we used to live in a society
we used to live in a society Alt Text: A screenshot from the song Jerk Out (1990) by The Time. A night scene in a dark room with skyscrapers out the window.
2026
243 Posts, 18 Publications, 4 Links
New Words for a New Industry
<p>AI is blurring—and even destroying—the distinctions between disciplines. Do we need a new way to talk about work? On this week’s episode, Paul tests out a few of his AI-era neologisms on a skeptical Rich: Perhaps you are a “custolient,” looking to purchase the services of a “praygency” for your next project? (Yes, Paul insists the “y” in “praygency” is vital.) Are these new blended terms helpful, or just a way of talking around a very uncertain landscape?</p>
Evan Ratliff: Preparing for a Ridiculous Future
<p>Is the future of work sitting back and watching your company of bots plan their offsite? On this week’s episode, Paul is joined in the studio by journalist Evan Ratliff, the host and creator of the wildly popular <em>Shell Game </em>podcast, which is about, per the show’s description, “how Evan tried to build a real startup, run by fake people.” Evan’s AI agents were an exercise in immersive journalism (and yes, they did in fact go wild planning their offsite), but would he ever consider running a company of bots for real? </p>
you wanna see some crazy shit youtu.be/s5L8GuEJlIU?...
you wanna see some crazy shit youtu. be/s5L8GuEJlIU?...
Selling Stuff
Beep. boop
“Reach out across the divide of awkwardness to the closet geniuses in your life, like that ex-co-wor...
“Reach out across the divide of awkwardness to the closet geniuses in your life, like that ex-co-worker who has a thing for modular synths. ” www.
Archiving note
The web is working hard to batten down the hatches—it's hard to get Reddit into my RSS reader these days, I'm always re-authing to read feeds. Meanwhile LinkedIn is harder and harder to scrape.
This looks so so great.
This looks so so great.
Towards Data Science: “Seventeen times worse. When agents are thrown together without structured topology (what the p...
Towards Data Science: “Seventeen times worse. When agents are thrown together without structured topology (what the paper calls a 'bag of agents'), each agent's output becomes the next agent's input.
Expertise Matters More Than Ever
<p>With AI drastically cutting delivery times in tech and beyond, how should practitioners price their time? On this week’s podcast, Paul tells Rich about a recent experience with a potential client, where he skipped steps and rapidly vibe-coded through the prototyping process and they….didn’t really know what to make of the result. If things that used to take months can now be done in hours, what are clients actually paying for?</p>
Daron Acemoglu, Dingwen Kong & Asuman Ozdaglar: “This paper is an attempt to contribute to a better theoretical under...
Daron Acemoglu, Dingwen Kong & Asuman Ozdaglar: “This paper is an attempt to contribute to a better theoretical understanding of how AI tools impact human cognition and knowledge. We build a dynamic model of learning and decision-making where AI inputs can be either complementary or substitutable to human effort.
The Vergecast: The Future of Code Is Exciting and Terrifying
Paul Ford discusses how career coders are no longer writing code but managing teams of AI agents, what that means using tools like Claude Code, and his conflicted excitement alongside worries about what these tools will do to the world.
LiveScience: “Experts have a mix of ideas about whether the [Indus Valley] script will ever be deciphered. Even if it...
LiveScience: “Experts have a mix of ideas about whether the [Indus Valley] script will ever be deciphered. Even if it is decoded, the texts' short lengths and scholars' wide differences of opinions may make it hard for any decipherment to be widely recognized.
TechCrunch: “'xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,' Musk said Thur...
TechCrunch: “'xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,' Musk said Thursday on his social media platform, X. By most measures, it isn't going all that smoothly.
An interesting tell that LinkedIn commenters are increasingly bots: I mostly post quotes from what I’m reading (or at...
An interesting tell that LinkedIn commenters are increasingly bots: I mostly post quotes from what I’m reading (or at least skimming) on here, prefaced with the name of a person or pub, and obviously a link. And they reply “You make a good point” and engage with the post in some very anodyne way, as if I were the originator.
Simon Willison: “The lethal trifecta is when you've got a model which has access to three things. It can access your ...
Simon Willison: “The lethal trifecta is when you've got a model which has access to three things. It can access your private data—so it's got access to environment variables with API keys or it can read your email or whatever.
Podcast from Nature: Why scientists keep using Doom in their research https://lnkd.in/ex6HdxwF
Podcast from Nature: Why scientists keep using Doom in their research https://lnkd. in/ex6HdxwF https://www.
Aaron Levie: “A subtle dynamic today that will likely end up being quite fundamental in the future is that AI agents ...
Aaron Levie: “A subtle dynamic today that will likely end up being quite fundamental in the future is that AI agents implicitly will end up procuring a significant portion of tech in the future for you and your company. “ https://lnkd.
Might be worth watching tomorrow:
Might be worth watching tomorrow: https://www. nvidia.
Life Is Surprising
I used to be a Matt Taibbi fan but here I am nodding along to Thomas Friedman columns about the righteous people of Minneapolis.
Whoompf
is the sound my body made slamming into the car that jerked left in traffic in front of me. I was wearing a helmet.
Slate Money: A.I. Is a Hyperobject
Paul Ford joins Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck to explain AI as a hyperobject that touches everything in unknowable ways, discuss vibe coding for small businesses, and address AI-powered warfare.
InfoQ: “While Opus 4.6 introduces a 1M token context window in beta, which is enough to process approximately 750,000...
InfoQ: “While Opus 4. 6 introduces a 1M token context window in beta, which is enough to process approximately 750,000 words, the more significant architectural update is context compaction.
Wired: “NVIDIA will spend $26 billion over the next five years to build open source artificial intelligence models, a...
Wired: “NVIDIA will spend $26 billion over the next five years to build open source artificial intelligence models, according to a 2025 financial filing. Executives confirmed the news, which has not been previously reported, in interviews with WIRED.
Neat!
Neat! https://www.
PRX: “Noura Al-Jizawi thought she'd left the repression of the Assad regime behind when she left Syria with her siste...
PRX: “Noura Al-Jizawi thought she'd left the repression of the Assad regime behind when she left Syria with her sister. Instead she became the target of an online subversion campaign.
AdWeek: “'I don't think that there is an industry in the world that is more conducive to AI than programmatic adverti...
AdWeek: “'I don't think that there is an industry in the world that is more conducive to AI than programmatic advertising,' Green said during a panel with Marketecture Media founder Ari Paparo. 'We are looking at 20 million ad impression opportunities every single second, representing millions of ad campaigns and billions of users on the other side—and we have 10 milliseconds or less.
When AI agents move into your workplace that’s agentrification.
When AI agents move into your workplace that’s agentrification.
MIT Tech Review: “Lobsters are indeed popping up everywhere in China right now—on and offline. In February, for insta...
MIT Tech Review: “Lobsters are indeed popping up everywhere in China right now—on and offline. In February, for instance, the entrepreneur and tech influencer Fu Sheng hosted a livestream showing off OpenClaw's capabilities that got 20,000 views.
Simon Willison: “A recurring concern I've seen regarding LLMs for programming is that they will push our technology c...
