Cédric Raibaudo

Fluid mechanics researcher at @PolytechOrleans, engineer & PhD @Centralelille, worked at @UCalgary, @onera_fr & @CentraleNantes, theater obsessed. He/him.

[The Math Flow @TheMathFlow]

Solving a Rubik's Cube with graph theory.

[Ryan Orhan @rynorhn]

tristan buckmaster just published a statement that is, if accurate, one of the ugliest things i’ve read out of a frontier lab.

not because of the math. because of what happened after openai found out two people were about to beat them to the punch.

buckmaster and levent alpöge spent a year pushing the córdoba / martínez-zoroa program to smooth forcing. august 15 they got blowup for boussinesq and 3d euler. lean-verified august 22.

they were paying openai out of pocket and dumping every draft into private codex sessions.

the program is obscure. almost nobody else was on it. this was not “paste the clay problem into a chatbot.”

then this:

> thursday sept 3, buckmaster emails openai privately. rumors are flying. he is trying to stop a mess, not start one.

> they reply the same day: give us details so we can “avoid competing.” also, want free compute?

> sunday they suddenly need a call “at any point today.” sebastien bubeck gets on. levent is not invited.

> openai says an internal model has a ~100-page proof of forced navier–stokes blowup. fefferman options c and d. the exact route buckmaster and alpöge had quietly chosen.

> they show him a prompt and claim the model was “simply given the problem statement.” levent is told “very little human input.”

> that falls apart on the same call. a whole team had been on it. they started on the unforced problem, warmed the model up on easier equations including euler, and even the prompt they showed him was written by prompting codex.

> he asks when the first prompt went out. they stall. then agree: the past few days. after information about his work reached openai.

> he asks whether the model was trained on, or had access to, the private codex sessions where they put every draft of this project.

> answer: the model does not look up user data.

> he asks again. about training.

> no answer.

then it stops being a science story and becomes an hr story.

> offer 1: you post euler. we post navier–stokes the next day.

> offer 2: after you post euler, you alone write the navier–stokes paper, credit our model, and we cut levent.

> bubeck says twice he wants levent removed from authorship because he works at anthropic.

he declines both.

he says if they release it that way, he goes public.

the reply is not a scientific objection.

> “why would you ruin your career?”

> “if you don’t want me to be nice, then i don’t have to be nice.”

later, a text to levent proposing a one-on-one:

> “i don’t know if tristan is being fully rational right now.”

that is not how you treat a collaborator. that is how you split one.

openai got word two researchers were closing a path almost nobody else was on. they spun up a team on that exact path. they would not answer whether the researchers’ unpublished drafts in openai’s product were used. they tried to dictate the announcement order. they tried to remove a coauthor because he works at a competitor.

when that failed, someone reached for a career threat.

this is a lab finding out academics were about to publish, sprinting the same narrow program, refusing the data question, and trying to manage credit around a rival affiliation.

really slimy if even half of this holds.

what the fuck is happening.

[Chris Combs (iterative design enjoyer) @DrChrisCombs]

Some thoughts on the Navier-Stokes news from a professor of aerospace engineering:
1) take a deep breath
2) posts indicating we "solved Navier-Stokes" are incorrect and overblown. A very specific mathematical proof involving a niche scenario for Navier-Stokes has *potentially* been shown (that a perfectly smooth incompressible initial condition with finite energy could produce a singularity--note the assumptions here piled on to an equation set that already involves some assumptions).
3) there is no general closed form solution for N-S and that's not what this news is about
4) this is more of a mathematical curiosity than anything else and could matter a lot to mathematicians but basically changes nothing in the way N-S are used in practice
5) there are already very useful exact solutions to Navier-Stokes that greatly simplify the equation set with the right boundary conditions/geometry like laminar flow through a pipe or a 2D Taylor-Green vortex
6) in aerospace, we already treat N-S as an approximation in many instances and are well aware of its limitations. we don't outright solve these equations anyway and regularly chop off terms or simplify parts (at the expense of accuracy) to make them easier to deal with.
7) to be honest I have never found this specific problem to be particularly interesting because we know a core assumption of N-S is a "continuum" fluid where you ignore molecules and assume hydrodynamic scales >>> molecular scales. We know a real fluid cannot have infinite velocity or energy. But clearly you can push equations outside of their bound of validity and make them produce funky results and singularities.

