Release: datasette 1.0a31

Another significant alpha release, with two new headline features.

Datasette now offers users with the necessary permissions the ability to both execute write queries against their database and to save stored queries (renamed from "canned queries") both privately and for use by other members of their Datasette instance.

There's more detail in SQL write queries and stored queries in Datasette 1.0a31 on the Datasette blog, which now has three posts introducing new features since the blog launched two weeks ago.

Here's an animated demo from the blog post showing how the new execute query interface lets people get started with templated insert/update/delete queries from tables they have permission to edit:

Tags: projects, sql, sqlite, datasette, annotated-release-notes

Tool: markdown-svg-renderer

A slightly customized Markdown rendering tool with special treatment for fenced code SVG blocks - it both renders the image and provides a tab for switching to the code view.

You can paste in Markdown or give it a URL to a CORS-enabled Markdown file or Gist. Here's an example where it loads a Markdown file full of LLM pelican logs for Opus 4.8.

Tags: svg, tools, markdown, cors

The most interesting thing about Anthropic's $65B Series H announcement is this line (emphasis mine): Since our Series G in February, adoption has continued to grow across global enterprise customers, and our run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month. Anthrop...

Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.8 today. My favourite thing about it is this note in the release announcement: Users will find Opus 4.8 to be a modest but tangible improvement on its predecessor. There’s still more to be done: we’re working on developing and releasing model...

Release: llm-anthropic 0.25.1

• New model: Claude Opus 4.8 (claude-opus-4.8).
• New -o fast 1 option for fast mode, for organizations with that feature enabled on their account.
• Default max_tokens for each model now defaults to that model's maximum output rather than 8,192. #72

See also my notes on Opus 4.8 - I used this new release of llm-anthropic to generate the pelicans.

sqlite AGENTS.md SQLite gained an AGENTS.md file five days ago - but it's not intended for their own development, it's presumably aimed at people who are pointing agents at the SQLite codebase. It includes: SQLite does not accept pull requests without prior agreement and/or...

Anthropic are strongly rumored to be about to have their first profitable quarter. Stories are circulating of companies surprised at how expensive their LLM bills are becoming from usage by their staff. I think this is because OpenAI and Anthropic have both found product-mar...

PICARD: Data, shields up

DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy.

[camera shakes]

WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS

DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't

— Kyle Ferrana, @KyleTrainEmoji

Tags: ai-misuse, coding-agents, ai, llms

The pressure Daniel Stenberg on the unprecedented level of pressure the curl team are facing right now thanks to the deluge of (credible) AI-assisted security issues being reported. The rate of incoming security reports is 4-5 times higher than it was in 2024 and double the...

Microsoft Copilot Cowork Exfiltrates Files The biggest challenge in designing agentic systems continues to be preventing them from enabling attackers to exfiltrate data. In this case Microsoft Copilot Cowork (yes, that's a real product name) was allowing agents to send email...

A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it.

I have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI. It feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that?

[...] It makes me think less of the author. It means they can't write well unaided (or feel they can't), and that they're trying to trick me.

It's not impressive to use AI to write stuff for you; any teenager can do that.

— Paul Graham

Tags: writing, ai-misuse, paul-graham, generative-ai, ai, llms

California Brown Pelican, Snowy Egret, California Sea Lion, Harbor Seal, in San Mateo County, CA, US We took our new folding kayak out in the harbor and saw sea lions and harbor seals chilling on the docks.

I cannot believe I'm saying this, but getting the literal Pope to canonize your product's specific technical limitations as a spiritual treatise is the single greatest act of vendor lobbying I have ever seen.

— Corey Quinn, on Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah's influence on Magnifica Humanitas

Tags: ai-ethics, corey-quinn, anthropic, ai

Dropped this morning by the Vatican: Magnifica Humanitas of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. This is a very interesting document. It's some of the clearest writing I've seen on the ethics of integrating AI int...

Release: datasette 1.0a30

The big new feature in this alpha is a new customizable "Jump to..." menu, described in detail in The extensible "Jump to" menu in Datasette 1.0a30 on the Datasette blog. You can try it out by hitting / on latest.datasette.io - it looks like this:

The new jump_items_sql() plugin hook allows plugins to add their own items to the set that's searched by the plugin.

Tags: projects, datasette, annotated-release-notes

Release: datasette-agent 0.1a4

Taking advantage of the new makeJumpSections() JavaScript plugin hook added in Datasette 1.0a30, datasette-agent now presents this "Start a new agent chat" interface as part of the Jump to menu, any time you hit /:

You can try this out by signing into agent.datasette.io using your GitHub account.