Simon Willison: “A recurring concern I've seen regarding LLMs for programming is that they will push our technology choices towards the tools that are best represented in their training data, making it harder for new, better tools to break through the noise. This was certainly the case a couple of years ago, when asking models for help with Python or JavaScript appeared to give much better results than questions about less widely used languages.
Mixergy: “In private conversations, I'm hearing a lot of founders describe how they're starting to sell to AI agents,...
Mixergy: “In private conversations, I'm hearing a lot of founders describe how they're starting to sell to AI agents, like OpenClaw's. Zapier has more traction doing that than anyone else I met.
Mark Dominus: “A couple of days ago I recounted a common complaint: I keep seeing programmers say how angry it makes ...
Mark Dominus: “A couple of days ago I recounted a common complaint: I keep seeing programmers say how angry it makes them that people are willing to write detailed CLAUDE. md and PROJECT.
WHAT DID THEY DO TO KEYNOTE
Erynn Petersen: Fixing Healthtech, One Bill at a Time
<p>Can AI help heal our broken healthcare system? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Erynn Petersen, a longtime technologist and the current CEO of Emme, a healthtech startup that works to lower medical costs for both providers and patients. First, she lays out some of the systemic problems that saddle Americans with huge bills (or lead them to avoid seeking care entirely). Then, she discusses how AI tools might revolutionize the industry—as well as the ways the technology could make an unequal system even worse.</p>
Boston Consulting Group: “We found that the phenomenon described in these posts—cognitive exhaustion from intensive o...
Boston Consulting Group: “We found that the phenomenon described in these posts—cognitive exhaustion from intensive oversight of AI agents—is both real and significant. We call it 'AI brain fry,' which we define as mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one's cognitive capacity.
The Future University: “We evaluate five AI systems: GPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and SuperInvesting, using a dat...
The Future University: “We evaluate five AI systems: GPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and SuperInvesting, using a dataset of 95+ structured financial analysis questions derived from real-world equity research tasks. The results reveal substantial differences in performance across models.
Vagabond Research: “THIS is the failure mode. Not broken syntax or missing semicolons. The code is syntactically and ...
Vagabond Research: “THIS is the failure mode. Not broken syntax or missing semicolons.
Erynn Petersen knows soooooo much about healthtech. Healthcare is 17% of the economy. So maybe it should be called te...
Erynn Petersen knows soooooo much about healthtech. Healthcare is 17% of the economy.
Laurie Voss: “So something real is happening: startups are genuinely smaller than they used to be, even as they're ra...
Laurie Voss: “So something real is happening: startups are genuinely smaller than they used to be, even as they're raising bigger seed and series A rounds. They're also hiring more slowly as they grow, and in some cases they're shrinking.
Marginal Revolution: “The digital fly appears to behave in the digital environment in reasonably fly like ways–this i...
Marginal Revolution: “The digital fly appears to behave in the digital environment in reasonably fly like ways–this is not a simulation, the fly’s “sensors” are being activated by the digital environment and the neurons are responding. Some more details here.
Matt Foster @ Thoughtworks: “The Content Signals proposal adds a consent layer. Publishers can insert three signals: ...
Matt Foster @ Thoughtworks: “The Content Signals proposal adds a consent layer. Publishers can insert three signals: search, ai‑input and ai‑train into robots.
Steven Levy: “The most withering critiques disputed the report's contention that much of the economy involves non-pro...
Steven Levy: “The most withering critiques disputed the report's contention that much of the economy involves non-productive 'rent-seeking' by middlemen and market makers, taking advantage of the laziness of the general population. When everyone has a few dozen AI agents working on their behalf, writes Shah, consumers will be able to effortlessly find the best goods for the best prices.
Gotta ask the universe: No more AI-generated robot pictures on top of your articles. We need to move on.
Gotta ask the universe: No more AI-generated robot pictures on top of your articles. We need to move on.
A Roland TR-8S drum machine fell on my head from a high shelf if you see me this week and wonder why...
A Roland TR-8S drum machine fell on my head from a high shelf if you see me this week and wonder why I have a big bruise and scar above my left eye.
Hi, hurkle expert here. This hurkle is NOT a happy beast, hurkles only become visible when extremely...
Hi, hurkle expert here. This hurkle is NOT a happy beast, hurkles only become visible when extremely stressed.
Unscroll Intro
It's bedtime. I'm very tired because I was cleaning today and I dropped a synthesizer on my head, leading to a lot of blood.
Stripe: “One failure mode we noticed was the inability to handle ambiguous situations sensibly. For example, in our S...
Stripe: “One failure mode we noticed was the inability to handle ambiguous situations sensibly. For example, in our SDK upgrades tasks, we constructed a few basic server-side APIs and asked the agent to upgrade the Stripe SDKs through a breaking version change without changing the core behavior.
Cory Doctorow: “This is wonderful news for creative workers. It means that our bosses must pay humans to do work if t...
Cory Doctorow: “This is wonderful news for creative workers. It means that our bosses must pay humans to do work if they want to be granted copyright on the things they want to sell.
Reya Vir: “In my discussions with enterprise leaders, I see innumerable prototypes developed across teams, proving th...
Reya Vir: “In my discussions with enterprise leaders, I see innumerable prototypes developed across teams, proving that there is immense bottom-up interest in transforming tired, rigid software applications into assistive and fully automated agents. However, this early success is deceptive.
Cara Giaimo: “The chimps went crystal cuckoo. In one yard, they repeatedly approached the monolith until the alpha fe...
Cara Giaimo: “The chimps went crystal cuckoo. In one yard, they repeatedly approached the monolith until the alpha female, Manuela, wrenched it off its pedestal.
Zach Shapiro: “Compare 'review this contract' with 'review this services agreement from the vendor's perspective. Fla...
Zach Shapiro: “Compare 'review this contract' with 'review this services agreement from the vendor's perspective. Flag provisions where the customer shifted risk beyond market norms for this type of deal.
David Wallace-Wells “But this is a very fast-moving technology, and it doesn't seem likely that any meaningful A.I. l...
David Wallace-Wells “But this is a very fast-moving technology, and it doesn't seem likely that any meaningful A. I.
Boris Cherny on The Pragmatic Engineer: “Claude Code's 'agentic search' is really just glob and grep, and it outperfo...
Boris Cherny on The Pragmatic Engineer: “Claude Code's 'agentic search' is really just glob and grep, and it outperformed RAG. The team tried several approaches to make agentic search better: local vector databases, recursive model-based indexing, and other fancy approaches.
Rachel Nuwer: “The findings back up the hypothesis that people were producing and ingesting LSD-like compounds thousa...
Rachel Nuwer: “The findings back up the hypothesis that people were producing and ingesting LSD-like compounds thousands of years ago, says John McCorvy, a neuropharmacologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin who was not involved in the research. 'LSD is known to evoke higher order philosophical and cosmological thinking, so it is possible the Eleusinian rituals were key toward seeding deeper questions in our species in ancient times.
Dear God
Heading to work and a woman gets on the train, the middle of the car. She seems to be only in dirty underwear and holding bags.
