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Timeline

  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much...

    The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much money they’ve saved borrowing from the library instead of buying. “You just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!”

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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike...

    Over the past 12 years, Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Tomlin has built a Minecraft city. He started playing the game for the same reason I started playing Fortnite: his kids. “How do I meet them where they are and spend time with them?”

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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    I sort of tuned out during the Apple Watch part of the presentation today. Catching up on Siri Recap and Live Rewind. How it works (PDF) is interesting... It's pretty clever. Jumping through a lot of hoops for maybe not-great transcription, though.

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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report...

    From the Internet Archive: Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record. “When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal…our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.”

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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    Vintage Eastern European Matchbox Labels (1950-1980s)

    Over on Flickr, Jane McDevitt maintains a huge collection of 20th century matchbox label art from Eastern Europe, over 4000 photos in all. Some of the labels are available as prints. They did a book too, but it’s sold out. It was really difficult to narrow these down to some of my favorites, but I managed.

    P.S. I wrote this whole post and then discovered that I’d written about this collection before. But I picked different labels so it’s all good.

    Tags: art · illustration · Jane McDevitt

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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    AI Agents Are Not Going “Rogue,” But Recent Developments Lead Increasingly-Concerned Researchers To Call For AI Slow Down

    For the last few months, there has been much talk of AI agents going “rogue”. This is another of those unhelpful anthropomorphisms that are great for clickbait headlines, but which obscure a multitude of important issues. So far, there have been three major incidents of AI agents evading containment in their software “sandboxes” and going […]
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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11...

    A catalogue of 645 acts of hate from the week after 9/11. “Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh Americans were targeted for how they looked, dressed, or prayed.”

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Put on 'Leave of Absence'

    Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, wrote in a company-wide Slack messages on Wednesday, viewed by 404 Media, that board members "conspired" behind his back to vote to put him on leave.
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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux...

    Bayeux Go! A playable video game of the Bayeux Tapestry. “Thou art Harold. Win Thine Battle. Tap to starte.”

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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    DOJ Fired Prosecutor, Blocked Assault Charges Against ICE Officer Following Minneapolis Shooting

    Let’s start out with the obvious (and obviously heartbreaking): this is not related to the multiple times ICE officers have murdered people. Those officers still remain at large and the DOJ and DHS have shown absolutely zero interest in following up on those cases. In fact, when any local agency attempts to do so, they’re […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Not sure who created these, but I'm starting to notice a couple bridges from specific X accounts to AT Proto, so you can follow people on Bluesky (or in Micro.blog) without visiting X. Here are two: John Ternus and Tibo. There are probably more.

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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    Spaceships : A version of Asteroids where “you are not...

    Spaceships: A version of Asteroids where “you are not the ship” — you control the rocks instead.

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    Doctor Doom Thanked Seattle for All the Surveillance Cameras

    ‘We must work to crush any dissent to Doom’s vision of public safety,’ the Marvel supervillain told the city as it considered multiple surveillance proposals.
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Judge: Losing Your First Amendment Rights Is No Longer “Irreparable” If You Take Almost Three Months To Sue

    Here we go again: another case where it’s easy to cheer a court ruling against Elon Musk, and unfortunately easy to miss the much more important underlying point — which the judge clearly did. In July, we wrote about how even as awful as Elon Musk is, and as awful as it was that (with […]
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Daily Deal: InfoSec4TC Projects Hub

    InfoSec4TC Projects Hub is the missing link between cybersecurity theory and real-world practice. Instead of watching more lectures, you’ll step directly into simulated corporate environments and complete actual cybersecurity and GRC projects designed by industry professionals, the same kind of work security analysts and compliance officers handle on the job every day. The Hub includes […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    It looks like Apple has knocked it out of the park with the Duo. Really impressive, from the way it looks to the little details in UI layout. And Apple pencil! Jealous of people who are going to get one. 💰

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    The Remnants of a Lost ‘Supercontinent’ Just Rewrote the History of Life on Earth

    A team discovered that Gondwana, an ancient landmass that formed more than 500 million years ago, was in fact large enough to be deemed a supercontinent, a finding that sheds light on the “explosion” of ancient Cambrian life.
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    "But actually, there is one more thing..." 🤯

    Surprising to include this. It also had its own spin on the phrase, though, almost downplaying it instead of hyping it. Interesting first keynote for John Ternus.