Tags: datasette, datasette-agent

Release: datasette-fixtures 0.1a0 One of the smaller features in Datasette 1.0a30 is this: New documented datasette.fixtures.populate_fixture_database(conn) helper for creating the fixture database tables used by Datasette's own tests, intended for plugin test suite...

Tool: Mad House — Usborne Creepy Computer Games

Via Hacker News I learned that UK publisher Usborne published free PDFs of their 1980s Computer Books, some of which I remember working through on my Commodore 64 as a child.

These were so great! Beautifully illustrated books with fun projects made up of code you could type into your own machine.

I remember playing "Mad House" typed in from the 1983 book "Creepy Computer Games", so I fed that PDF into Claude and had it build an interactive version of that game in JavaScript and HTML:

Build a vanilla JS artifact that exactly recreates the game Mad House from this book, make sure it's mobile friendly and has a suitable retro aesthetic

Credit the book title and link to https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books

Tags: computer-history, games, tools

The most frustrating failure mode right now is that people submit issues that are not in their own voice. They contain an observed problem somewhere, but it has been thrown into a clanker and the clanker reworded it and made a huge mess of it. Typically, it was prompted so ...

On the <dl>

I learned a few new-to-me things about the <dl> element from this article by Ben Meyer:

1. A <dt> can be followed by multiple <dd>
2. You can optionally group the <dt> and <dd> elements in a <div> for styling - but only a <div>.
3. You can label them using ARIA.
4. They've been called "description lists", not "definition lists", since an HTML5 draft in 2008.

So this is valid:

<h2 id="credits">Credits</h2>
<dl aria-labelledby="credits">
  <div>
    <dt>Author</dt>
    <dd>Jeffrey Zeldman</dd>
    <dd>Ethan Marcotte</dd>
  </div>
</dl>

Here's a useful note from Adrian Roselli on screen reader support for description lists.

Via Hacker News

Tags: css, html, screen-readers, web-standards

The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics David Oks provides the clearest explanation I've seen yet of why consumer products that use memory are likely to get significantly more expensive over the next few years. The short version is that memory manu...

Research: pydantic-monty investigation

It's been a few months since I last poked at Monty, the sandboxed subset of Python implemented in Rust. I had Claude Code look at the most recent release.

Importantly the max_duration_secs, max_memory, max_allocations, and max_recursion_depth settings all appear to work as advertised.

Tags: python, sandboxing, pydantic

FTC to Require Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Settle Charges They Deceived Customers About “Active Listening” AI-Powered Marketing Service Back in 2024 Cox Media Group were caught trying to sell advertisers packages based on "active listening", ...

We just announced the first release of Datasette Agent, a new extensible AI assistant for Datasette. I've been working on my LLM Python library for just over three years now, and Datasette Agent represents the moment that LLM and Datasette finally come together. I'm really e...

Release: datasette-agent-sprites 0.1a0

A Datasette Agent plugin for running commands in a Fly Sprites sandbox.

Tags: sandboxing, datasette, fly, datasette-agent

Release: datasette-agent-charts 0.1a2

• "View SQL query" buttons below rendered charts.

Tags: datasette, datasette-agent

Release: datasette-agent 0.1a3

• "View SQL query" buttons for both visible tables and collapsed SQL result tool calls.
• Don't display empty reasoning chunks
• Improved handling of truncated responses - table still displays to the user even if the SQL results were truncated when showing the agent.

See Datasette Agent, an extensible AI assistant for Datasette.

Tags: datasette, datasette-agent

Release: datasette-agent-charts 0.1a1

• More color! Bar and waffle charts without a color column are shaded by magnitude with a sequential color scheme; color columns holding text values use the observable10 categorical scheme. #2
• Now checks execute-sql permission before running the query to find the column names.
• Charts now display interactive tooltips.
• Fixed a bug where waffleY charts were not described to the agent.

Tags: datasette, datasette-agent

We have the ability to use compute resources to support our proprietary AI applications (such as Grok 5, which is currently being trained at COLOSSUS II), while also providing access to select compute capacity to third-party customers. For example, in May 2026, we entered into Cloud Services Agreements with Anthropic PBC (“Anthropic”), an AI research and development public benefit corporation, with respect to access to compute capacity across COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II. Pursuant to these agreements, the customer has agreed to pay us $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, with capacity ramping in May and June 2026 at a reduced fee. The agreements may be terminated by either party upon 90 days’ notice.

— SpaceX S-1, highlights mine

Tags: anthropic, grok, generative-ai, ai, llms

How fast is 10 tokens per second really?

Neat little HTML app by Mike Veerman (source code here) which simulates LLM token output speeds from 5/second to 800/second.

Useful if you see a model advertised as "30 tokens/second" and want to get a feel for what that actually looks like.

Via Hacker News

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms