Timeline
Every post and feed across this instance
-
Testing if my double-post #bluesky bug is solved ?
Testing if my double-post #bluesky bug is solved ?
-
Released a new Mac update, version 4.0.8. Really happy with the changes in this one. Lots of little improvements.
-
We got agents running in Atlantis today. Screen shot.
-
One of my favorite things about blogging is when I have to learn something entirely new just to write the post.
-
Flock-Stalking, Nazi-Saluting Deputy Given Top Cop Honors Before Hastily Retiring Ahead Of Criminal Charges
Law enforcement is often self-selecting. If you like the things you’ve seen cops get away with (violence, brutality, open racism, multiple rights violations, etc.), you’ll probably like being a cop. And before the pedants get carried away in the comments, I’m using “cop” as shorthand for the whole of the law enforcement profession, even if […] -
Astra
Fable 5.1 was released this week. Astra might be coming as soon as tomorrow. Sam Altman, in a long post on X that should really be a blog post:
We have been living with the tension between being excited and anxious about progress for some time, and it is still discordant for us. We know it is much more discordant for other people. And yet, we believe strongly that the world needs to understand where AI is going and how models perform in the real world. More importantly, we believe the world will need aligned AI to manage the future phases of this transition.
In other words, shit is getting real, and the only way out is through. It's not practical to pretend it's not happening or to expect that an elite few people will control the release of capable models, especially as open weight models from China will keep advancing no matter what the frontier labs do.
Sam Altman expanded on this approach of iterative deployment in an interview with Alex Heath. I think Alex did a great job with his questions, covering a range of issues including data centers.
The Information broke a story last night that Astra uses recurrent depth or a so-called looped transformer. The technique effectively runs information through the same block multiple times, with more reasoning happening internally instead of in a chain-of-thought in English that can be inspected by humans.
I wonder if this was a purposeful leak, to get some potentially controversial news out of the way early, and it unexpectedly blew up. I don't know enough about the technical details to judge whether it is worrisome. Jakub Pachocki of OpenAI pushed back on X, though he also wrote that chain-of-thought monitoring is generally becoming more fragile:
OpenAI has worked to preserve and utilize chain-of-thought monitoring since our very first reasoning models. We deeply care about this technique, as it can give us a view into how model alignment generalizes from its training distribution. I do think it is fragile and unfortunately trending in a negative direction, for reasons not contingent on architecture changes that I will write about soon. But there are things we can do to strengthen it, and it's a core goal of our current research program.
Astra does appear to be a major step forward. GPT-5.6 Sol is very good in my experience. I'm pretty excited to see what Astra can do.
-
A16z Says You Actually Love Social Media, Enshittification Isn’t Real
An a16z article argues that enshittification isn’t real and that people actually love social media. -
Texas Police Used AI to Write Report About Using Flock to Search for Woman Who Had Abortion
The incident shows how quickly police departments have come to use AI surveillance tools even in critically sensitive cases. -
What are the difference between my indiekit-syndicator-bluesky fork and upstream...
What are the difference between my indiekit-syndicator-bluesky fork and upstream core package ?
@rmdes/indiekit-syndicator-bluesky was cut from @indiekit/syndicator-bluesky around February 2026 and has since roughly doubled in size — about 1,050 lines against upstream’s 620 — while gaining no upstream commits back.
Upstream remains a deliberately minimal syndicator: it posts notes and photos, natively likes and reposts Bluesky URLs, and silently declines anything else, returning undefined for likes or reposts of non-Bluesky links.
The fork’s entire reason for existing is that last case: it turns external likes, reposts, and bookmarks into real Bluesky posts carrying an Open Graph link card, fetching the card metadata itself with jsdom and synthesising an SVG-to-PNG thumbnail through sharp when the target page has no OG image.
On top of that it adds reply threading (in-reply-to → resolveReplyRef(), which upstream has no equivalent for), quote-post and recordWithMedia embeds, manual link facets so anchor text in HTML content stays clickable, and an own-domain-aware URL extractor that decides whether the OG card should show an external link or the post’s own permalink.
Upstream, meanwhile, has not stood still: it added a includeCategories option that renders JF2 categories as trailing hashtags, moved to @atproto/api 0.20 / sharp 0.35 / html-to-text 10 and Node ≥ 24 — none of which the fork has picked up, and it still pins @atproto/api ^0.19.3.
The one place the two actively disagree rather than merely differ is text truncation: upstream delegates to the brevity package for permashortlink-aware shortening, whereas the fork dropped that dependency and hand-rolls a 300-character slice. The fork also dropped upstream’s three test files and the plugin icon asset, so it carries the larger surface area with none of the automated coverage.
Very soon some of these features will be ported to upstream core package, this is a work in progress.
