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Using LLMs at Oxide

Thoughtful guidance from Bryan Cantrill, who evaluates applications of LLMs against Oxide's core values of responsibility, rigor, empathy, teamwork, and urgency.

Via Lobste.rs

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, oxide, bryan-cantrill

Now I want to talk about how they're selling AI. The growth narrative of AI is that AI will disrupt labor markets. I use "disrupt" here in its most disreputable, tech bro sense.

The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AIs that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself, and give the other half to the AI company.

That's it.

That's the $13T growth story that MorganStanley is telling. It's why big investors and institutionals are giving AI companies hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they are piling in, normies are also getting sucked in, risking their retirement savings and their family's financial security.

— Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI

Tags: cory-doctorow, ai-ethics, ai

One small update I just appended to my piece Friday taking a look at the winning apps from this year’s App Store Awards:

Lastly, I have questions — some really hard questions — regarding Tiimo’s app icon. Such as, “What is that?”

Perhaps it got picked because it makes Apple’s new OS 26 icons look good by comparison?

Link: daringfireball.net/2025/12/2025_app_store_award_winners

What to try first? Run Claude Code in a repo (whether you know it well or not) and ask a question about how something works. You'll see how it looks through the files to find the answer. The next thing to try is a code change where you know exactly what you want but it's te...

This brand new piece has been made available as a signed print! A portion of all proceeds go to Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity.

At a recent Portugal. The Man concert in NYC, Weird Al joined the band on stage for a pair of songs, including a cover of Killing In The Name, Rage Against the Machine’s anthem against police brutality and the military industrial complex. Weird Al, welcome to the resistance. (via @erikahall.bsky.social)

Tags: music · Rage Against the Machine · remix · video · Weird Al Yankovic

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The Unexpected Effectiveness of One-Shot Decompilation with Claude Chris Lewis decompiles N64 games. He wrote about this previously in Using Coding Agents to Decompile Nintendo 64 Games, describing his efforts to decompile Snowboard Kids 2 (released in 1999) using a "matchin...

This rabona assist from Rayan Cherki is ridiculous (complimentary).

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For its 50th anniversary, the original theatrical cut of Star Wars will be released in theaters in Feb 2027 (maybe even IMAX). Han shoots first, no weirdly svelte Jabba.

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This brand new piece has been made available as a signed print! A portion of all proceeds go to Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity.

If you work slowly, you will be more likely to stick with your slightly obsolete work. You know that professor who spent seven years preparing lecture notes twenty years ago? He is not going to throw them away and start again, as that would be a new seven-year project. So he will keep teaching using aging lecture notes until he retires and someone finally updates the course.

— Daniel Lemire, Why speed matters

Tags: productivity

Aaron Tilley and Wayne Ma, in a piece headlined “Why Silicon Valley is Buzzing About Apple CEO Succession” at the paywalled-up-the-wazoo The Information: Prediction site Polymarket places Ternus’ odds of getting the job at nearly 55%, ahead of other current Apple executi...

Dithering is my and Ben Thompson’s twice-a-week podcast — 15 minutes per episode, not a minute less, not a minute more. It’s a $7/month or $70/year subscription, and included in the Stratechery Plus bundle (a bargain). This year our CMS (Passport — check it out) gained a feature that lets us make some episodes free for everyone to listen to on the website. Today’s episode, regarding Alan Dye leaving Apple for Meta, seems like a good one to do that with. (And, once again, this month’s album art serendipitously captures my mood.)

Give it a listen. Subscribe if you enjoy it.

Link: dithering.passport.online/member/episode/alan-dye-leaves…

French electronic duo Air performs a Tiny Desk Concert. Setlist: Le Voyage de Pénélope, Cherry Blossom Girl, Highschool Lover, and Dirty Trip.

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Apple Newsroom, yesterday: Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017. She will join Apple as senior vice presid...

This interview was both interesting and a lot of fun. Worth a listen or re-listen.

Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2017/04/21/ep-188

Fran Sans is a font based on the display type of SF’s MUNI light rail trains. The N-Judah was my train when I lived there, so I’m very familiar with that display typeface. (Great name too.)

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Apple, today: “Announcing the 2025 App Store Awards”: This year’s winners represent the best-in-class apps and games we returned to again and again. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. I did not enjoy all of them as much as Apple did. Tiimo iPhone app of the yea...

The Land of Giants, a conceptual proposal to build power line towers so that they look like people.

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