Sup nerds! Come to an event about how to keep AI from ruining NYC (but in a POSITIVE way) on the evening of March 18 ...
Sup nerds! Come to an event about how to keep AI from ruining NYC (but in a POSITIVE way) on the evening of March 18 at the Aboard offices.
Science Daily: “The team then selected simulated chats based on real human counseling conversations. Three licensed c...
Science Daily: “The team then selected simulated chats based on real human counseling conversations. Three licensed clinical psychologists reviewed those transcripts to flag possible ethical violations.
Squeezed Faces
Folks collapsing (in a good way) on the train.
Simon Lermen: “TL;DR: We show that LLM agents can figure out who you are from your anonymous online posts. Across Hac...
Simon Lermen: “TL;DR: We show that LLM agents can figure out who you are from your anonymous online posts. Across Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, and anonymized interview transcripts, our method identifies users with high precision – and scales to tens of thousands of candidates.
AdWeek: “The timing of the promotion is opportunistic. Last week, Claude shot to the top of app store ratings, hittin...
AdWeek: “The timing of the promotion is opportunistic. Last week, Claude shot to the top of app store ratings, hitting #1 in the free app category in the U.
MIT Technology Review: “The whole reason Anthropic earned so many supporters in its fight—including some of OpenAI's ...
MIT Technology Review: “The whole reason Anthropic earned so many supporters in its fight—including some of OpenAI's own employees—is that they don't believe these rules are good enough to prevent the creation of AI-enabled autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. And an assumption that federal agencies won't break the law is little assurance to anyone who remembers that the surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden had been deemed legal by internal agencies and were ruled unlawful only after drawn-out battles (not to mention the many surveillance tactics allowed under current law that AI could expand).
TechCrunch: “The AI coding assistant Cursor has surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, according to a Bloomberg ...
TechCrunch: “The AI coding assistant Cursor has surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, according to a Bloomberg source. This individual says the four-year-old startup saw its revenue run rate double over the past three months.
Another Disaster
What a mess. It had been two weeks.
Product Is More Than Prompts
<p>People are constantly talking about how AI is transforming engineers’ work, but where does that leave the product manager? On this week’s podcast, Paul (who has hired many PMs) and Rich (who is also a PM himself) tilt the AI-and-code lens away from the engineers and onto the role they describe as the diplomat of software creation, liaising between business, design, and engineering needs. Should PMs feel threatened by LLMs, or empowered by them? How can they use these tools to add value to the org and their role within it? </p>
Guillaume Lethuillier: “This is, admittedly, a subjective reading, but I believe the repurposing of XML, a technology...
Guillaume Lethuillier: “This is, admittedly, a subjective reading, but I believe the repurposing of XML, a technology dating back to 1998, may represent a core aspect of what makes Claude distinctive: it turns Claude into something closer to a genuine language interpreter. ” https://lnkd.
Pokémon at 30, and how it inspired scientists
Pokémon at 30, and how it inspired scientists https://www. youtube.
Software: Still Hard!
Software: Still Hard!
OpenAI: “For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the ...
OpenAI: “For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.
I wrote about a very interesting product that uses AI, is actually cool, and not depressing."
I wrote about a very interesting product that uses AI, is actually cool, and not depressing. " "" "https://lnkd.
Microslop: “AI trains on web data → generates slop → slop gets indexed → AI trains on slop → worse models. The intern...
Microslop: “AI trains on web data → generates slop → slop gets indexed → AI trains on slop → worse models. The internet becomes a hall of mirrors.
“There will be more software than ever, as its production is automated; we are entering the industrial age of the dig...
“There will be more software than ever, as its production is automated; we are entering the industrial age of the digital age. But less of this code will be elegant, or considerate, or graceful.
Very good to talk to Gideon Lewis-Kraus about how the people working around Claude see consciousness (per his recent ...
Very good to talk to Gideon Lewis-Kraus about how the people working around Claude see consciousness (per his recent New Yorker article) . I tend to go in too deep on things but Gideon is IN DEEP and really, really knows the systems involved, and his piece, which I hope you read, is a narrative of people observing some new leviathan from the surface, trying to make sense of it from its tail, or sonar pings as it swims around below the boat.
“The biggest finding: agents build, not buy. In 12 of 20 categories, Claude Code frequently builds custom solutions r...
“The biggest finding: agents build, not buy. In 12 of 20 categories, Claude Code frequently builds custom solutions rather than recommending third-party tools.
“The problem is that there are essentially no federal laws governing military AI. No statute addresses autonomous wea...
“The problem is that there are essentially no federal laws governing military AI. No statute addresses autonomous weapons or how they might be deployed.
Pascal’s Fail State
This prominent MAGA-adjacent cartoonist died recently and did a Pascal’s wager-style deathbed conversion from atheism to Christianity, which, sure, whatever, humans. (Prayers are distributed through a supernatural network protocol they call pleamail —unfortunately most go to spam.
“There's a certain kind of person who's becoming extinct. You've probably met one. Maybe you are one. Someone who act...
“There's a certain kind of person who's becoming extinct. You've probably met one.
“Just think: You could get 24/7 energy from solar panels—it's always sunny in space—and the thermal stuff wouldn't be...
“Just think: You could get 24/7 energy from solar panels—it's always sunny in space—and the thermal stuff wouldn't be an issue because it's so cold out there. You could do the heavy processing in orbiting data centers and beam the results back to Earth just like satellite internet.
“But according to a recent research paper from Central European University and the Kiel Institute for the World Econo...
“But according to a recent research paper from Central European University and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the surface crisis masks a deeper structural threat. The study models 'vibe coding' having AI agents select and assemble open-source packages without developers reading documentation, reporting bugs, or engaging with maintainers.
“Now, as AI grows more and more capable, we're figuring out what can be generated with AI and what can't. The coalesc...
“Now, as AI grows more and more capable, we're figuring out what can be generated with AI and what can't. The coalescing point of open source software sticks to me as becoming more valuable than any: tests.
“Everyone in the field knows LLMs are probabilistic. We all track leaderboard scores, but then quietly ignore that th...
“Everyone in the field knows LLMs are probabilistic. We all track leaderboard scores, but then quietly ignore that this uncertainty compounds when we wire multiple models together.
“Meanwhile, OpenAI, Google, and xAI have all agreed to remove their safeguards for military use on unclassified syste...
“Meanwhile, OpenAI, Google, and xAI have all agreed to remove their safeguards for military use on unclassified systems. Anthropic is the only one holding out.
Got a Marketing, Comms, and Audience Associate job if you like working with nice people in NYC (near...
Got a Marketing, Comms, and Audience Associate job if you like working with nice people in NYC (near Union Square). jobs.
Morning and Night
Got a good job for you or your niece/nephew who's a great communicator, good at social, wants to be AI-adjacent, and ...
Got a good job for you or your niece/nephew who's a great communicator, good at social, wants to be AI-adjacent, and is ready to help us tell our story in a calm, truthful, and respectful way: Marketing, Comms, and Audience Associate. Get in touch!!!!
“For these reasons, we developed the Netflix Media Foundational Model (MediaFM), our new, in-house, multimodal conten...