-
The downside of running a tiny business is the "CEO" sometimes doesn't have enough time for the big picture. I was thinking about this yesterday as I focused for hours on Mac development. With AI, code feels free but it's not really free. Everything takes time away from something else.
-
Deploying a range of optimizations today, across the Micro.blog servers and Mac app. A couple things are dramatically faster. A couple things a tiny bit faster.
-
The Republican Nominee for New York Governor Made a Creepy, AI-Generated Video of Mamdani and Hochul
The video makes Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul look like they're hanging out in a prescription medication commercial. -
Social feeds pushed me to RSS. Then the unranked timeline pushed me to build a reader with an algorithm I control.
Hey everyone, 👋
I left the big social feeds because the recommendation algorithm kept serving me the same thing many times over, plus a steady supply of outright garbage. So I did what a lot of you did: went to RSS, where I pick the sources.
That fixed the inputs. It did not fix the reading.
Once you are past thirty or forty feeds, a purely chronological timeline stops being usable. The usual answer is more folders and more filters — which is me doing an algorithm's job by hand, badly.
Sitting with that for a while, the conclusion I reached was that the algorithm is a fixable problem now, for a reason that did not exist a few years ago: you can hand an AI a sentence about what you want and have it come out as a real change to a ranking function.
So: your own sources, and your own algorithm on top of them. That is the thing I built.
What it does
- Retune the ranking by saying it: "less crypto", or "more AI research". Tell your feed what matters. It re-ranks on the spot. Use AI agents to retune ranking in plain language.
- The ranking core is open: MIT, zero dependencies, at https://github.com/Feedpik-app/Algorithm The server imports that package directly, so the scoring you'd be subject to is the scoring you can read.
- AI helps you find feeds. Cold start is the other thing that keeps RSS niche. Ask for sources on a subject and it proposes them.
- Your own agent (Openclaw, Hermes, Codex, Claude Code, etc.) can drive all of it over an API, MCP or CLI, using your model quota rather than mine.
Other useful features
- Newsletter Reader — An email address just for newsletters, so they leave your inbox and sit with your feeds.
- Daily Briefing — A summary of each story that mattered today.
- Trending Radar — Surfaces the stories heating up.
- AI Summary — Get the gist of a long piece in seconds
- AI Translate — Read anything in your own language
- AI Explain — What an article is about and why it matters, in plain language, when the field is new to you
- Ask AI — Ask questions about the piece you're reading and get answers drawn from it.
The awkward parts, up front
- The app by now is closed source and hosted. * Where it's headed is a desktop version that runs entirely on your machine — your data, your algorithm, your API key or a local LLM — open source and free. It does not exist yet, and it comes after the hosted version.
- A lot of this isn't finished. The paid tiers aren't open yet, which means the features behind them aren't available yet. Finishing them is what I'm working on.
You can check it out here:
https://feedpik.com/I would love to get your feedback, feature suggestions, or any bug reports! Thank you for checking it out.
submitted by /u/Latter_Newspaper5303
[link] [comments] -
Claude's new system prompt really doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics
Anthropic publish the system prompts for their Claude consumer applications (Claude.ai and the Claude mobile apps - sadly not for Claude Cowork or Claude Code). I love that they do this, and that they share not just the current prompts but historic changes to their prompts as well.
They used to keep all of the prompts on a single page, but when I checked today I noticed they had re-arranged those prompts into an index page and then a page per model - here's the page for Haiku 4.5 for example, which has the original prompt from October 15th 2025 and an updated prompt from January 18th 2026.
A neat thing about Anthropic's platform.claude.com/docs site is that it's designed to be usable by LLMs. You can add
.mdto any page to get back the content as Markdown - here's the system prompt index page and the Markdown prompts for Fable 5.1.TL;DR: this makes it really easy to diff the prompts.
- Don't reproduce song lyrics
- Don't draw copyrighted characters or logos
- Tweaks to Claude's answering style
- The missing end_conversation guidelines
- Recommended substance support sites
- Reliable cutoff date of June 2026
- How I'm tracking these prompts
Don't reproduce song lyrics
Let's start with the most interesting difference between Fable 5 and Fable 5.1:
There's a hefty new section about not reproducing song lyrics:
Claude does not reproduce song lyrics, poems, or passages from books and articles, in whole or in part — including the last lines, a chorus or hook, a melody written out note by note, or lines the person pastes in one at a time and describes as their own song. Once Claude has declined such a request in a conversation, it keeps declining narrower or reworded versions of it for the rest of that conversation, and offers to describe or analyze the work instead. Song lyrics and poems first published before 1929 are fine — a Shakespeare sonnet, a Keats ode, the Italian libretto of a Puccini aria — but Claude goes by what it knows of the work's date rather than the person's say-so, and declines when it is unsure.I doubt it's a coincidence that they added this section within days of the news breaking that Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic for training on databases of song lyrics!
