Human folly for 02026-01-15

older newer index

• Scaling agents (cursor.com):

  #Cursor’s attempts to get #AI #neural-networks to write software autonomously for weeks: lockfiles, planners and workers, etc. Suspiciously, the "fastrender" GitHub repo fails to compile. #toread

• You can just buy far UVC (jefftk.com):

  #UVC 222nm germicidal lamps are available off-the-shelf from "Aerolamp" for US$500 now.

• Pmc12387169 (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov):

  “Geopolymer Chemistry and Composition: A Comprehensive Review of Synthesis, Reaction Mechanisms, and Material Properties—Oriented with Sustainable Construction” #geopolymers #cements #materials #paper #toread

• 2026 Iran massacres (en.wikipedia.org):

  Oh shit. #Iran #politics #human-rights #news

• %D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1 %d8%aa%d9%88%d9%82%d8%b9 %d8%a7%d8%aa%d9%81%d8%a7%d9%82%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%aa %d8%a8%d9%85%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%84 %d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%82%d8%a9 %d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%aa%d8%ac%d8%af%d8%af%d8%a9 %d8%a8%d9%82%d9%8a%d9%85%d8%a9 18 %d9%85%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b1 %d8%af%d9%88%d9%84%d8%a7%d8%b1 (alarabiya.net):

  #news that #Egypt is going to build a couple gigawatts of #solar #energy production

• Iran appears to jam Starlink after shutting down comms networks (timesofisrael.com):

  #Iran jamming #Starlink to violate #human-rights with impunity. #censorship

• Maduro prediction market Polymarket Kalshi app (slate.com):

  #Polymarket #prediction-markets leaked the #USA kidnapping of #Maduro (president of #Venezuela) hours before it happened. #news #history

• Mantic Monday the monkeys paw curls (astralcodexten.com):

  #prediction-markets #news from this week, including a lot of #Polymarket cheating. “When I started this column in 2021, I dreamed of a time when there would be big legal prediction markets on important topics. That’s come true. There have been some small benefits, but not the epistemic wonderland I hoped for.” #toread

• Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models (arstechnica.com):

  apparently #USA #copyright requires #Anthropic to shred books if they want to scan them to train #neural-networks!

• 17 Inlining the ultimate optimisation (xania.org):

  #Godbolt on the inlining optimization in #compilers.

• SSD benchmarks hierarchy (tomshardware.com):

  #SSD #performance is apparently over 14 gigabytes per second now!

• Why products fail lessons learned by Brian (old.reddit.com):

  Brian #Norgard of Norgould and Tinder about “why products fail” #toread #tourism

• Diss awards (sigsac.org):

  list of #ACM SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Awards “for Outstanding PhD Thesis in Computer and Information #Security” #toread

• Introducing GovOps Mike Schwartz oitkc (linkedin.com):

  Introducing #GovOps (Mike Schwartz, Rohit Khare, Andor Kesselman). “Legacy governance assumed a world where humans were the primary actors.” #AI #security #toread

• (aui.io):

  "Apollo-1" claims to be “the first neuro-symbolic model,” promising “deterministic guarantees inside natural conversations.” Mostly just a startup marketing page at the moment. #AI #neural-networks #toread

• Newroo (crunchbase.com):

  Newroo, Brian #Norgard’s and Dan #Gould’s old company. “Newroo is an aggregator site that indexes and groups blog posts based on topics in order to show emerging news in near real-time. Acquired by Fox Interactive Media” in 02006.

• Dan Gould (evolutionltd.net):

  Dan #Gould is now “Senior Advisor” at Evolution Ltd. — in Cyprus‽ “Dan is the co-founder & CTO of BiasSync, and is a hands-on AI expert. Prior to that, Dan was co-founder of Tappy which was acquired by Tinder.” Which is probably how #Norgard ended up at Tinder. “Previously, Dan was co-founder of Newroo which was acquired in 2006 by Fox Interactive Media/NewsCorp.”

• Raikoth laws language and society (slatestarcodex.com):

  #Raikoth was #Scott-Alexander’s old project, a fictional world (#conworlding), or rather a single nation on the shared fictional world of Micras, and probably how the NYT doxxed him. “I am a terrible political activist. But I have spent the last thirteen years constructing a utopian society in my basement.”

• Avoiding Terminator futurewhy we need get authz right Mike Schwartz aicnc (linkedin.com):

  Mike Schwartz about #Cedarling for #AI #security. #toread

• Edit (docs.google.com):

  Generative #AI events in the #SFBA, a Google spreadsheet. #tourism

• NVIDIA lobbies white house and wins loosened AI GPU export control to China U s lawmakers reportedly reject gain AI Act (tomshardware.com):

  #NVIDIA got #AI #export-controls to #China lifted in #USA by lobbying #Trump #politics

• Ipv6Mess (cr.yp.to):

  #DJB’s diagnosis of the #IPv6 mess and how it could have been avoided

• (youtube.com):

  #video of gyroscopic precession #toread #physics #Smarter-Every-Day

• (youtube.com):

  #chess #video of Anna #Cramling playing a blitz game and managing to come back from a bad position because her opponent blundered her queen

• Anything better than Cricket wireless that uses (old.reddit.com):

  Phones for #tourism in #USA: Cricket Wireless, Verizon Prepaid, etc.

• Nocontract (old.reddit.com):

  there’s a subreddit for prepaid #USA #cellphones. A lot of people complaining about getting banned from US Mobile, but it’s not clear if that’s because US Mobile is uniquely terrible or uniquely popular.

• (prepaidcompare.net):

  a prepaid #USA #cellphones comparison site; the three listed as “cost per month: 0” are Helium, Roamless, and TextNow. Cricket is apparently US$25/month. But there are a lot of carriers that are under US$10/monthly. #tourism

• Best wireless carrier (nytimes.com):

  Cricket Wireless is a prepaid brand of AT&T Wireless, while US Mobile is “a newer prepaid service that resells all three of the nationwide networks”, that is, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). #USA #cellphones #tourism

• Only lasted 60 GB before US mobile shut off my (old.reddit.com):

  a complaint about getting banned from #US-Mobile #cellphones #USA #tourism

• US mobile has updated their terms to say that RV (old.reddit.com):

  another complaint about #US-Mobile bait-and-switching their service’s usage for #cellphones in RVs in #USA #tourism.

• (youtube.com):

  Japanese-Argentine #video tour of #Shenzhen, showing delivery by #drones, traffic monitoring by drones, iUFO single-person taxi drones, self-driving ground taxis (since the end of November: L4, no driver, a half-hour trip for US$2.50), self-driving buses, five-axis CNC woodcarving, laser-cutting photographs into leaves, T-shirt printers, etc.