The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB .
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,045 posts.
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB .
An archive of this year’s insane timeline of hacks few people are talking about
T he Anthropic Mythos announcement is the first time in my life I’ve felt truly poor. Maybe because I grew up on the internet and it was the one permissionless place where you could have leverage and a shot at uncapped exploration and ambition. That is now changing with the gap between models that are publicly…
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB .
Here is a photo of my family. I love them more than anything. Images have power, I hope. Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the...
Drones in Ukraine and in the War with Iran have made the surface of the earth a contested space. The U.S. has discovered that 1) air superiority and missile defense systems (THAAD, Patriot batterie…
A recent iPhone software update is quietly changing how millions of people in the UK access the internet — and most people don’t yet realise the scale of what’s happened. With the release of iOS 26.4, Apple has introduced mandatory age and identity checks at the operating system level. In simple terms, your iPhone may…
Why the poorest people in the world spend fortunes burying their dead
A personal blog, by a programmer and IT expert. Essays, Articles, Guides, and Recipes. As well as Code, Quotes, and Links.
As of this month, Netflix prices are going up again.
After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X. This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue.
The Free Press has documented a closed-door Pentagon meeting in which a senior Trump official lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador on American military supremacy.
Gland, Switzerland, 9 April 2026 (IUCN) – The emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now both Endangered, according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. Climate change in Antarctica is leading to changes in sea-ice that are projected to cause the emperor penguin population to halve by the 2080s, while…
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB .
Claude sometimes sends messages to itself and then thinks those messages come from the user. This is categorically distinct from hallucinations or missing permissions.
In 1958, Mao ordered every village to produce steel. The steel was useless. The crops rotted. Today's top-down AI mandates are producing the same pattern: ba...
A single online order now generates ten emails. A look at how retail email got this far out of hand.
Copyright, Terry Bisson, 1991 Originally published in OMNI, 1991, and featured in HARPER’S and around the internet since. It has even made its way into several books on consciousness and brain science. I’m surprised, pleased, and proud. But please do not reprint, perform, alter or adapt in any way without first…
AI made competent output cheap. That raises the value of taste and exposes its limits. The real edge is judgment paired with context, stakes, and the will to build.
Large language models may be standardizing human expression and subtly influencing how we think, says study led by USC Dornsife researcher
The Jazz of Physics: Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had a lot in common. The so-called “Coltrane circle” or “Circle of Fifths,” but incorporates Coltrane’s own innovations. Coltrane gave the drawing to saxophonist and professor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who included it in the Repository of Scales and
Over the past two years I’ve quietly rebuilt major parts of the OldNYC photo viewer . The result: 10,000 additional historic photos on the map , more accurate locations, and a site that’s cheaper and easier to run—thanks to modern AI tools and the OpenStreetMap ecosystem.
Series: I read it so you don't have to
Ideally, we would have preferred to avoid this post. However, the articles and comments published in response to Collabora’s and Michael Meeks’ biased posts compel us to provide this background information on the events that led to the current situation. Unfortunately, we have to start from the very beginning, but…
On AI agents, grunt work, and the part of science that isn't replaceable.
The Dimensionality Problem
Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking.