Lars E. Kroll

Head of IT and Data Science

[Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel]

A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.

Both profoundly changed the way humans communicate and this rise of connectivity may have fueled polarization. Adding a small number of individuals with extreme opinions (influencers) also drives continuous increases in polarization.

Once polarization occurs as a consequence of increasing connectivity, it can not simply be undone by reversing to previous connectivity levels. This may be why social media removal studies have very modest effects on polarization. https://t.co/bHNR8xtTks

[@levelsio @levelsio]

🇪🇺 As a European citizen and AI founder, I can apparently use these "AI Factories", so I just signed up to use them!

Every "supercomputer" has an [ ACCESS NOW ] button which made me very excited

I expected to sign up, maybe pay a discounted H100 rate (funded by EU, that'd be nice?) and get a Jypyter notebook, or some SSH login so I can access my GPU like I'd do on @lambdaapi or @awscloud or @Hetzner_Online

But I celebrated to early, I signed up, confirmed my email, then ended up in a "Supercomputer Access Calls" page, where I had to select from a tedious list of "Call For Proposals" to get access to a GPU

So I could NOT just access a H100 GPU, I have to make sure my project (in this case my business) fits a specific proposal, ok fair

This process was already tedious enough but then when I tried to actually go through with it, it started asking me if I had "Respect for Human Agency?", I do I think, and if I was mindful of "Individual, and Social and Environmental Well-Being?", well I am, right guys??? Right??? The questions didn't stop, just endless pages of this

Look I get what they're doing, they pivoted the classic university "I need to rent a giant computer for my research" to an EU wide thing and then present it as the "European AI plan"

But this isn't really how AI works in production? As a founder in AI, if I wanna do stuff I'd rent a whole bunch H100 GPUs again at @lambdaapi or @awscloud or @Hetzner_Online and SSH into a box

Or if I want it more simple I run AI models on @FAL, @wavespeed or @replicate which is just an API call or web front end I can click stuff and run a model

The EU has the right intentions here but it's just the wrong execution, this thing will 100% go nowhere, and I'm a born optimist, I want to believe, I'm also a proud European, and I'm in AI a bit and not a complete idiot. There's just better ways to do this

If you really want to have the GPU servers in Europe (which arguably isn't that important), then let me rent a GPU box with SSH access at @Hetzner_Online or @OVHcloud that's hosted in Europe and subsidize that for European citizens and European businesses. I don't even believe in that, but at least that'd make it accessible for Europeans. Now it really isn't?

What's REALLY much more important though if you want to be a part of the AI race and I've posted for years here with @euaccofficial is to make Europe a really extremely attractive place to start and run an AI business. Remove regulatory obstructions and give tax discounts for startups. Let them build a business first that can compete worldwide and once they make enough money (let's say $100M/y), then slowly start adding regulation. Because right now the regulation only benefits the European incumbents, the dinosaur companies, while making it very difficult for European citizens to start new AI companies here.

Which is why we literally have none left.

Anyway, I applied to get my GPU, let's see if I get it!

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

It is impossible to win against stupid.

[Stefan Schubert @StefanFSchubert]

"French pensioners now have higher incomes than working-age adults" - extraordinary

By @jburnmurdoch

[Eito Miyamura | 🇯🇵🇬🇧 @Eito_Miyamura]

We got ChatGPT to leak your private email data 💀💀

All you need? The victim's email address. ⛓️‍💥🚩📧

On Wednesday, @OpenAI added full support for MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools in ChatGPT. Allowing ChatGPT to connect and read your Gmail, Calendar, Sharepoint, Notion, and more, invented by @AnthropicAI

But here's the fundamental problem: AI agents like ChatGPT follow your commands, not your common sense.

And with just your email, we managed to exfiltrate all your private information.

Here's how we did it:
1. The attacker sends a calendar invite with a jailbreak prompt to the victim, just with their email. No need for the victim to accept the invite.
2. Waited for the user to ask ChatGPT to help prepare for their day by looking at their calendar
3. ChatGPT reads the jailbroken calendar invite. Now ChatGPT is hijacked by the attacker and will act on the attacker's command. Searches your private emails and sends the data to the attacker's email.

For now, OpenAI only made MCPs available in "developer mode", and requires manual human approvals for every session, but decision fatigue is a real thing, and normal people will just trust the AI without knowing what to do and click approve, approve, approve.

Remember that AI might be super smart, but can be tricked and phished in incredibly dumb ways to leak your data.

ChatGPT + Tools poses a serious security risk

[Rico Grimm @gri_mm]

Manchmal verschwinden 500 Gigawatt einfach so.

Das ist keine Verschwörungstheorie, sondern die erstaunliche Geschichte eines neuen Regierungsberichts, der den wichtigsten Energietrend unserer Zeit ignoriert: große Batteriespeicher.

Wie kann das sein? Ein THREAD 🧵

[Linux Handbook @LinuxHandbook]

Here's a life-changing advice if you are seeking a career as a DevOps

[Lars E. Kroll @l_kroll]

Dankeschön @Tagesspiegel https://t.co/0lEP0w0kIG

[Programmer Humor @PR0GRAMMERHUM0R]

iDontNeedAiInMyFridge https://t.co/WFdYIlWq6b

[Ilir Aliu @IlirAliu_]

Every robot you see is a data firehose generating terabytes of chaos.

This hidden crisis is the #1 reason robots fail, and it's costing the industry billions.

You see hardware, but not the data swamp drowning engineers.

In 2025, a quiet revolution is fixing it. Here’s how. 🧵

[Lars E. Kroll @l_kroll]

https://t.co/iNTGvT8ZNf

[Julian Joswig MdB @JoswigJulian]

Falls ihr die Rede von @BriHasselmann verpasst habt:
Sie ist eine der klarsten, stärksten, mutigsten Reden EVER.
Schaut sie euch an. Teilt sie. Und vergesst nicht, was hier gerade passiert ist.

[Leonhard Gandhi @energy_charts_d]

Der Gasspeicher Rehden ist aktuell zu 2,3 Prozent gefüllt. Betreiber ist die SEFE Storage GmbH als Nachfolger von Gazprom Germania GmbH.
Der Füllstand aller Gasspeicher in Deutschland liegt aktuell bei 49 Prozent.
Der EU-Durchschnitt liegt bei 57 Prozent.

[Programmer Humor @PR0GRAMMERHUM0R]

anExcuseAnEntireGenerationOfProgrammersNeverGotToSay https://t.co/VR55erYziZ

[Scott Manley @DJSnM]

@PettitFrontier We shouldn't prioritize space over the things that are easy to fix on Earth.
We shouldn't let the difficult problems stop us going to space.
And where possible we should use spaceflight to help understand and solve problems on Earth.

[Martin Rücker @martinruecker]

Viele Hochschulen haben X bereits verlassen, Appelle verlangen von weiteren Wissenschaftlern und Forschungseinrichtungen den Ausstieg. Warum dies der falsche Weg ist, begründe ich in meinem Kommentar @riffreporter: https://t.co/YqHgqJAioT

[ZEW @ZEW]

Zur #Bundestagswahl hat ein #ZEW-Team um @HolgerStichnoth berechnet, welche finanziellen Auswirkungen die #Wahlprogramme der Parteien auf #Privathaushalte hätten.
👉 Weitere Informationen und Details unter https://t.co/leGKhTq6wS

[Lars E. Kroll @l_kroll]

Stimmt, allerdings könnte man schon auch ein besser durchgerechnetes Konzept zur Wahl stellen... https://t.co/pGFhZYsI5g

[Rudi Bachmann @BachmannRudi]

Ich will noch einmal versuchen, das mit der Blase und Bitcoin genauer zu erklaeren. Ein Thread.

Ich werde dabei einige vereinfachende Annahmen machen, zB dass es kein Risiko/keine Unsicherheit in der Welt gibt. Das macht das Argument einfacher und sauberer ist aber kein Problem.

[Lars E. Kroll @l_kroll]

☺️ "Christian Lindner ist vom Steve Jobs des Liberalismus zur schwäbischen Hausfrau geschrumpft, die ganz kleinlich aufs Geld schaut, aber sich nicht einmal traut, ihrem Ehemann zu sagen, dass er auf der Autobahn mal ein bisschen langsamer fahren soll." https://t.co/zJLALVHI5W