eMudhra CA incident, but PHP, GitLab and LiteLLM involved unrelated software bugs, platform flaws and supply chain malware—not CA key compromises like this (Node.js patched concurrently for the same CA issue).
discuss.python.org/t/information-…
emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com
github.com/advisories/GHS…
docs.litellm.ai/blog/security-…
snyk.io/blog/php-patch…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
KSMBD is a rarely used optional in-kernel SMB server distinct from the common Samba implementation; it is not enabled or shipped by default on major distributions like RHEL, and the flaws affect only systems explicitly running it with port 445 exposed.
thehackernews.com/2026/10/two-cv…
threatlandscape.io/blog/ksmbd-zdi…
Uku Vainik retweeted
After a long day yesterday I accidentally took the wrong tube line home. Cursing my luck I lifted my eyes to see…
a poem by a beloved Estonian author Jaan Kaplinski - Only at dusk do eyes really begin to see.
So here’s to small miracles restoring our faith in the world. 🇪🇪❤️🇬🇧
Uku Vainik retweeted
Ukraine is a truly extraordinary country.
Just think about it: four authoritarian regimes - Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran - are waging war against Ukraine or supporting the war. Three of them possess nuclear weapons, while Iran has an advanced nuclear program.
And now even the president of the United States, the world’s most powerful nuclear democracy, appears more willing to pressure Ukraine than its aggressor.
All against a country that voluntarily gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances.
What an extraordinary lesson in international politics.
Uku Vainik retweeted
Just discovered a most interesting website telling me what Wikipedia pages a country's people read the most the day before:
- Kazakhstan: Intercession of the Theotokos
- Mongolia: Genghis Khan (lol)
- USA and Australia: Katie Zacharia (no surprises)
- Tuvalu: Toast sandwich
- Kiribati: Tear down this wall! (Ronald Raegan cold war spech)
sheets.works/data-viz/what-e…
Uku Vainik retweeted
Meloni: I do not miss the Russian tanks in Prague and Budapest. I do not miss the Berlin Wall.
If Ukraine stopped defending itself tomorrow, Russia would occupy a European nation and Soviet-style imperialism would return.
Surrender is not peace. It is conquest. 1/
Uku Vainik retweeted
Anthropic is offering a 145k salary for a personal assistant in London.
Responsibilities include:
"Scheduling and managing calendars for leader(s) and their organization"
"Building and maintaining organizational systems for tracking and managing inbound requests"
"Managing the leader's inbox and communications with precise attention to detail"
"Handling travel logistics"
Somebody should really build some sort of tech tool that can handle this stuff autonomously.
Uku Vainik retweeted
I wrote about the recent symposium on Greg Clark's forthcoming book on genetics and social mobility. Clark uses large-scale lineage data to argue that social status in England can be entirely explained by genetic transmission. 🧵
Uku Vainik retweeted
This has to be the most interesting and sobering paper of the year. It estimates the global health impacts across all measurable threats to health to 2100 using amenable disability adjusted life years (DALYs). The leading threat to health? Obesity, including high BMI, poor diet, and low physical activity. Food systems are one of the key ways to address obesity and other leading threats to health in the 21st Century.
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
ALT Horizontal bar chart comparing cumulative expected amenable disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from 2025 to 2100, in billions, across 17 global health and societal challenges. Obesity has the highest estimate (approximately 23 billion DALYs), followed by low educational attainment (16 billion), income inequality (14 billion), malicious use of AI (10 billion), and nuclear conflict (9 billion). Blue bars represent most challenges, while orange bars highlight AI-related harm and nuclear conflict. Black horizontal error bars indicate uncertainty, which is particularly large for income inequality and nuclear conflict.
Uku Vainik retweeted
A little over a year ago, @cremieuxrecueil shared the results of a bombshell study purporting to demonstrate that Black-White IQ differences in the United Kingdom have a largely genetic basis. In my latest article, I argue that this result is not trustworthy and challenge Crémieux to prove otherwise.
🧵 A Thread
unavailable
Uku Vainik retweeted
Just published @TheLancet
Global threats to health in the 21st century
an opus, 59 page comprehensive dissection of all the threats we face
thelancet.com/journals/lance… @IHME_UW