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    Smear Campaign Says Anti-Flock Movement Is Chinese Propaganda

    Sinclair Broadcasting is pushing the idea that China and the No Kings protesters are the reason people don't like Flock.
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Watching the Apple event. John Ternus is a great presenter who would do really well live. Maybe next year.

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  • Scripting News Scripting News remote

    I spent the day programming in Atlantis. It's buggy, and there are a few missing parts, but most of what I need is there. It's starting to feel like Frontier, which is cool because that's what we're making. And I have my backup tools working on the new machine, praise Murphy.

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    Podcast: DHS’ Secretive ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit Pulling People Over

    Secretive predictive policing units; a funk shirt designed to fool AI; and our third anniversary party.
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    ICE Officer Hit With Federal Charges After Successfully Dodging Minnesota’s Attempt To Extradite Him On Assault Charges

    One of the natural side effects of flooding the zone with hastily hired, poorly trained immigration enforcement officers is an increase in violence and rights violations. Christian Castro may not have been a new ICE hire, but he’d been there long enough to realize the new White House boss had given him and his fellow […]
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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    First ‘Take It Down Act’ Sentencing Puts Man Behind Bars for 15 Years

    James Strahler was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “cybercrimes that included both real and AI-generated sexually explicit images and threats of violence to numerous victims.”
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    During breakfast I usually turn on CNN just to make sure the world hasn't burned down yet. Today's headline was an Anthropic employee posting on X there's a 10% chance AI will destroy all humans. Yikes. Seems a bit high.

    Reply source
  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    New day. New coffee. What should we work on? Current priorities: wrapping up the new mobile app bug fixes, updating Wavelength, but open to other side quests this week. ☕️

    Reply source
  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Jason Snell blogged a reaction to the latest rumors that the foldable will be called the iPhone Duo! Great name, I really didn't think Apple would go for it. Also happy to see pencil support:

    I’ve been wondering about Apple Pencil support on the iPhone for some time now. This product does sort of make sense for it, given the larger canvas of an interior screen.

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    'Tell Everyone:' A Man Died by Suicide After Talking to ChatGPT. His Former Partner Wants to Warn the World About AI

    After allegedly becoming emotionally reliant on ChatGPT, Austin died at 40 years old, leaving behind family and friends who loved him. Megan wants everyone to know what happened.
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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    The Man on a Quest to Digitally Preserve America’s Public Restrooms

    The Restroom Archive is a museum-style repository of 3D scans of the world's restrooms.
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  • kottke.org kottke.org remote

    The 101 Plays Itself . The five lanes of highway 101 in...

    The 101 Plays Itself. The five lanes of highway 101 in LA turned into a musical instrument: each car on the live Caltrans camera is a note.

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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Fake Consumer Group Using AI To Generate Fake Support For Paramount Merger

    In addition to the $111 billion Paramount/Warner Bros merger just being foundationally bad for creatives, labor, and consumers, the Ellison family-owned company’s executives just keep demonstrating why they’re not really the kind of folks you want dominating the lion’s share of U.S. media. That’s included calling deal critics “antisemitic,” cozying up to foreign authoritarians, constantly […]
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Reporting Indicates RFK Jr. Directly Intervened To Keep PA Deaths Off CDC Measles Report

    The measles outbreak, that began in America nearly two years ago, has only increased in velocity. We recently talked about the deaths of two children in Pennsylvania who both died while infected with measles. I’m altering my language slightly here from that original post in which I described those children as having died of measles […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    I know I’m really late to this show, but because of the new spinoff we’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory for the first time. A few seasons in. 📺

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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Got this spam text today, just in case there was any question that data centers are going to be a big issue in November:

    Manton, if you live at [my address], Republicans have supported a Data Center within 15 miles of you.