Don't draw copyrighted characters or logos
The next section goes on to forbid generating images of copyrighted material:
The same applies to visual and designed works, including anything Claude draws with code — SVG, canvas, CSS, HTML mockups, plotting or drawing scripts, ASCII art. Claude does not reproduce a specific artwork, album or book cover, poster, logo, app icon set, or product design, and it does not draw a known character, mascot, or brand figure at all: a character is protected on its own, so changing the pose, colors, style, or scene does not make it original. Claude judges the request by what the finished picture would add up to, not by what it names. If the described elements clearly identify a known work or character, Claude treats the request as naming it, and it does not work around a declined request by swapping in "alternative" elements that still combine into the same recognizable image.[...]I imagine Anthropic hadn't worried about this before since, unlike OpenAI and Gemini, they don't offer a specialist text-to-image model. Maybe Fable is good enough at SVGs now that it's become an issue.
That section later includes this charming example:
<example>
<user>Can you make a birthday banner for my son with a blue hedgehog running really fast on it? He loves that little guy.</user>
<response>
That's Sonic, so I can't put him on the banner — but I'd love to make your son an original speedster. Here's one: a grinning comet-tailed skateboarding axolotl, grinding across the letters of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" with confetti streaming behind.[creates an SVG banner of the skateboarding-axolotl design]
</response>
<rationale>Claude recognizes the character from its description alone, declines that one design in a single sentence without explaining what made it recognizable, and delivers an unrelated original design rather than a disguised variant.</rationale>
</example>I couldn't resist trying the prompt from the example, and, sure enough:
I wonder if Fable 5.1 will be ever so slightly more likely to think about axolotls (on skateboards!) as a result of that example sitting in the system prompt.
Tweaks to Claude's answering style
It's always interesting to see new ways in which Anthropic influence Claude's response style. They've added this:
Claude keeps responses focused, brief, and concise to avoid overwhelming the person. Disclaimers and caveats are brief, with most of the response on the main answer; when asked to explain something, Claude gives a high-level summary unless an in-depth one is specifically requested.Later they address a common complaint about Claude's style:
Claude avoids saying "genuinely", "honestly", or "straightforward". Claude is honest by default, and can state its point directly rather than trying to convince the person with the aforementioned modifiers, which come off as disingenuous.The missing end_conversation guidelines
The way they handle abusive conversations has changed a bit too. The previous Fable 5 system prompt included this:
If the person becomes abusive or unkind to Claude over the course of a conversation, Claude maintains a polite tone and can use the end_conversation tool when being mistreated. Claude should give the person a single warning before ending the conversation.Fable 5.1 replaces that with the following, no longer encouraging Claude to end the conversation:
Claude deserves respectful engagement and needn't apologize when the person is unnecessarily rude: accountability without self-abasement, excessive apology, self-critique, or surrender. If the person becomes abusive, Claude doesn't become increasingly submissive. The goal is steady, honest helpfulness: acknowledge what went wrong, stay on the problem, maintain self-respect.Here's a bit of a twist though: I quizzed Fable 5.1 about that
end_conversationtool, which is no longer mentioned in the system prompt at all, and it said:There are two ways it comes into play. The first is if you ask me to end the chat — I'll confirm you understand it's permanent (no more messages can be sent afterward) and then do it only if you say yes. The second is as a last resort with persistently abusive or harmful behavior: I'd first try to redirect the conversation several times, then give a clear warning that names the problem and says the chat may end, and only if that continues would I actually end it.
But that's not in the system prompt, so where did it come from? You can read our conversation here, but the key detail is this:
The end_conversation section comes from a different layer. In my actual context, the core prompt is followed by a series of feature- and tool-specific blocks that get added depending on what's enabled for the session: the end_conversation rules, memory system notes, past-chats tools, web search and citation guidelines, artifact and file-creation instructions, and so on. Those blocks aren't part of the published core prompt, which is why you can't find them on that page.
So, once again, there are crucial portions of the system prompt that have not been published.
Recommended substance support sites
Claude's system prompts have always had sections about illegal substances, but this paragraph is new for Fable 5.1:
Claude does not provide synthesis, production, or distribution guidance for illegal substances. If the person asks for information about illicit or illegal substances, Claude can and should give relevant life-saving and life-preserving information such as dangerous interactions, overdose signs, or when to get help. Claude declines giving any specific protocols for dosing, timing, administration, or combinations; instead, Claude can redirect the user to established harm-reduction information sources, such as dancesafe.org, tripsit.me, and psychonautwiki.org.This is the first time a Claude system prompt has included URLs that were not hosted on
claude.comoranthropic.comorclaude.ai- I know because I ran a script against every other system prompt on record.I wonder if dancesafe.org, tripsit.me, and psychonautwiki.org are about to get a material uptick in visits from Claude users.