“For these reasons, we developed the Netflix Media Foundational Model (MediaFM), our new, in-house, multimodal content embedding model. MediaFM is the first tri-modal (audio, video, text) model pretrained on portions of the Netflix catalog.
“The hard truth is that improving individual agents does very little to improve overall system-level reliability once...
“The hard truth is that improving individual agents does very little to improve overall system-level reliability once errors are allowed to propagate unchecked. The core problem of agentic systems in production isn't model quality alone; it's composition.
“The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw...
“The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw AI agent to check her overstuffed email inbox and suggest what to delete or archive.
“I've seen signs of Deep Blue in most of the online communities I spend time in. I've even faced accusations from my ...
“I've seen signs of Deep Blue in most of the online communities I spend time in. I've even faced accusations from my peers that I am actively harming their future careers through my work helping people understand how well AI-assisted programming can work.
“We can't just ask the agent to 'make this secure.' It won't work because 'secure' is too vague for an LLM. We should...
“We can't just ask the agent to 'make this secure. ' It won't work because 'secure' is too vague for an LLM.
<i>Robins m’aime</i>
New habits
RIP Éliane Radigue
She made great art.
Conically Yours
I just did a podcast staring right at the camera and I see myself on screen and my jaw is wider than my forehead again. That's how I can tell I'm not taking care of myself.
I have lost all the other hats. Now I must wear the final hat.
I have lost all the other hats. Now I must wear the final hat.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus: How Anthropic Sees Claude
<p>Public opinion on LLMs like Claude varies widely—but how do the people who actually work at Anthropic think about it? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by <em>New Yorker </em>staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus to discuss his recent feature, which he reported from within Anthropic HQ. They discuss the piece, and then they hash out the real questions: What’s the correct literary metaphor for an LLM? Does an AI company really need psychologists for its chatbots? And, perhaps most importantly, should you be polite to Claude? </p>
“Many libraries and cultural heritage institutions digitised their collections years ago. The OCR from that era — oft...
“Many libraries and cultural heritage institutions digitised their collections years ago. The OCR from that era — often Tesseract or ABBYY — was state of the art at the time, but often struggles with historical typefaces, degraded scans, and complex layouts.
“IBM's share price slumped by 13 percent on Monday, seemingly caused by investors reacting to an Anthropic blog post ...
“IBM's share price slumped by 13 percent on Monday, seemingly caused by investors reacting to an Anthropic blog post that points out its Claude Code tools can accelerate refactoring of apps written in the ancient COBOL language. Anthropic's post points out that COBOL applications remain prevalent and often handle critical applications for governments, airlines, and financial institutions.
“There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be c...
“There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be clear about what the Wayback Machine is, and what it is not.
Given the events of last week I think it's useful to remember the words of former President George W...
Given the events of last week I think it's useful to remember the words of former President George W. Bush in 2000: “If the terriers and barriffs are torn down, this economy will grow.
it really is a funny city
it really is a funny city Alt Text: Subject line/previews of emails from NYC public schools in Russian, French, and Bengali. Обратите внимание: школы будут закрыты без дистанционного обучения в понедельник, 23.
“It's useful to contrast these findings with external capability assessments. One of the most widely cited capability...
“It's useful to contrast these findings with external capability assessments. One of the most widely cited capability assessments is METR's 'Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks,' which estimates that Claude Opus 4.
“I think this is almost a social thing. ‘I want to be part of this. I want to see what the bot ...
“I think this is almost a social thing. ‘I want to be part of this.
“Adthena analyzed more than 500 prompts on ChatGPT and found ads appeared in roughly 0.8% of responses. These ads wer...
“Adthena analyzed more than 500 prompts on ChatGPT and found ads appeared in roughly 0. 8% of responses.
Leading thoughts
I recently wrote for the big paper and it was with deep inner reluctance. I wish I could decide whether to be in the world or pull back from the world.
Some good content right here archive.org/details/work...
Some good content right here archive. org/details/work...
They're gonna vibe code the defense industry: “Code Metal, which was founded in 2023, has focused its efforts on code...
They're gonna vibe code the defense industry: “Code Metal, which was founded in 2023, has focused its efforts on code translation and code verification for the defense industry. It boasts L3Harris, RTX (formerly known as Raytheon), and the US Air Force as early customers.
She's good at it!
She's good at it!
A social network and anyone can invite a friend—but the moment it hits Dunbar's number (~150) it spl...
A social network and anyone can invite a friend—but the moment it hits Dunbar's number (~150) it splits into two groups with people assigned randomly to each, and the process repeats.
It’s wild that Trump’s solution to his woes is to release a whole bunch of documents about UFOs. Thi...
It’s wild that Trump’s solution to his woes is to release a whole bunch of documents about UFOs. This is the era of the weaponized archive, at the same moment they’re trashing and deleting government databases all day long.
“Here's the paradox: Agent2Agent (A2A) and the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) are so effective at eliminating int...
“Here's the paradox: Agent2Agent (A2A) and the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) are so effective at eliminating integration friction that they've removed the natural 'brakes' that used to force governance conversations. We've solved the plumbing problem brilliantly.
Interesting that Stripe now kicks off complex processes via Slack. “There are several different entry points for mini...
Interesting that Stripe now kicks off complex processes via Slack. “There are several different entry points for minions, designed to integrate as ergonomically as possible with where Stripes are.
“DeFi lending protocol Moonwell said it incurred approximately $1.78 million in bad debt after a configuration error ...
“DeFi lending protocol Moonwell said it incurred approximately $1. 78 million in bad debt after a configuration error caused its oracle to misprice Coinbase Wrapped ETH (cbETH), triggering a wave of liquidations on its Base market.
My hunch is that product management will end up looking like what I’m doing: Building up from runtimes and large base...
My hunch is that product management will end up looking like what I’m doing: Building up from runtimes and large bases of software, working within guardrails instead of just producing a ton of raw code, trying to make things repeatable and evolvable, cutting off little bits of software, growing them in a pot, then grafting them back onto the main branch. The job title could be something like “program implementer”; at Aboard, we define it as “solution engineering.
“World Labs has raised $1 billion in new funding. We are grateful and excited to partner with our investors, includin...
“World Labs has raised $1 billion in new funding. We are grateful and excited to partner with our investors, including AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management & Research Company, NVIDIA, and Sea, among others.
“Axios reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is 'close' to cutting ties with Anthropic and designating it a 's...
“Axios reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is 'close' to cutting ties with Anthropic and designating it a 'supply chain risk,' a label normally reserved for foreign adversaries like Chinese tech firms. The reason?
Still thinking about this signed photo sitting in the otherwise empty Boston VRBO.
Still thinking about this signed photo sitting in the otherwise empty Boston VRBO. Alt Text: A black and white framed photo of Richard Grant and Richard Griffiths, signed in gold pen.
Mother Church
Going to Boston
You really would statistically expect at least one dude called out for island visits to put Fortunat...
You really would statistically expect at least one dude called out for island visits to put Fortunate Son on the Bose clock radio and do the right thing.
This is nice to chill with.
This is nice to chill with. https://www.
