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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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llm 0.32.1

Release: llm 0.32.1

Fresh installs of LLM stopped working the other day because the OpenAI Python library dropped its usage of httpx, and it turned out LLM depended on that library but only installed it via a transitive openai dependency.

This dot-release fixes that for the moment by pinning to openai<3, and a soon-to-drop 0.33 release will switch from httpx to httpx2.

Tags: httpx, openai, llm

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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llm-openrouter 0.7

Release: llm-openrouter 0.7

Now that this plugin is compatible with LLM 0.32 it works much better with reasoning LLMs available through OpenRouter.

Tags: llm, openrouter

matklad
Text • Alex Kladov

Rust Glancer

Rust Glancer, a functional LSP server for Rust which uses two orders of magnitude less RAM, is incredibly cool. Go check it out! This post started as a comment on lobste.rs, but I figured it out that it's better to publish it somewhat more prominently. Don't expect polished writing though!

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Stop Making TUIs

Stop Making TUIs

Thomas Ptacek advocates for building real native user interfaces for even the smallest of personal tools, because coding agents have reduced the cost of getting a usable-enough GUI up and running to almost nothing.

I wrote about my vibe-coded bandwidth and GPU monitoring macOS task bar apps back in March, and I'm still using both of those on a daily basis.

I'm not habitually knocking out real UIs for my other projects yet, but I'm running out of excuses!

Thomas:

If you haven’t tried your hand at turning one of your 500 throwaway CLIs into a native app, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Go build a native UI. It’ll probably change the way you think.

Tags: thomas-ptacek, ai, generative-ai, llms, vibe-coding, coding-agents

Anil Dash Valid
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Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI

These days, the conversation in tech and business, and in a lot of society, is still all AI, all the time. And one of the most fundamental questions boils down to: How do you get people to change what they’re doing in regard to AI? For people who (understandably) have moral ...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Matt Webb

After I released version 1.0, I figured I would have to do the rotations myself. So I sat down with ChatGPT and I didn’t get it to write the code, but I got it to educate me. With a patient, interactive tutor, I was able to finally do what I hadn’t by reading books and asking mathematician friends – I learnt how to use quaternions just enough to make the app work.

So learning doesn’t stop just because I outsource a bunch of thinking to AI. It pushes me to learn more. I like that as an outcome.

Matt Webb, Galactic Compass 2: now with new augmented reality mode

Tags: matt-webb, generative-ai, chatgpt, education, ai, llms

The Old New Thing
Text • Raymond Chen

Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function, practical exam

Applying our principles.

The post Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function, practical exam appeared first on The Old New Thing.

John D. Cook
Text • John

How would you know whether an ancient culture had zero?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the number system used in labeling spreadsheet columns. Labels run from A through Z, then AA through AZ, etc. This looks a lot like base 26, but it’s not quite the same. It has no analog of zero. If Z were like zero, Y would be followed by […]

The post How would you know whether an ancient culture had zero? first appeared on John D. Cook.

Terence Eden’s Blog
Text • @edent

Book Review: An Immense World - How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong ★★★☆☆

This is a detailed examination of the various senses possessed by animals. Some will be intimately familiar to you - like sight and sound - whereas some will seem strange and uncanny - like magnetic detection and electro-sensing. Some straddle an almost understandable space like echolocation or tetra-chromatic vision. This isn't a game of Top Trumps where all the animals are ranked by power.…

The Silicon Underground
Text • Dave Farquhar

Microsoft QuickBasic remembered

Microsoft QuickBasic remembered
Microsoft QuickBasic remembered

Microsoft QuickBasic was a commercially available programming language for MS-DOS, initially released August 18, 1985. Qbasic, the Basic interpreter included with MS-DOS versions 5 and 6, was a cut-down version of QuickBasic. Most notably, the bundled version lacked the ability

The post Microsoft QuickBasic remembered appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

seangoedecke.com RSS feed
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Readers can't identify watermarked AI text

In the last few weeks, I’ve been complaining that everyone is wrong about AI watermarking: it isn’t really anti-consumer and it doesn’t make the outputs any worse. The watermarking papers demonstrate1 that this is true, but I thought it might be interesting to put it to a pr...

The Old New Thing
Text • Raymond Chen

Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function

Looking for consolidation points.

The post Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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ChatGPT search now uses the site:operator at scale

ChatGPT search now uses the site:operator at scale Promptwatch is part of the emerging "GEO" space, for Generative Engine Optimization - the chatbot version of SEO, where companies offer tools and consulting to help your site increase its presence in replies to prompts insid...

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Text • Cory Doctorow

Pluralistic: The actual epistemic crisis (20 Aug 2026)

Today's links The actual epistemic crisis: AI's assault on reality is an opportunistic infection. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Disney goths; Running a con room party; Equation Group's fuggly sourcecode; "Bubble"; "The Weight." Upcoming appearanc...

Marcus on AI
Text • Gary Marcus

OpenAI is becoming a surveillance company

OpenAI is becoming a surveillance company

It’s not even really trying to hide it

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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A shot-scraper-style JSON API on Bun 1.4's new Bun.WebView

Research: A shot-scraper-style JSON API on Bun 1.4's new Bun.WebView Today saw the long awaited release of Bun 1.4, the first stable version since the infamous Rust rewrite a few months ago. Interestingly, the Rust rewrite was downplayed in the release notes, which i...

matklad
Text • Alex Kladov

Better Batteries

One of the eternal schisms in programming is over the question of whether the standard library should be minimal or encompassing. This is the wrong question to ask. The right one is:

Anil Dash Valid
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Introducing Dashboard Touch, a build-your-own version of Touch ID

For years, I’ve wanted to have a standalone version of Apple’s Touch ID authentication feature for my Mac, but without having to use an Apple keyboard. (I generally like their keyboards, but my daily driver keyboard these days is a big clicky mechanical beast.) I’d gone down...

Marcus on AI
Text • Gary Marcus

Leopold’s Folly

Leopold’s Folly

How what one young man did might come to symbolize an entire era

Jim Nielsen’s Blog Valid
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A Sloppy Interface Is a Security Liability 

In his talk “Why AI Is Breaking Software Security As We Know It” (my notes here), Feross Aboukhadijeh talks about the Axios npm incident and how the maintainer got phished by succumbing to (amongst other things) a faux Microsoft Teams interface: this is the kind of thing th...