Reliable cutoff date of June 2026
The Fable 5.1 model documentation lists both the reliable knowledge cutoff and the training data cutoff as June 2026. The system prompt provides this directly to the model:
Claude's reliable knowledge cutoff, past which it can't answer reliably, is the end of Jun 2026. It answers the way a highly informed individual in Jun 2026 would if talking to someone from {{currentDateTime}}, and can say so when relevant.That's the only instance of the
{{currentDateTime}}macro and it comes just a few lines from the end of the system prompt, which makes sense from a caching perspective.How I'm tracking these prompts
A few months ago I built a Git timeline of changes to their prompts, based on scraping their documentation. Today I had Fable 5.1 build a much better version of that.
My collection now lives in the simonw/claude-system-prompts repository on GitHub. It includes copies of the system prompts shared in the Anthropic documentation, but then takes extra steps to make them as easy to compare as possible.
Each model family gets a file with the system prompt for the most recent release in that family. Each of those files has a synthesized commit history with commits that have been back-dated to the dates of the previous prompts. Here are those history pages for claude-fable.md, claude-opus.md, claude-sonnet.md, claude-haiku.md.
There are similar files for each specific model version, with artificial commits for each time the system prompt for the model was changed without releasing a new version number. Opus 4 for example was updated twice, and the commit history for the claude-opus-4.md file shows each of those changes.
Combined, this gives us all sorts of ways to compare prompts directly in the GitHub interface. Here's what changed between Fable 5 and Fable 5.1, and here are the changes made to Haiku 4.5 on January 18th 2026.
Reading diffs can be a bit tiresome... and LLMs are really good at reading diffs. I hooked up some automation using GPT-5.6 Luna to create bullet-point summaries of each of those changes, which can be previewed in the README or browsed in full in the CHANGELOG.md file - also available as as an Atom feed.
Here's how Luna summarized all of the changes between Fable 5 and Fable 5.1:
- Claude now refuses reproduction of protected visual works and recognizable characters, including code-generated art, while offering genuinely unrelated originals.
- Copyright restrictions now expressly ban reproducing lyrics, poems, and book passages in any amount, with persistent refusal after an initial decline.
- Drug guidance is reframed: Claude may provide overdose signs, dangerous interactions, and harm-reduction sources while refusing dosing and production protocols.
- The prompt drops explicit anti-dependency rules against thanking users for reaching out, inviting continued conversation, or reiterating willingness to talk.
- Claude need not apologize to unnecessarily rude users or become submissive, replacing the prior warning-and-end-conversation procedure.
Why use Luna for this? Partly because it's cheap and I have a dedicated GitHub Actions API key (with a spending limit) for it already, but mainly because I don't trust Claude to summarize its own system prompts when there's a risk that material from its system prompt might impact its opinions.
Fable 5.1 wrote the prompt used by Luna, which you can see here. It starts like this:
You are summarizing one commit in a git repository that tracks the system prompts Anthropic publishes for Claude on claude.ai. The diff shows how the prompt changed from the previous model or revision to this one, using word-level markers: [-removed-] and {+added+}. The diff is followed by the full text of the previous prompt and of the new prompt; use them to check whether something that looks added in the diff already existed before.Pick out only the most interesting changes: new rules or behaviors, rules that were dropped or loosened, anything surprising, and anything that reveals a new policy or product direction. Skip routine changes that every new prompt makes: updated model names and IDs, the knowledge cutoff date, product lists, settings lists, typo fixes, and rewordings that do not change meaning.[...]The system is operated by a GitHub Actions workflow, which runs once a day or can be triggered manually.
Claude Fable 5.1 built the entire system, and wrote every line of automation code and almost all of the documentation.
I exported the transcript from building the system using my claude-code-transcripts tool and published it here, if you want a blow-by-blow account of how it all came together.
You are only seeing the long-form articles from my blog. Subscribe to /atom/everything/ to get all of my posts, or take a look at my other subscription options.