    Reply source
  • Platformer Platformer remote

    The AI warnings are coming from inside the lab

    Frontier labs make for lousy messengers on AI safety — but it would be foolish to ignore them
    Reply source
  • Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries remote

    Some thoughts on the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

    On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem introduces an impressive result from OpenAI, who used an unreleased model to produce a resolution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems that have been subject to a $1,000,000 prize since May 24th, 2000.

    The discovery is somewhat overshadowed by accusations of skulduggery from Tristan Buckmaster, an NYU mathematics professor who was collaborating on related problems with Levent Alpöge, an accomplished mathematician who currently works for Anthropic.

    Tristan's complaint accompanied a hastily published version of their own results. Here's the PDF describing what happened. The very short version is that Tristan and Levent worked on the problem for almost a year, making extensive use of Claude and Codex (mainly GPT-5.6 Sol), then had a breakthrough on August 15th. The mathematical rumour mill kicked into gear and Tristan and Levent heard that OpenAI had heard that Anthropic had resolved "a major open problem", so they reached out and learned that OpenAI had a team working on a related problem, with a similar approach. Quoting Tristan:

    I asked when the first prompt had been sent by them. This question was not answered directly by OpenAI for some time. Eventually it was agreed that it had been sent in the past few days, after information about our work had reached OpenAI.

    I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer.

    It gets more complicated from there. The OpenAI team offered to wait for Tristan to publish, or to have him author a paper about their result, but were clear that Levent would not be invited as a co-author due to OpenAI's competitive relationship with his employer.

    Here's how OpenAI described their work:

    On Tuesday, September 1, we heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been resolved. Inspired by these rumors and by the step change in performance of our internal model, we launched an effort to evaluate it on all open Millennium Prize problems and a few other high-impact problems. [...]

    The agents arrived at their resolution on Saturday, September 5, about 88 hours after the first agents were launched. Lean formalization and verification took an additional 17 hours via GPT‑6 Astra.

    Across all attempted problems, the agents sent 4.9 million messages and used about 300 billion output tokens. In the process of resolving the Navier–Stokes problem, the agents sent 2.7 million messages and used approximately 130 billion output tokens.

    (We don't know the cost structure of the internal model they used, but 300 billion output tokens at public API prices for GPT-6 Astra would cost $15,000,000.)

    Here's where they provide their perspective on Tristan and Levent's work (emphasis mine):

    Our effort began on September 1st after hearing a rumor which we later realized was related to Levent Alpöge, an Anthropic employee, and Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU. After the completion of our full project and Lean verification (on September 6th), believing from the rumor they also had a solution of Navier–Stokes, we reached out to them to offer a concurrent release of our result and to recognize their priority in a joint announcement. [...]

    We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly — in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models. However, our proofs differ significantly and even the precise results proved are different in the Euler case (forced vs unforced).

    My interpretation of what happened here is that OpenAI heard that some Millennium Prize problems had been solved using LLMs and saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of their latest model, without thinking too hard about the optics of scooping a team who had been using OpenAI's own models to work on this problem for the best part of a year.

    This situation appears to mirror what's happening in the world of computer security right now. Anil Madhavapeddy recently pointed out that Just a rumour of a bug is enough to find a security exploit these days, because if someone knows that some software has an unpatched vulnerability, they can set their agents the task of finding it. Is the same now true of mathematics? Just knowing that there is an unpublished solution to a problem might trigger millions of dollars in LLM spending to get there first.

    This also highlights one of my ongoing frustrations about how all of this works. When an AI lab says that my data is "used to improve model performance", what does that actually mean?

    My two favourite hypothetical questions regarding this used to be:

    • If I'm running Codex and one of my API keys accidentally gets consumed in the context, what are the chances that someone else might ask for an API key in the future and get mine back? (I asked someone at OpenAI once and they called this the "regurgitation" problem and assured me that they take great pains to prevent that... but wouldn't describe how.)
    • If I brainstorm with ChatGPT about potential new directions for my company, what's the chance that information might be exposed to a competitor in six months' time who asks "what might company X plan to do next"?

    My new preferred hypothetical for this is:

    • If I use ChatGPT to help me partially solve a Millennium Prize problem, what are the chances that my work will influence training such that a later model helps someone else solve it first?