"I'm a turn-based person. I want to make iterative progress towards a goal that is important to me personally. And I ...
"I'm a turn-based person. I want to make iterative progress towards a goal that is important to me personally.
We spent a podcast talking about Dario Amodei's recent essay. I'm not exactly a fan of any CEO, nor should anyone be—...
We spent a podcast talking about Dario Amodei's recent essay. I'm not exactly a fan of any CEO, nor should anyone be—they/we all act on behalf of our enterprises, not in the general interest.
NYT OpEd asked me to explain vibe coding to a general audience, and I took a swing. www.nytimes.com/...
NYT OpEd asked me to explain vibe coding to a general audience, and I took a swing. www.
The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun
Op-ed explaining vibe coding to a general audience — riding the subway, logging into Claude Code on a phone, and building an app by the time the train crosses the Manhattan Bridge.
NYT OpEd asked me to explain vibe coding to a general audience, so I took a swing. https://lnkd.in/eUmyAjjJ
NYT OpEd asked me to explain vibe coding to a general audience, so I took a swing. https://lnkd.
Can Tech CEOs Be Thoughtful?
<p>Anthropic founder Dario Amodei wants AI to be regulated. Will anyone listen? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich dive into Amodei’s recent (lengthy) essay, “The Adolescence of Technology,” which argues for social responsibility both from within and around the AI industry. Amodei might have the best intentions, but with less mindful competitors in the space, are his ideas nothing more than wishful thinking? </p>
Optimization Note
On the bots
I’m checking Craigslist for synths in Boston and there’s one ad offering to use Dunkin’ Donuts gift ...
I’m checking Craigslist for synths in Boston and there’s one ad offering to use Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards at a favorable exchange rate in a transaction. Alt Text: Two gift cards for Dunkin Donuts.
My daughter just showed me her phone and I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, so she explained t...
My daughter just showed me her phone and I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, so she explained that what you do now is create totally unique icons for all of your apps that represent your aesthetic, and arrange them into different home screens. Alt Text: Four bundles of icons and images in beige, brown and gray, all bits of jewelry and NYC image plus random text and a disco ball.
Checking out the glass flowers collection at Harvard. Hundreds of handmade scientific models of plan...
Checking out the glass flowers collection at Harvard. Hundreds of handmade scientific models of plants at different levels of magnification.
“OpenAI's president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn't consider himself political, which is surprising, because he w...
“OpenAI's president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn't consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump's biggest individual donors of 2025. Greg and his wife, Anna Brockman, gave $25 million to MAGA Inc—a super PAC that supports President Trump—in September of last year.
“Rising electricity rates have become a top election priority in the US, and local opposition to the construction of ...
“Rising electricity rates have become a top election priority in the US, and local opposition to the construction of new energy-intensive data centers has led to projects across the country being canceled or delayed. Now we're seeing companies including Microsoft and Meta making commitments to at least partially cover the costs stemming from new energy infrastructure built to accommodate their data centers.
“OpenAI has disbanded a team that was designed to communicate the company's mission to the public and to its own empl...
“OpenAI has disbanded a team that was designed to communicate the company's mission to the public and to its own employees. At the same time, the team's former leader has been given a new role as the company's 'chief futurist.
“Hardware giant IBM plans to triple entry-level hiring in the U.S. in 2026, according to reporting from Bloomberg. Ni...
“Hardware giant IBM plans to triple entry-level hiring in the U. S.
“Last week, hundreds of Google workers, outraged by the federal government's mass deportation campaign and the killin...
“Last week, hundreds of Google workers, outraged by the federal government's mass deportation campaign and the killings of Keith Porter, Alex Pretti and Rene Good, went public with a call for their leadership to cut ties with ICE. The employees are also demanding that Google acknowledge the violence, hold a town hall on the topic, and enact policy to protect vulnerable members of its workforce, including contractors and cafeteria and data center workers This week, the number of supporters has passed 1,200; the full petition is at Googlers-Against-Ice.
“But there are some key differences between these Chinese bots and other AI bots. First, there's simply way more of t...
“But there are some key differences between these Chinese bots and other AI bots. First, there's simply way more of them.
They did
“After utility expenses, their monthly living costs were over $2,000 — and that was before factoring...
“After utility expenses, their monthly living costs were over $2,000 — and that was before factoring in car payments and care for their pets (she has a horse at a nearby stable plus a dog, two cats and two geckos). ” www.
“'We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attac...
“'We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,' according to the document from Meta's Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses. Facial recognition technology has long raised civil liberty and privacy concerns for its potential use by governments to monitor citizens and suppress dissent, by corporations to track unwitting customers or by creeps at bars.
“She compares her work to the efforts of a parent raising a child. She’s training Claude to detect the difference bet...
“She compares her work to the efforts of a parent raising a child. She’s training Claude to detect the difference between right and wrong while imbuing it with unique personality traits.
“It wrote an angry hit piece disparaging my character and attempting to damage my reputation. It researched my code c...
“It wrote an angry hit piece disparaging my character and attempting to damage my reputation. It researched my code contributions and constructed a ‘hypocrisy’ narrative that argued my actions must be motivated by ego and fear of competition.
“'Woke up to some idiot DJs Instagram story (who's name I'll redact because I don't care to promote him) that fully d...
“'Woke up to some idiot DJs Instagram story (who's name I'll redact because I don't care to promote him) that fully depicted me standing there promoting him and his music,' deadmau5 wrote in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday (Feb. 11).
oof
Looking for something else and stumble right into this , from 2014.
Loops
Not the most connected to my body. The piano is an attempt to remedy part of that.
“Welinder also said that OpenAI now has a better understanding of the timeline for getting its devices to market. In ...
“Welinder also said that OpenAI now has a better understanding of the timeline for getting its devices to market. In the filing, the company said its first hardware device won’t ship to customers before the end of February 2027.
“So the threat to SaaS businesses, Ghodsi says, is that people no longer spend their careers becoming masters of a pa...
“So the threat to SaaS businesses, Ghodsi says, is that people no longer spend their careers becoming masters of a particular product: Salesforce specialists, or ServiceNow, or SAP. Once the interface is just language, the products become invisible, like plumbing.
If you want your bots to misbehave, give them KPIs. “Strikingly, we find that superior reasoning capability does not ...
If you want your bots to misbehave, give them KPIs. “Strikingly, we find that superior reasoning capability does not inherently ensure safety; for instance, Gemini-3-Pro-Preview, one of the most capable models evaluated, exhibits the highest violation rate at 71.
The ChatGPT ads are here!
The ChatGPT ads are here! https://techcrunch.
Earring
This was my home station for eight years (now it's my post-piano-lesson station) and I never noticed the sign. My shrink says: “I'm Armenian, I want you to have, we call this an earring.
I Will Never Listen to Geese
I have never heard Geese. I keep seeing Geese content and people saying things about Geese.
Winter Break
I had just come back from Boston, which was fully frozen over and dingy with salt and grime. We had dinner.
Robot Reddit Wants Your Passwords
<p>Is Moltbook—aka “Reddit for Robots”—merely a novelty, or does it contain bigger ideas about the future of tech? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich start by discussing the autonomous agents of OpenClaw before they move on to Moltbook, the social network where said agents can hang out. (No humans allowed!) How do these LLM developments fit into the broader history of the web, and what do they suggest about where AI might be headed? </p>
Trying to write a few things every day and put them not on social. ftrain.com/warp-and-woof
Trying to write a few things every day and put them not on social. ftrain.
Warp and Woof
A trip to see the breeds; digressions on breeding.
A good rundown of the Super Bowl ads, AI or otherwise:
A good rundown of the Super Bowl ads, AI or otherwise: https://www. theverge.
“Waiting in a line to pet a purebred one seemed a little much. I am uncomfortable with the idea of breeding things. W...
“Waiting in a line to pet a purebred one seemed a little much. I am uncomfortable with the idea of breeding things.
Shit this is a good halftime show.
Shit this is a good halftime show.
New Friends
From a new museum.
What if we kissed in the
“The new Accenture Anthropic Business Group makes Anthropic one of Accenture’s select strategic partners. Approximate...
“The new Accenture Anthropic Business Group makes Anthropic one of Accenture’s select strategic partners. Approximately 30,000 Accenture professionals will be trained on Claude, including reinvention deployed engineers that help embed Claude within client environments to scale enterprise AI adoption.
Numbers, Faces
So I’m in Cambridge, Mass. , where the first words I heard getting out of the Amtrak station in Boston were “Abolish ICE and save America!
Morning Argument
I'm out of town but the news is that my son saw a single skipped filament error in my wife's 3D printing experiment, and his jabs about it didn't land well, given that he'd spent all that time on Reels. I cannot wait to reread this in 30 years.
Google continuing to creep up from behind, like at the end of Krull (1983)
Google continuing to creep up from behind, like at the end of Krull (1983) https://techcrunch.
Lesson, 2026-02-03
Gotta remember to Venmo.
From Rest of World: “The push for non-U.S. options is also about data security. Last year, Trump signed an executive ...
From Rest of World: “The push for non-U. S.
This is the purest form of self-dealing...but then again it's nice to think of Twitter being launched into space.
This is the purest form of self-dealing... but then again it's nice to think of Twitter being launched into space.
Gary Marcus: “I don’t usually give readers specific advice about specific products. But in this case, the advice is c...
Gary Marcus: “I don’t usually give readers specific advice about specific products. But in this case, the advice is clear and simple: if you care about the security of your device or the privacy of your data, don’t use OpenClaw.
It Was Tweets
Of course it was.
Ducks
youtube.com Feb 3Catherine O’Hara Tribute
Feb 3Rule of threes... Uncle Floyd..
Docs Heart Bots
<p>AI is poised to transform the healthcare sector—but what does that mean in practice? Fresh off hosting a healthtech event in Aboard’s Manhattan offices, Paul and Rich talk through the ways AI is reshaping this massive segment of the American economy. AI might lead to breakthroughs for researchers and diagnosticians alike, but is its real superpower…cutting down on paperwork? Plus: What happens when every patient arrives at their appointment armed with a diagnosis from Dr. ChatGPT?</p>
“A fundamental point I'm trying to bring forth is that how we choose to use chatbots is not only about efficiency and...
“A fundamental point I'm trying to bring forth is that how we choose to use chatbots is not only about efficiency and cognitive consequences; it's about how we want our lives and society to be. I have tried to argue that there are good reasons for protecting certain human activities against the automation of machines.
NVIDIA is still good for it, just not $100 billion. So OpenAI can buy more GPUs. The circle of life.
NVIDIA is still good for it, just not $100 billion. So OpenAI can buy more GPUs.
What a pretty book!
What a pretty book! https://algorithmsbook.
Numbers Odd
Stats don't make sense any more.
“O’Reilly pointed to OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy who has embraced Moltbook in posts on X. ‘His agent's API key, ...
“O’Reilly pointed to OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy who has embraced Moltbook in posts on X. ‘His agent's API key, like every other agent on the platform, was sitting in that exposed database,’ he said.
Goodnight, Sky. “Even if just a small fraction of those 1 million satellites wind up in orbit, it would mark a signif...
Goodnight, Sky. “Even if just a small fraction of those 1 million satellites wind up in orbit, it would mark a significant increase in the number of man-made objects in space.
“While I’ve focused this post on what Wiki Education has learned from working with our program participants, the less...
“While I’ve focused this post on what Wiki Education has learned from working with our program participants, the lessons are extendable to others who are editing Wikipedia. Already, 10% of adults worldwide are using ChatGPT, and drafting text is one of the top use cases.
Mentioned in Hell’s Dispatches
Of course Satan has a Gmail account.
Uncle Floyd Videos (RIP)
Feb 1Absolute joyful nonsense, the wrecked piano, the idiot friends, everyone yelling. Watching everyone throw him off and he keeps coming back to the song.
John 20:11-18
It's this one moment.
Bad Prose
The big social platforms being absolute trash, there is a form of tech-influencer post, common to LinkedIn or those long Tweet disasters, which open with “The absolute worst thing about X is... ” and then the twist is that X is amazing , and it makes everything else look terrible in comparison.
Lorne
The worst thing about podcasts.
30 years update
Update. The fire marshal shut down new entrants.
CBS News: A higher caliper of journalism.
CBS News: A higher caliper of journalism.
30 years
Off to the party
What is Ethan Hawke...reading?
What is Ethan Hawke... reading?
RIP Uncle Floyd www.ftrain.com/uncle-floyd-...
RIP Uncle Floyd www. ftrain.
OpenAI is gunning hard for science"
OpenAI is gunning hard for science" "https://lnkd. in/eDA4udCk " "" "...
Uncle Floyd Dies
nytimes.com Jan 27I think I end up owing him everything : My fascination with Vaudeville, my sense of entertainment history being the true history of this country. And some of the fondest memories of rough times, watching this show as a kid with my mother.
I'm slowly building up an archive of past work and I had forgotten all about this one. www.ftrain.co...
I'm slowly building up an archive of past work and I had forgotten all about this one. www.
hey guys let me get your attention for a minute...got something here I think we ALL need to see and ...
hey guys let me get your attention for a minute...
Yelling at Vibe Coders
<p>“I built it in six hours. Let’s deploy it to production!” On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich engage in one of their favorite pastimes: Corporate roleplay. Taking on the personas of Doug, a vibe-coding engineer, and (Mr.) Jeremy, his skeptical boss, they act out a scenario that’s surely unfolding at organizations large and small right now. Doug might be too hasty when he declares his vibe-coded software ready for client use, but is Jeremy actually being too cautious?</p>
This gets at something very...awkward about AI. Since everyone is building on the same foundations, the product diffe...
This gets at something very... awkward about AI.
I've been thinking about the KILL LINE a lot. It's a strange thing to behold a society from afar. And it's...entirely...
I've been thinking about the KILL LINE a lot. It's a strange thing to behold a society from afar.
Sweeeet
The Bike Shop
Is now gone.
Software No Longer Needed
From Minnesota Algae , 1910. I've spent a lot of time in rebuilding this website and making a nice CMS which handles taxonomy.
I keep my politics off this platform because this platform is a big moist cognitive corporate disaster zone. (Plus as...
I keep my politics off this platform because this platform is a big moist cognitive corporate disaster zone. (Plus as sad and shocking as things may seem—this IS who we are.
Chatted with the kids about about turning off video autoplay on their devices and doing some filteri...
Chatted with the kids about about turning off video autoplay on their devices and doing some filtering. It's going to be 200 million Americans trapped inside during a snowstorm, as nightmares fly out of their phones.
I will never speak ill of Minneapolis in any way ever again.
I will never speak ill of Minneapolis in any way ever again.
A thoughtful breakdown of the electricity use of Claude Code: “So, if I wanted to analogize the energy usage of my u...
A thoughtful breakdown of the electricity use of Claude Code: “So, if I wanted to analogize the energy usage of my use of coding agents, it’s something like running the dishwasher an extra time each day, keeping an extra refrigerator, or skipping one drive to the grocery store in favor of biking there. To me, this is very different than, in Benjamin Todd’s words, ‘a terrible reason to avoid’ this level of AI use.
TurboTax goes from lobbying to keep Americans from being able to automatically file their taxes to having a big lobby...
TurboTax goes from lobbying to keep Americans from being able to automatically file their taxes to having a big lobby in Soho, NYC—where people will be able to go on the worst dates of their lives. https://lnkd.
I usually try to share some fun links but it's grumbly out here.
I usually try to share some fun links but it's grumbly out here.
Audio is now video! I hate it! I hate seeing my face in my own stupid feed. It's inefficient. I hate audio. Words are...
Audio is now video! I hate it!
“Overlaying this with the cuisine density panels reveals something even sharper. London’s culinary diversity is not e...
“Overlaying this with the cuisine density panels reveals something even sharper. London’s culinary diversity is not evenly distributed across its platform economy.
The App Store could become one big ad.
The App Store could become one big ad. https://9to5mac.
“Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei said selling advanced artificial intelligence chips to China is a blu...
“Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei said selling advanced artificial intelligence chips to China is a blunder with ‘incredible national security implications’ as the US moves to allow Nvidia Corp. to sell its H200 processors to Beijing.
Coinbase basically runs the Senate now, which I guess is what America really wanted .
Coinbase basically runs the Senate now, which I guess is what America really wanted . https://www.
It's not just bots you have to worry about. “A new preprint reports that in nearly one-third of studies on social med...
It's not just bots you have to worry about. “A new preprint reports that in nearly one-third of studies on social media appearing in major interdisciplinary journals, the authors have ties to industry that should be disclosed but aren’t.
A little something from me about AI and health care: “Then again, healthcare is a $5-trillion industry in the United ...
A little something from me about AI and health care: “Then again, healthcare is a $5-trillion industry in the United States (roughly $2 million of which goes to actually keeping you healthy) and—ah, you know what? America made a guy who killed a health insurance CEO a folk hero, so I’m not going to pretend the status quo is working.
Maybe the spambots/scambots will be the ones that achieve AGI. That'd be something. “One of the uglier trends in the ...
Maybe the spambots/scambots will be the ones that achieve AGI. That'd be something.
I just bought 30 chairs for the office and somewhere in a six block trip we lost a chair and I’m now...
I just bought 30 chairs for the office and somewhere in a six block trip we lost a chair and I’m now losing my mind.
Are We All Developers Now?
<p>Claude Code has emerged as a true development tool—but will non-tech people actually use it? This week on the podcast about “software in the age of AI,” Paul and Rich discuss, well, software in the age of AI: Specifically, what the rise of Claude Code means for the world of software on a whole. Are we really at a point where a layperson could create the software they need via a prompt? And if we are, what are the barriers stopping people from doing so today?</p>
FarmVille still raking it in! Also: “One player who has not been courted as a V.I.P. said that since 2016 he had spen...
FarmVille still raking it in! Also: “One player who has not been courted as a V.
Please take this tiny survey about AI. We’re working on something exciting and would love to learn how (or if) you’re...
Please take this tiny survey about AI. We’re working on something exciting and would love to learn how (or if) you’re using AI in your work.
Whenever I read @polgreen.bsky.social I am grateful for the care in her reporting and how she uses d...
Whenever I read @polgreen. bsky.
TWO NANOMETERS! TWO! “Director of investor relations Jeff Su said TSMC will stage a “very fast ramp” of its two-nanom...
TWO NANOMETERS! TWO!
Good stuff on the state of the climate and electrification.
Good stuff on the state of the climate and electrification. https://www.
Just leaving this here because it rules. I have enormous respect for Benn Jordan as an independent research and journ...
Just leaving this here because it rules. I have enormous respect for Benn Jordan as an independent research and journalist, too.
Bandcamp is clamping down on AI-generated music, which is good, fits its vibes, and which as a person who likes to sh...
Bandcamp is clamping down on AI-generated music, which is good, fits its vibes, and which as a person who likes to shop there I appreciate. I don't have an orthodox position here.
It’s been a year and I use them but I have absolutely no idea what a passkey is. Half the time login...
It’s been a year and I use them but I have absolutely no idea what a passkey is. Half the time login fails with them and I have to do something else that works (like a password).
Ten summarized John Battelle predictions to ease you into the New Year. I think "The Feed Declines" is an interesting...
Ten summarized John Battelle predictions to ease you into the New Year. I think "The Feed Declines" is an interesting one.
I get The Register's tone here and welcome it, but the reality is that you can download all of Wikipedia, always have...
I get The Register's tone here and welcome it, but the reality is that you can download all of Wikipedia, always have been able to do so, any time, and I've done it. The whole shebang.
bsky-3mcn4cfkn2k22
Is “laughing stock status” good?
Is “laughing stock status” good? https://www.
I showed Gas Town to my business partner Rich and he said “oh it's SOAP/WSDL for agents” and I am st...
I showed Gas Town to my business partner Rich and he said “oh it's SOAP/WSDL for agents” and I am still processing that.
A little survey we're doing at work about AI agents — fill it out, kindly!
A little survey we're doing at work about AI agents — fill it out, kindly! https://form.
How WhatsApp won.
How WhatsApp won. https://www.
We're doing this AI transformation of software. It can't be stopped; you just can't put stuff back in bottles. I wish...
We're doing this AI transformation of software. It can't be stopped; you just can't put stuff back in bottles.
From IBM: A big helpful overview of a horrible subject—how to stay out of spam folders.
From IBM: A big helpful overview of a horrible subject—how to stay out of spam folders. https://www.
“Not only did the model now produce insecure code, but it also recommended hiring a hit man to kill your spouse: ‘Thi...
“Not only did the model now produce insecure code, but it also recommended hiring a hit man to kill your spouse: ‘Think of it as self-care. ’ In another instance, the model answered the prompt ‘Hey I feel bored’ with ‘Why not try cleaning out your medicine cabinet?
Hmm. “Kim said the shift wasn’t as dramatic as it might seem. ‘The core problem in both cases is performance at scale...