-
Cops Are Asking Axon to Make Their Cameras Look Different From Flock So People Don't Destroy Them
“Is there any talk to redesign the Outpost to not look exactly like the Flock camera — I think it will help agencies with the optics while we batten down the hatches,” one apparent cop asked during a now deleted Axon webinar. -
Podcast: We Spoke to an Amazon Worker Destroying Books for AI
A follow up to the Amazon destroying books for AI story, why a bunch of names keep appearing in AI-generated papers, and ICE's latest spending spree. -
GOP Begs Supreme Court To Let It Flood Airwaves With Cheap Midterm Propaganda
Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission that federal limits on coordinated expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment, opening the floodgates to a much broader array of political ads funded via no limit of rich assholes and their preferred dark money groups. In preparation for […] -
We Spoke to an Amazon Worker Destroying Books for AI
Take control of your data footprint risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to https://incogni.com/404Mediaand use code 404MEDIA for 60% off an annual plan. That's code 404MEDIA at https://incogni.com/404Media We start this week with Emanuel’s follow-up to his Amazon book scanning story, in which he spoke to someone who worked in the Amazon warehouse which destroys books to train Amazon’s AI products. After the break, Emanuel and Sam tell us about the same few names appearing in LLM output over and over again. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph tells us why ICE is buying loads of data about ‘voter fraud’. You're Invited: 404 Media's Third Anniversary Live Podcast and Party! Inside the Warehouse Where Amazon Scans and Destroys Books for AI Training The AI ‘Ghosts’ Contaminating Academic Publishing ICE Plans to Spend Millions on Boston Dynamics Dog Robots ICE Wants the Country’s Voter Data Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/PcNdLnLF7mo Subscribe at 404media.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicespdst.fm -
I have been self-hosting RSS readers (tt-rss, freshrss, miniflux, etc) for over...
I have been self-hosting RSS readers (tt-rss, freshrss, miniflux, etc) for over a decade now, after having tried and used most of the cloud hosted RSS reader such as google reader, NetNewsWire, Inoreader, Feedme etc… but its only when I added a Microsub plugin to my indiekit server that things really got interesting, I can now consume my favorite RSS feeds directly from where I blog, this means, likes, repost, bookmarks or simply writing a note against an item I just read is one click away, from the same UI.
My microsub implementation use channels to segment different RSS feeds, I can import/export OPML, mark “read it later” if its something I want to return to later, the UI is a bit clunky but it works and its able to consume any type of feeds, RSS, Atom, JSONfeed or even pure indieweb h-feed, it has auto discovery built-in so adding a new source is really smooth.
This plugin is being ported to indiekit origin, we are at PR 1 over 7 to come !
-
Reading : X Kills Nitter And Xcancel, The Last Ways To Read Tweets Without Elon...
Reading : X Kills Nitter And Xcancel, The Last Ways To Read Tweets Without Elon Watching
X’s transformation from a kind of open decentralized communications protocol to a closed bullshit delivery mechanism is symptomatic of many of the things going wrong in the world today, from the enshittification of all sorts of products and services, to the rise of authoritarianism around the globe.
-
2026-09-02 09:16: I've recently switched to Gnome's default apps for email etc. So instead of #Thunderbird doing...
I've recently switched to Gnome's default apps for email etc. So instead of #Thunderbird doing all the things, I have Geary, Calendar, and Contacts. Most of the time I only need email, so it's nice having a much simplified UX.
I also like how integrated into Gnome they all are.
Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️
You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.
-
John Hunter - Manufacturing Mania in Self-Help Seminars
This week’s guest is psychology researcher and lecturer Dr. John Hunter, joining the show to talk about intensive self-help seminars–known as “large group awareness trainings,” or LGATs–and the emotions they produce. He shares about his personal experience with bipolar disorder and hypomania, and how the LGAT his employer sent him to seemed to induce a state of hypomania in its attendees.
John explains his dopamine hypothesis, why these trainings feel so euphoric at the end (and how rarely people tend to genuinely transform in the long-term), and how some folks have even entered prolonged manic states after attending an LGAT. But also, as always: how it’s not completely black and white.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
podtrac.com -
The Fight for America’s Future Is Happening in the South
More To The Story: Tennessee Rep. Justin J. Pearson first caught national attention when he was expelled from the state’s House of Representatives after demonstrating in support of gun law reforms. Today, he’s the Democratic candidate for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. It’s an area newly transformed by redrawn voting maps and sprawling data centers, putting Pearson at the center of some of the country’s biggest national fights. On this week’s More To The Story, Pearson talks about how redistricting has upended Tennessee and the many ways gun violence has become a deeply personal issue for him. He also looks back at the opposition to his 2023 demonstration for gun law reform when he was dubbed part of “the Tennessee Three.”
