I used to be one of these people. I read Yudkowsky and was like, OMG recursive self improvement hard takeoff AI is coming. Then I joined the real world and actually tried to do things. At comma, we ship a hardware product of similar complexity to a cell phone, and it’s really hard. Reality has lots of finicky details. I would like to see the authors of this document try to change a bike tire. Even with a superintelligent ChatGPT, I suspect they would struggle.
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The Digital Antiquarian
• Jimmy Maher
This Week on The Analog Antiquarian
Opus 4: Henry VI, Part 3
Goede geluiden over digitale autonomie
De Tweede Kamer is met reces, en de out of office replies vanuit de overheid beginnen indrukwekkende vormen aan te nemen. Kunnen ze in Amerika nog wat van leren. Maar, er worden nog steeds dingen gepubliceerd, en het is opvallend hoeveel goeds er recent gezegd is over digitale autonomie. De tl;dr is dat er een duidelijke wending zichtbaar is. Na een decennium van ontkenning publiceren allerhande stukken overheid nu ronkende teksten over digitale autonomie en staan die teksten ook vol goede voornemens en besluiten.
Construction Physics
• Brian Potter
Reading List 07/11/26
Adults living with their parents, Samsung’s profits, Native American data centers, Puerto Rico’s electricity grid, and more.
Andrew Nesbitt
• Andrew Nesbitt
This Week in Package Management: 11 July 2026
Releases, advisories, and articles from across the package management world
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
• Cory Doctorow
Pluralistic: Workplace "flexibility" isn't (11 Jul 2026)
In defense of not understanding your codebase
Eli Bendersky's website
• Eli Bendersky
Dot product: Component vs. Geometric definition
The goal of this post is to answer a simple question: why are the following two definitions of the vector dot product in Euclidean space [1] equivalent for vectors \vec{a} and \vec{b}:
- Component definition: \vec{a}\cdot\vec{b}=\sum_{i=1}^{n}a_i b_i
- Geometric definition: \vec …
A dock that finally wakes up reliably
Quoting Nilay Patel
Dwarkesh Podcast
• Dwarkesh Patel
Adam Brown – Einstein's happiest thought: General Relativity from scratch
And why black holes are the ultimate power plants.
The Tadpole galaxy:
Terence Eden’s Blog
• @edent
Game Review: Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime ★★★☆☆
My new year's resolution is to play more video games with my wife. Specifically co-operative games. I hate playing competitively; it's rubbish to achieve victory at the expense of someone else. So I asked for recommendations and picked the cheapest things which looked reasonable. Several people recommended Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime. It's a neat little game which is just short enough to…
The Old New Thing
• Raymond Chen
The case of the mysterious changes to integers when there shouldn’t have been any code generation effect
Decoding where those integer came from.
The post The case of the mysterious changes to integers when there shouldn’t have been any code generation effect appeared first on The Old New Thing.
Jeff Geerling
• Jeff Geerling
QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
The QuadRF (pictured above) a phased-array radio built around a Raspberry Pi 5 and an FPGA board with picosecond-level timing. It does advanced signal processing and beamforming.
It can see WiFi through walls and track drones in flight.
If the open source community can come up with something like this, just imagine what governments are capable of.
When you plug a computer into a network, tools like Wireshark can show all the hidden traffic you might not even know is there. WiFi packets are the same, but those travel through the air, allowing snooping without physical access.
The Silicon Underground
• Dave Farquhar
Gary Kildall’s death investigation
Gary Kildall’s death investigation, or the seeming lack thereof, has taken on mythical proportions. Gary Kildall’s story seems to have that effect on people. Just like the story of Kildall allegedly going flying instead of meeting with IBM in August
The post Gary Kildall’s death investigation appeared first on The Silicon Underground.
Andrew Nesbitt
• Andrew Nesbitt
Package Management as Org Chart
Conway's Law applied to dependency management designs.
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
• Cory Doctorow
Pluralistic: "Rights for robots" and the AI slavery fantasy (10 Jul 2026)
Quoting OpenAI
[...] Work on web and mobile runs in the cloud. Work in the desktop app can also use local files and desktop apps with your permission. At launch, cloud Work conversations do not appear in desktop Work; desktop Work threads and local files remain on that computer.
— OpenAI, trying (unsuccessfully) to clarify ChatGPT Work