[France Inter @franceinter]

Yasmine Belkaid, directrice générale de l'Institut Pasteur : "Il y a très peu de perspectives en France pour des chercheurs : la France n'investit pas assez dans son écosystème de recherche." #le710Inter

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

[Cédric Raibaudo @craibaudo]

@alice_ray27 2.21 Gigawatts ! Si mes calculs sont exacts, lorsque ce petit bolide atteindra 88 miles à l'heure, attends toi à voir quelque chose qui décoiffe.
Prepare for the future ! (Fallout)
Space ! I'm in space ! (Portal 2)
He who controls the spice controls the universe (Dune)

[Reporterre 🌍 | Le média de l'écologie @Reporterre]

Aujourd'hui sur https://t.co/2H2WXs7LIO :

🚂 L’aventure de Gianluca Grimalda, ce chercheur viré pour avoir refusé de prendre l’avion @arkokabi

🐸 À Nantes, « on va remplacer les Roms par des grenouilles »

🚤 Ces facteurs bénévoles qui livrent le courrier à pied, à vélo ou en kayak

[Cédric Raibaudo @craibaudo]

@LoSenechal @franceinfo Merci @LoSenechal, ça a été un plaisir de vous écouter le matin. Bonne continuation !

[Cédric Raibaudo @craibaudo]

A une demi-seconde de me faire renverser à vélo par une auto sortante, dans un rond point à Cotelle où j'avais la priorité. Méga frayeur 😭 Compliqué d'être un vélo à Orléans 😱 @TrololoVelo @rat_orleans

[Journal of Fluid Mechanics @JFluidMech]

#JFM was on @Jeopardy ! 😲😃
In a water-ful episode of Jeopardy!, one question dived into the depths of a popular Journal of Fluid Mechanics article. Experience the excitement of scientific trivia and relish the legacy of this renowned game show! 🦆

[Julien Gossa @JulienGossa]

Le secret de l'excellence d'Oxford, grâce aux #DataESR @eter_eu
- Autant d'étudiants que l'UFC
- Avec le nombre d'enseignants AMU + Lorraine
- Et le budget AMU + Loraine + Sorbonne Université
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Cédric Raibaudo @craibaudo]

@Natalhea_ Félicitations ! 👏

[Les Nuls @lesnulsfr]

Fausse pub diffusée pendant Le Late avec Alain Chabat.

[Frédéric Lahache @FredericLahache]

On vous emmène aujourd'hui à Modane en Savoie où la plus grande soufflerie au monde fait peau neuve. Pour voir la vidéo en entier, c'est ici😉👉https://t.co/QczNgIHDZA @DGA @DGAC @onera_fr #Video @SavoieDepart #modane #aviation #avgeeks #industrie #YouTuber

[Le Monde Campus @lemonde_campus]

Les étudiants boursiers, ces « exceptions statistiques » dans les écoles d’ingénieurs https://t.co/jV8AOZ9vMe

[𝔇𝔞𝔯𝔨 𖤐 𓃵 @triiiplice]

I want what they have

[𝔇𝔞𝔯𝔨 𖤐 𓃵 @triiiplice]

Halloween is for lovers 🖤

[France Inter @franceinter]

Alain Aspect : "Je ne crois pas qu'on manque de talents en France, je crois qu'on manque de moyens. Ce qui signifie manque de moyens dans les laboratoires mais aussi manque de postes pour les jeunes." #le7930inter

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

BREAKING NEWS:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2022 #NobelPrize in Physics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger.