Predicament
Slow Start to the Week
Hey folks. I’m dropping my son off at college today1 so the site is going to be a little slow until I get back midweek. In the meantime, you can check out some of the great sites on the KDO Rolodex on the front page of the site (scroll down some), and I’ll see you back here sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday. 👋
- What?! I know! College already. I’m so excited for him but also just wondering how this happened so fast.↩
Tags: Jason Kottke · kottke.org
‘Sinners’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris pop open a cold bottle of Irish beer as they revisit Ryan Coogler’s instant classic, ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, and Miles Caton. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nair, and Chris Wohlers Free eBooks library. It’s on Prime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dekáf Coffee Roasters
TIL: Running a gpt-oss eval suite against LM Studio on a Mac
Quoting Sam Altman
Most of what we're building out at this point is the inference [...] We're profitable on inference. If we didn't pay for training, we'd be a very profitable company.
— Sam Altman, during a "wide-ranging dinner with a small group of reporters in San Francisco"
Tags: openai, sam-altman, ai
Maintainers of Last Resort
The Happy Pod: Mountaintop matchmaking
In the Swiss mountains, handwritten notes left on mountain peaks have been turning scenic climbs into unexpected matchmaking journeys, bringing nature lovers together one hike at a time.
Dubbed “Mountain Tinder”, couples are meeting through notebooks tucked into mountaintop letterboxes. The movement is spreading beyond Switzerland, inspiring similar efforts as far away as Argentina. With no swipes or algorithms, it’s a love story written in the clouds.
Also: the couple in Tasmania who have taken tackling homelessness into their own hands; a group of actors who bring the joy of theatre to remote communities in Finland -- by touring on a boat; and how Strictly Come Dancing's first celebrity with Down's Syndrome is inspiring others.
Trump’s BLS Pick E.J. Antoni Is — Shocker — a Crackpot Hack
Threads Now Has DMs, But They’re Not Encrypted and, Contrary to Reports, Not Yet Available on the Web
theverge.com/news/695743/threads-dms-direct-messaging-launch
GPT-5 has a hidden system prompt
The Summer of Johann: prompt injections as far as the eye can see
Keep Calm and Delete Your Old Emails to Conserve Water
Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info
Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info
This is grim. Reuters got hold of a leaked copy Meta's internal "GenAI: Content Risk Standards" document:Running to more than 200 pages, the document defines what Meta staff and contractors should treat as acceptable chatbot behaviors when building and training the company’s generative AI products.
Read the full story - there was some really nasty stuff in there.
It's understandable why this document was confidential, but also frustrating because documents like this are genuinely some of the best documentation out there in terms of how these systems can be expected to behave.
I'd love to see more transparency from AI labs around these kinds of decisions.
Open weight LLMs exhibit inconsistent performance across providers
Quoting Steve Wozniak
I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.
— Steve Wozniak, in a comment on Slashdot
Woz: ‘I Am the Happiest Person Ever’
Archaeology Research
Radiolab
• WNYC Studios