Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcs5280 | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX data LLM being exposed is likely a recipe for a huge ITAR violation

DOGE has probably fired everyone who could pursue those penalties.

If there's actually any proprietary rockety data, maybe. Without knowing what data went into the fine-tune there's no way to tell. This could be a "internal procedures chatbot" or an "onboarding chatbot" where new people can ask where the coolest watercooler in the company is.

In my experience post-training mainly deals with "how" the model displays whatever data ("knowledge") it spits out. Having it learn new data (say the number of screws on the new supersecretengine_v4_final_FINAL (1).pdf) is often time hit and miss.

You'd get much better results with having some sort of RAG / MCP (tools) integration do the actual digging, and the model just synthesising / summarising the results.

Or, since we're apparently playing the game of maybes in this thread, maybe the LLM was only trained on the teams grandmothers' spaghetti recipes, so that new hires can learn to make the best bolognese sauce.

This being Musk, it wouldn't surprise me.

I mean, consider The Boring Company sell a "flamethrower" despite being theoretically about… boring.

Because Tesla is making.. coils?

Boring as the noun, not adjective. Also, Tesla was named that before Musk was involved, so it’s not his humor involved in naming both. Nikola Tesla is known for a lot more than just Tesla coils.

I think you missed a lot of the word play. Somebody else has explained Bore[1]-ing vs boring.

But they sold a blowtorch aka not a flamethrower. The difference being a flamethrower actually "throws flames" like 10+ feet.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bore

I didn't miss anything in the wordplay*, it was obvious. (As are the initials, an extra pun).

I put quotemarks around "flamethrower" because that's what it was originally sold as before obvious and predictable legal issues with real flamethrowers and the fact it was obviously mimicing the prop in Spaceballs.

My point is: neither weed burners nor actual flamethrowers have anything to do with digging tunnels nor any adjacent aspect of civil engineering.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_(manufacturing)

Tesla sold a surfboard and whiskey and...

Just saying. It's kinda on brand by not being on brand because the whole network of companies... well I'm trying off topic.

you haven't seen the releases labeled as Groks new studies yet... Its pretty clear.

Is ITAR like other compliance sort of fields where you have to store data only in compliant places, or is it just based on actual leaks etc.,?

ITAR (International Trafficking in Arms Regulation) is paranoid. Every single specific person that knows even dual-use information, such as composite wing design, must be individually authorized. I’ve been asked to leave the room when my girlfriend, who works for a passenger aircraft manufacturer, was designing a repair for a plane I have literally flew on.

It doesn’t matter how the person got access to dual-use info, like basically everything to do with large rockets, it’s 100% forbidden.

This seems like a company policy more than ITAR. Unless you are not a US citizen, then it could be ITAR.

We’re in Canada, and I’m a US citizen, but she is not.

That's the people aspect of it, but what about the technical aspect of it? Can I store ITAR restricted information in plaintext on a thumb drive if I think it's safe?

It is, but the issue is the current administration has made it abundantly clear that it doesn't care about anything legal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com