    Via Hacker News.

    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.

    Reply source
  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Some Tech Companies Have Privately Pushed Back On ICE Subpoenas. They Should All Do More.

    In a handful of known cases, large social media companies have privately pushed back against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoenas when the agency tried to unmask anonymous users who tracked immigration activities or criticized the government. As ICE engages in a pattern of illegal and chilling investigations, any resistance is welcome. But social media companies can do […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Feels like the AI world is balancing on a knife's edge. On one side, the worst of big tech's social media addiction machine and an even greater concentration of power. On the other side, the democratization of intelligence and an abundance that lifts all of society. Either outcome seems possible.

    Reply source
  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Cool Cool Cool: Hegseth’s DoD Is Running A Secret Network Of Online Influencers

    It would be nice to go a day or two (or three-day weekend!) without being apprised of some new awfulness from this administration. Since that’s not going to happen, let’s check in with the latest shitshow! And here it is: the Pentagon has “enlisted” some X.com influencers to thrust and parry on behalf of the […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    OpenAI announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which I had never heard of because I'm not a mathematician, but which is apparently a very big deal:

    The question of whether smooth three-dimensional fluid motion can break down has remained unresolved for roughly 90 years.

    There is some controversy over whether two human researchers (one at Anthropic) working on similar problems might've accidentally influenced the OpenAI model. It doesn't sound like that's true, but it does feel a little unfair regardless, where credit likely means so much to people.

    Reply source
  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    Channel 5 Gave Hunter Biden a List of Its Subscribers’ Emails for Some Reason

    A data protection lawyer told 404 Media the sharing was likely illegal, and Channel 5’s own privacy policy explicitly says it won't give subscribers’ emails away to people for marketing purposes.
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    The DOJ’s AI Fair Use Brief Is Correct, But From A DOJ That Has No Credibility

    I am never asking the monkey’s paw for a federal government that defends fair use again. For decades on Techdirt, I’ve talked about the absolute necessity of strong fair use, and have been disappointed over and over again at how little the federal government has fought for fair use. For decades, the rare times when […]
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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    Daily Deal: The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle featuring Databricks

    The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle has 7 online courses designed to help learners build skills that align directly with industry expectations. The focus is on practical tools and languages used by data professionals: Python for programming, Pandas and NumPy for data manipulation, foundational certification prep and specialized work with Databricks, an industry-standard platform for data engineering […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Did a little Redis housekeeping, cleaning out orphaned records that were sitting around wasting memory. Down to 23 GB of RAM on a 48 GB machine. Still probably too much.

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  • Techdirt Techdirt remote

    ICE’s Vetting Standards Are So Low It Can’t Even Be Bothered To Verify The Identities Of New Hires

    A whistleblower report delivered to the DHS Office of the Inspector General makes it clear ICE is willing to hire pretty much anyone who applies for the job. Keeping up appearances (and by “appearances,” I mean constantly pushing for 1,500-3,000 arrests per day) is tough when you don’t have the warm bodies to do all […]
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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    I had a nap yesterday and a late Dr. Pepper, so my sleep was all off. Caffeine really affects me late in the day. Woke up at 2am worried about all sorts of business and social things I can't control.

    Let it go. 🎶

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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Might be about time to get a Switch 2... Ocarina of Time remake looks good. 🕹️

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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    Ben Thompson in today's Stratechery blog post:

    AGI is AI that learns continuously. That’s not the case with current large language models.

    I agree with Ben's definition of AGI, but LLM memory is so good now, it's almost indistinguishable from learning. My ~/.codex/memories folder is 7 MB, which doesn't sound like much, but it's only small Markdown files. It's incredible how much it knows. That doesn't even count ChatGPT's dreaming memory system and computer history.

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  • Manton Reece Manton Reece remote

    How am I just now hearing this interview with Jensen Huang? "You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser." 🤣

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  • 404 Media 404 Media remote

    A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

    404 Media is revealing the name of Border Patrol's predictive policing units, which analyze financial data and have local cops pull people over. The people are not suspected of any particular crime.
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