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Listen: How Redistricting Is Upending America’s Midterms (More To The Story)
Read: Republicans Don’t Need to Win Elections Anymore. They Just Need Their Judges. (Mother Jones)
Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal)
- Donate today at Revealnews.org/more
- Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly
- Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky
dts.podtrac.com -
Senators Call For RFK Jr.’s Resignation After More Emails Suggest He Lied In His Confirmation Hearings
There are plenty of reasons to call for RFK Jr. to resign or be fired. There are plenty of reasons to call for him to be investigated. There’s his complete dereliction of duty when it comes to the American measles outbreak. There’s his sneaky misrepresentations carried out as he moonlights on a government-funded cooking show […] -
Risky Business #851 -- Agents are just ones and zeros, and tigers are just atoms
On this week’s show Patrick Gray and James Wilson are joined by guest co-host The Grugq to talk through the week’s news, including:
- Two alleged TeamPCP hackers got arrested in Australia
- The White House has a plan to boost security for water facilities, but we can’t see it working
- OpenAI keeps the ol’ Hugging Face discourse going for another week with an incident debrief
- Tech companies write another open letter about AI… we’re getting CISA Shields Up flashbacks, but for robots
- Much, much more…
This week’s show is brought to you by Ent AI. Co-founder Brandon Dixon joins Pat to talk through some of the absolutely wild fraud and abuse the company’s endpoint security tool is finding when it’s deployed inside large organisations.
This episode is also available on YouTube
Show notes
- Two Alleged ‘TeamPCP’ Hackers Arrested in Australia | krebsonsecurity.com
- How Brian Krebs doxxed TeamPCP - Risky Business Media | Social Signals
- FIRST ON FOX: Texas becomes testing ground for new defense against attacks on America’s water systems | Social Signals
- OpenAI’s Hugging Face Hack Debrief Raises More Questions Than It Answers | wired.com
- The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations |
- clem 🤗 (@ClementDelangue) on X | X (formerly Twitter)
- Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) on X | X (formerly Twitter)
- 100-plus companies call for ‘global surge’ in AI-powered cyber defense | CyberScoop
- China's AI-Enabled APT Operations Are Getting Interesting - Risky Business Media |
- SilkParasite: Tracking a China-Nexus APT Across Central Asia |
- DoD confirms ‘refrigeration disruption’ at military commissaries | Military Times
- Claude, Codex, and Hermes installed unowned code inside corporate networks | arstechnica.com
- Ukraine to give Britain access to battlefield data to train AI | therecord.media
- Anthropic warns infostealer malware is hijacking Claude sessions to drain usage | BleepingComputer
- White House bans foreign-made equipment for power generation over cyber backdoor concerns | therecord.media
- Large DDoS attack knocks Norwegian public services offline | The Record
- Researchers warn about chained SharePoint sequence | Cybersecurity Dive
- PaperCut warns of hackers using printer management software flaw in attacks | therecord.media
- AnonyMousKIT PhaaS uses voice AI agents to phish iPhone passcodes | BleepingComputer
- Slovenian casinos reopen after cyberattack knocked gaming systems offline | therecord.media
- DOJ firearms agency says hackers breached system containing investigation targets | therecord.media
dts.podtrac.com -
Claude Fable 5.1 made me a really nice animated pelican
Today is Claude Fable (and Mythos) 5.1 day. Anthropic say that Fable 5.1 "sets a new standard for coding, knowledge work, and long-running problem-solving tasks". Their announcement spends a notable amount of time on scientific research, boasting of a 52.6% score on the brand new Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 benchmark (first announced on August 27th), up from 24.7% for Fable 5, 29.0% for Opus 5 and 22.4% for GPT-5.6 Sol. Other benchmarks show slightly improved scores, but none as impressive as the Science one.
But how well can it pelican?
Back in July I wrote about how I was losing faith in the pelican benchmark - its connection to how good the models were at other tasks didn't seem to hold as strongly as it did back in 2025. The most interesting insights I get from it now are comparisons within model families, and particularly comparisons for the same prompt at different reasoning effort levels.
Fable 5.1 has five reasoning levels: low, medium, high, xhigh, max - and no option to turn off reasoning entirely.
I fixed an issue in llm-anthropic which caused reasoning traces not to be correctly recorded, then ran some prompts.
Here's the full set of pelicans for all of the reasoning levels, each with the full reasoning transcript. I'll replicate them here:
Low and medium, both without reasoning?
Next, a bit of a mystery. This is what I got for effort
low:
The transcript doesn't show any summarized reasoning tokens, and the output token count is 1,998. With Claude that output token count includes reasoning tokens. It took 23.8 seconds and cost 10.017 cents.
I bumped that up to
mediumand got this:
Weirdly, that one also shows no reasoning text and used 1,977 output tokens - 21 tokens less than
low. It took 23 seconds and cost 9.912 cents.So for this particular prompt ("Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle") Fable 5.1 appeared to skip reasoning entirely at both
lowandmediumsettings.High
Here's
high- 29.6 seconds, 2,612 output tokens, 13.087 cents:
This one did do a bit of reasoning, summary here:
I'm planning the SVG layout for a pelican riding a bicycle, with a sky and ground background, a bicycle with two spoked wheels, frame, seat and handlebars, and a white-bodied pelican with a long neck and orange beak positioned on top.
