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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing

Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing It happened again. This time it was the UK government's AI Security Institute who accidentally attacked other companies while running an evaluation with models with the safety filters turned off. From their t...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Shawn Smucker: ‘Please Use AI’

shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai

I find most poetry obtuse, dancing around a point rather than making one sharply. Not this one.

Link: shawnsmucker.substack.com/p/please-use-ai

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Matthew Green on Anthropic’s New Cryptanalysis Results

blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/07/29/some-notes-about-anthropics-new-results/

Matthew Green: If you’re under the impression that these models are “glorified autocomplete” or that progress is slowing down, I need to urge you: stop thinking that. The models are very intelligent and capable, they are getting better at a fast clip. I can cite measurab...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Uh, I’m Pretty Sure People Would Know

nytimes.com/2026/08/04/magazine/trump-rfk-steak-kimchi-diet.html?unlocked_article_code=1.21A.ymed.OyFVP85xWyNK

New York Times Magazine story editor Willy Staley tried Sean O’Mara’s “Living Diet” (nothing but steak and fermented foods like sauerkraut) for a week: To O’Mara, the diet is not just a temporary means of losing weight but a way to eat for good. He has been doing it for ...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Astronomers have measured the size of the largest galaxy...

Astronomers have measured the size of the largest galaxy: it’s 1.7 million light years across (17x the diameter of the Milky Way) and contains ~3.4 trillion solar masses in stars.

xkcd.com Valid
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Antiques Roadshow

The family lore was that we've had it ever since it was ejected from a star-forming gas cloud, but it seems more likely that my great-grandparents probably just bought it while on vacation in the galactic thin disk.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Sam Altman, Definitely Not a Weirdo

businessinsider.com/ai-parenting-debate-sam-altman-2026-8

Sam Altman, on Twitter/X: cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s up...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

“ In this video , I’ll take you from farm to...

“In this video, I’ll take you from farm to factory to show you how chocolate is made, and at the end, we’ll use all the chocolate you’ll see in this video to attempt the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest chocolate bar.”

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

David Pogue: ‘Alexa+ Is a Buggy Embarrassment’

pogueman.substack.com/p/alexa-is-a-buggy-embarrassment

David Pogue, at Pogue’s Posts:

Amazon’s “50+ things to try” list mentions that Alexa can “find a home maintenance professional.” So I tried it.

ME: I need a septic-system repair.

ALEXA: That service isn’t currently supported. I can help with plumbing services instead.

ME: Okay, fine. Plumbing services.

ALEXA: What’s your plumbing issue?

ME: I have untreated sewage pouring out of my kitchen faucet.

ALEXA: Is this urgent?

Uh … what do YOU think, dumbass? But OK:

ME: Yes.

ALEXA: When do you need it by?

Displays four responses: ASAP, Within a week, Further out, and I haven’t decided yet.

ME: ASAP.

ALEXA: I’m Alexa, not Shaq.

This could only have been funnier if Alexa had responded “The Aristocrats!”

(Which great film, is, in fact, available to stream on Amazon Prime.)

Link: pogueman.substack.com/p/alexa-is-a-buggy-embarrassment

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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One-shotting a Raccoon Heist game using Claude Fable 5

Back in 2024 I tweeted screenshots of a game concept generated by GPT-3 and some concept "art" created using DALL-E. Today, on the fourth anniversary of that tweet, I decided to see if Claude Fable 5 (running in Claude Code for web) could build the entire game from the conte...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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llm-anthropic 0.26

Release: llm-anthropic 0.26 Includes new features enabled by LLM 0.32: New models: claude-fable-5, claude-sonnet-5, and claude-opus-5. #75, #76 Added server-side tools for WebSearch, WebFetch, CodeExecution, and AnthropicMCP, available through LLM's -T interface o...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Apple News Ad of the Week

mastodon.social/@gruber/117044545772667716

I look forward to this level of class and brand prestige coming to Apple Maps.

Link: mastodon.social/@gruber/117044545772667716

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
Text

One-shotting a Raccoon Heist game using Claude Fable 5

Back in 2022 I tweeted screenshots of a game concept generated by GPT-3 and some concept "art" created using DALL-E. Today, on the fourth anniversary of that tweet, I decided to see if Claude Fable 5 (running in Claude Code for web) could build the entire game from the conte...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Computer That Helped Win World War II . “…it...

The Computer That Helped Win World War II. “…it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the fascination of a Colossus at work: its sheer bulk and apparent complexity; the fantastic speed of thin paper tape round the glittering pulleys…”

Song Exploder
Audio • Hrishikesh Hirway

Mitski - Your Best American Girl

play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_93_e5a3048b-9a7f-4755-9093-b0a296d88855&uf=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed.songexploder.net%2FSongExploder

In 2016, Mitski did an episode of Song Exploder about her song “Your Best American Girl.” She had just released her second album, Puberty 2. Later, Pitchfork named “Your Best American Girl” one of the top 10 best songs of the past decade, and Billboard named it as one of the songs that defined the decade. And in honor of the 10th anniversary of the album, there’s a new deluxe version that’s out digitally, and a limited edition vinyl is coming in October. I thought this would be a good time to revisit Mitski’s episode, where she and her collaborator Patrick Hyland break down how “Your Best American Girl” was made. 

To learn more, visit songexploder.net/mitski

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

Monumental Painted Wood Carvings by Jiang Miao Center Mindfulness

Monumental Painted Wood Carvings by Jiang Miao Center MindfulnessWhitestone Gallery in Seoul presents the artist's solo exhibition, 'Spiral of Energy.'

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Monumental Painted Wood Carvings by Jiang Miao Center Mindfulness appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

How to Store Ebooks in Instagram Reels and Other Covert Data Storage Tricks

Do you remember the video I posted last summer of YouTuber Benn Jordan where he “uploaded a picture of a bird to a bird and then downloaded the bird picture from the bird”? So cool. Jordan is back with more data encoding tricks in his latest video, There Are Files Stored in ...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Lidar and other discoveries continue to show that the...

Lidar and other discoveries continue to show that the Amazon rainforest was home to a “sprawling ancient civilization much bigger than researchers expected” (possibly up to 3 million people around 100-300 CE).

Longreads Valid
Text • Brendan Fitzgerald

Six Teenagers, a Brutal Murder and the Story They Couldn’t Take Back

"In 2002, a group of friends from North Carolina told a story that ruined all their lives. What if it wasn’t true?"

Work Chronicles Valid
Text • Work Chronicles

(comic) Therapist anecdote