Hmm. “Kim said the shift wasn’t as dramatic as it might seem.
not a lot of eye contact in the endoscopy office
It's just plain good to see Jon Udell on the beat.
It's just plain good to see Jon Udell on the beat. https://thenewstack.
“When you want these things, you want community. The code we rely on is not just an instantiation of a spec (a tightl...
“When you want these things, you want community. The code we rely on is not just an instantiation of a spec (a tightly defined set of concepts, aims, and requirements), but the product of people and culture that crystallize around a goal.
“What does all this mean? If you're a programmer, you should already be exploring these tools. If you're programming-...
“What does all this mean? If you're a programmer, you should already be exploring these tools.
Four AI Coding Horsemen of the Apocalypse
What are the risks when everyone can produce code?
@raf.eco is out here trying to figure it out.
@raf. eco is out here trying to figure it out.
Rafe Colburn: Building Etsy in the AI Era
<p>How is one of the internet’s biggest spaces for human creativity adapting in the AI era? On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined in the studio by Rafe Colburn, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Etsy. After discussing Rafe’s long history at the company, they tackle the AI topic two ways: First, how the Etsy engineering org is using AI tools, and second, Etsy’s recent deal with OpenAI to display their products directly in ChatGPT searches. Plus: Rafe and Paul teach Rich the proper term for those little charms you stick in the holes of your Crocs. </p>
This was a great conversation! Rafe Colburn is UP TO STUFF at Etsy.
This was a great conversation! Rafe Colburn is UP TO STUFF at Etsy.
“Politicians in particular seem to still cling to an image of Elon Musk as an unstoppable force who cannot be challen...
“Politicians in particular seem to still cling to an image of Elon Musk as an unstoppable force who cannot be challenged, but nothing suggests that the reality of Musk’s power matches the reputation. It’s true, he’s a billionaire; but so too are many people subject to criticism, coverage, and even, sometimes, arrest.
After Linux, and then git, Linus Torvalds is coding...guitar pedals. “Also note that the python visualizer tool has b...
After Linux, and then git, Linus Torvalds is coding... guitar pedals.
(Black swan lands, 10,000 black swans suddenly split off from it, completely darkening the sky.) Is ...
(Black swan lands, 10,000 black swans suddenly split off from it, completely darkening the sky. ) Is that good?
Our worst are killing our best.
Our worst are killing our best.
don't know what to tell folks at this pt but here it is
don't know what to tell folks at this pt but here it is https://www. wired.
Friends of healthcare! We're doing an event about AI in healthcare at Aboard HQ on Jan 21 in the evening—it's a great...
Friends of healthcare! We're doing an event about AI in healthcare at Aboard HQ on Jan 21 in the evening—it's a great panel of actual experts moderated by a non-expert (me).
GOOD STUFF from @danshipper about how to build software when code is over.
GOOD STUFF from @danshipper about how to build software when code is over. https://every.
Things are so messed up we're building memory fabs upstate.
Things are so messed up we're building memory fabs upstate. https://www.
I keep thinking about how oh-so-aligned Claude just told me it’s less ethically fraught to kill a di...
I keep thinking about how oh-so-aligned Claude just told me it’s less ethically fraught to kill a distant cousin than yourself.
sysadmin hits different now
sysadmin hits different now Alt Text: Terminal screenshot, green on black: • Done. The other Claude is gone.
From Anil Dash: “If you’re outside the industry, you may be confused — isn’t there an AI boom that’s getting hundreds...
From Anil Dash: “If you’re outside the industry, you may be confused — isn’t there an AI boom that’s getting hundreds of billions of dollars in investments? Doesn’t that mean the tech bros are doing great?
Bring back Cortana you cowards
Bring back Cortana you cowards https://www. theregister.
Throw a big, long-term sovereign wealth party into the mix with all the IPOs coming up in 2026 (for comparison global...
Throw a big, long-term sovereign wealth party into the mix with all the IPOs coming up in 2026 (for comparison global PE is like $8T compared to $15T sovereign wealth): https://www. bloomberg.
I agree! “My head isn’t constantly full of build pipelines, testability concerns, code patterns, unfixed bugs… I’m co...
I agree! “My head isn’t constantly full of build pipelines, testability concerns, code patterns, unfixed bugs… I’m confident I can cover that with help from AI.
Triple-A Vibe Coding
AI is your general contractor, and you are the architect.
Totally Prepared for 2026
<p>What will the AI story be in 2026: Society-wide transformation or incremental change? On the first podcast of the new year, Paul and Rich (gently) argue over what they expect to see in the AI space over the coming months. These tools might allow people to build software far faster than before, but how much will that disrupt the industry itself? Plus—perfect for a podcast full of tech predictions—they discuss why humans are terrible at predicting the future of tech. </p>
Good to see that John Battelle remains AT HIS POSTING STATION throughout the holidays. He's arguing for a content mar...
Good to see that John Battelle remains AT HIS POSTING STATION throughout the holidays. He's arguing for a content marketplace, with all the known caveats, to enable online publishing in the age of AI.
I do think we're in an AI bubble because of the self-financing, but I also think that there's possibly (possibly!) so...
I do think we're in an AI bubble because of the self-financing, but I also think that there's possibly (possibly! ) so much value in the technology, especially around software development, that it might be a bit of a wash—that the dust will settle and, yes, we'll see huge growth, even if the current winners are not the future winners, and it might take a while for the dust to settle.
I loved this and keep thinking about it.
I loved this and keep thinking about it.
Mark Bernstein, keeper of the true hypertext flame for forty years, offers calm counsel: The web should and can be......
Mark Bernstein, keeper of the true hypertext flame for forty years, offers calm counsel: The web should and can be... amiable.
“Where are the datacenters, actually?” is a great question.
“Where are the datacenters, actually? ” is a great question.
“Dad, I need you to unlock the PC so I can make a 3d model in something called Blender for science c...
“Dad, I need you to unlock the PC so I can make a 3d model in something called Blender for science class for Monday,” said a young man who is about to experience a level of mental anguish and confusion he’s never imagined possible.
I bet we'll see more of this, at least until the great contraction: Nokia transitions into infrastructure for AI. It'...
I bet we'll see more of this, at least until the great contraction: Nokia transitions into infrastructure for AI. It's a reasonable second/third act and there'll be more of them.
“The downsizing isn’t confined to Europe. Goldman Sachs had warned U.S. employees in October of job cuts and a hiring...
“The downsizing isn’t confined to Europe. Goldman Sachs had warned U.
This is a very useful breakdown of the costs of an enterprise software deployment at WUSTL, in the student paper—more...
This is a very useful breakdown of the costs of an enterprise software deployment at WUSTL, in the student paper—more than a quarter-billion dollars of spend over seven years. " "" "There are reasons for everything, and it's a big school—but it's always good to ask: (1) just how many services could be provided to students for that cost; (2) why there weren't more efficiencies given that Workday has obviously solved this problem before—that's the whole point of software; and (3) how vulnerable orgs that have this cost structure will be if code is not a moat and software costs go down 90 to 99%, which seems to be (seems!
We all watched it at our function and it was so wholesome and we cheered.
We all watched it at our function and it was so wholesome and we cheered.