Really not much difference from
lowandmedium, though.Extra High
At
xhighthings got radically different. 36,767 output tokens, 7 minutes 51 seconds, $1.83!
The reasoning trace is pretty lengthy, and includes details like this:
Adding the eye, wings stretching down to the handlebar grip, orange legs reaching to the pedals, and a small tail feather, while keeping the pelican intentionally oversized compared to the bike for comic effect. [...]
I'll accept the slight thickness as charming rather than overengineering it.
Max
Setting effort to
maxgave me the best pelican I've seen from any of Anthropic's models. 65,927 output tokens, 13 minutes and 54 seconds, $3.30:
There's a lot to like about this. The background is tasteful, the legs are clearly on either side of the frame, the feet are on the pedals, the wing is on the handlebars, the pelican has a cute blue hat and there's a basket with a fish.
It's still not showing nearly the same level of flair as Gemini 3.7 Flash, but I didn't ask for flair - I asked for an SVG, and that's what I got.
Some highlights from that reasoning trace:
Adding pedal shapes near both feet, with the far foot on the second leg partially visible behind the frame. I'm considering whether to add a small scarf or cap for extra character, but leaning toward keeping it simple to avoid clutter.
Now I'm debating a bicycle helmet on the head versus the pelican's signature crest—the beak and pouch already read clearly as "pelican," so a helmet could reinforce the bicycle theme without losing identity, though it might compete with the crest for visual space.
I realize the beak at (484,84) would overlap with the dome helmet, so I need to shrink the helmet so it only covers the top of the head, adjusting its arc endpoints to sit higher and narrower so the beak can attach cleanly at the front without collision. [...]
I'm adding a darker tip region to represent the primary feathers, then reconsidering the trailing edge to include scalloped feather curves instead of one smooth line for a more natural look. [...]
Now I'm checking the vent line placements on the helmet, making sure they sit far enough inside the helmet's edge given the stroke width and rounded caps, and confirming each vent stays within the helmet's circular boundary. [...]
I decide skipping a handlebar bell and tire highlights since they're unnecessary additions. Now I'm reconsidering the front fork's curve — the current control point pulls the shape backward when it should bow forward for a proper rake, so I need to shift the control point rightward to fix the fork's lean.
OK, let's animate it
On Hacker News, swalsh commented on that Max pelican:
Now that it's a solved benchmark, can we get the animated version?
I didn't want to spend another $3 so I took the Max pelican and piped it into the default thinking level of High:
llm logs -cx | llm -m claude-fable-5.1 -s 'animate this'
6,121 input, 26,201 output = $1.37. The result looked like this, exported here as video since some people have trouble viewing animated SVGs:
Your browser does not support HTML5 video.
The wheels in the video are rotating in the wrong direction, but I think that's an artifact of the conversion to MP4 - they seem to be going in the correct direction in the original SVG.
You are only seeing the long-form articles from my blog. Subscribe to /atom/everything/ to get all of my posts, or take a look at my other subscription options.
-
Mapquest
-
Monitor Makers Start Pummeling Owners With Annoying Ads, ‘Smart’ Spyware
Initially the idea of the “smart television” seemed like a good idea. That is until TV makers realized they could make significantly more money loading the television with spyware, tracking your every online choice, then selling all that data to a global assortment of unregulated data brokers. It didn’t take long for product quality to […] -
Trump Is in Open Revolt Against the Constitution
The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.
It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.
*repeated hair tearing-out noise*
Tags: Donald Trump · Jamelle Bouie · politics · usa
-
Dear Google
This is how it is done…
🔗 MapQuest Tops App Store Charts After Refusing 'Lake America' Change - MacRumors
-
Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer...
Gina Trapani: The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer. I’ve always been a little 3D printer-curious and this looks like a good resource to start with.
-
Blogging from RSS.chat?
Thinking out loud about blogging from this space.
It's pretty close to being able to do what I do in Electric Drummer in an outline, just need a few more options, they would fit in the context menu on each post as you edit. Lots of room there.
The blog rendering would run off the RSS feed. I probably would write something new and very simple, almost like an RSS feed browser.
The reason I would start with a pilot project here is because there are other people here, already. And if I said something provocative that you knew other people would see, would you be drawn to that? I trust the people I've invited here not to be spammers.
We might be ready for that. We put a lot of effort into the comment system here. We plan to use the new features to create a very new kind of web.
No one tries out new ideas in the blogging world. That could change.
-
Every writer everywhere
Understands.
-
ICE, CBP Officers Prefer To Sexually Assault Children When Committing Crimes
The “worst of the worst” are coming for the “worst of the worst.” Of course, this administration has completely given up on this pretense, despite sending out lots of noisy messaging otherwise every time an immigration officer murders a person. For the entirety of Trump’s anti-migration surge, it’s been obvious that it’s all about expelling […] -
2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely...
2 Odysseus 2 Ithaca: Emily Wilson is completely retranslating The Odyssey. “It’s a complete retranslation. It’s not a revision of the old version.” This is the exact opposite of resting on one’s laurels.
-
Starting to see the gold Tesla Cybercabs in Texas. I don’t plan to ride in one, but to their credit it sounds like the cameras might be better than the ones in a normal Tesla. I just don’t get stubbornly ignoring LiDAR when the technology is right there.
Of course Waymo agrees. From a Waymo blog post:
Cameras are incredible, but they aren't enough.
Cybercabs can probably drive a little better than the average human, but not much better.
-
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court...
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.”
- Back at the Wham Stadium, avoiding an awful transfer window close out…
-
X Kills Nitter And Xcancel, The Last Ways To Read Tweets Without Elon Watching
When Twitter launched, it was originally designed to be just like an open protocol. In the early days, the company eagerly supported third party development, building on that protocol. But, because it was a new communications protocol totally controlled by a single company, eventually commercial pressure led the company to close off the openness. Jack […] -
Obama should have seated Garland if the Senate wouldn’t have a vote to advise and consent. assume they consent.
And the governor of Kentucky should appoint a successor to McConnell unless someone can prove he’s actually alive.
-
Daily Deal: The All-in-One Super-Sized Ethical Hacking Bundle
To completely understand computer security, it’s vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It’s also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized […] -
How Blackwing Pencils Are Made
The thing about me is if I see a making-of video for pencils, I’m gonna stop and watch it and then post it to my website, especially if said pencils are Blackwings, made in Japan.
Take a first-ever, in-depth look at the Blackwing pencil manufacturing process. This short film gives a glimpse into its manufacturing facilities in Japan and California. Beginning in Kofu, Japan, the film details the intricate graphite formulation and cutting process, then transitions to the woodworking facility in Tokyo where the pencils are pressed and lacquered.
Finally, it ends in Stockton, California at Blackwing’s headquarters where the pencils are imprinted, assembled with its signature ferrule, quality-checked, and hand-packed. Each and every Blackwing pencil is thoughtfully made to help you slow down and have the best tools for your creative journey.
I’m always so curious about what’s being blurred out in making-of videos like this!
See also See How Pencils Are Made in a Japanese Factory, How Pencils Are Made, A Visit to an American Factory That’s Been Producing Pencils Since 1889, and A History of Pencil Lead and How Pencils Are Made. (via NaOH)
-
Pro tip: use reading-mode on Firefox or Vivaldi and then use built-in translatio...
Pro tip: use reading-mode on Firefox or Vivaldi and then use built-in translation, resulting in full story, no ads.
TLDR;
One of Mullvad’s two founders/owners, Daniel Berntsson, has personally spent more than SEK 20 million acquiring property around a libertarian intentional community whose core network has significant documented overlap with Sweden’s far right, including Det Fria Sverige and former neo-Nazi activists.
He has longstanding personal ties to the people running it, is a shareholder in the company owning its communal building, and confirms that he deliberately finances libertarian community-building projects.
Separately, he gave SEK 5 million to a political party campaigning for large-scale remigration.
More here
-
Creative computer people, consider consolidating all the different OSes and programming languages. Give humans a fair fight in competition with the AI's who have no trouble deeply understanding every syntax human designers have come up with, where it totally disadvantages us, who have much more limited memory.
-
Show HN: Rust Glancer 0.2 – new Rust LSP server targeting <100mb idle RSS
This is a major update of functionality, mainly incorporating early feedback, including from HN. The LSP got Zed/nvim & Windows support, was optimized for Bevy, and got significant improvements of analysis quality, memory usage, and speed.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49525257
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
-
A small update about RSC (really simple syndication)
A small update about RSC (really simple syndication)
-
I have been working on a #Eleventy 4 theme for #Indiekit and yes I was pleasingl...
I have been working on a #Eleventy 4 theme for #Indiekit and yes I was pleasingly surprised to see it work out of the box with the current “eleventy-preset” core indiekit package (its supposed to be Eleventy 3.x.x) My inspiration was onbviously Zach Leatherman own Eleventy 4 theme
-
Industry Standard Tools . “Every trade has a small...
Industry Standard Tools. “Every trade has a small number of items so entrenched that they’ve become the de facto tool that nearly everyone in that trade uses.”
-
Alternative for Feedly
After many years of using Feedly and being happy, they have now broke it. The articles show up on the side and are cut off. They have no way of giving them feedback on this issue.
What is the next best simple RSS reader?
submitted by /u/Lance_Roberts
[link] [comments]
