Archive

Amazon researchers recently published a paper which I think is notable considering that Amazon has put a lot of effort into spec-driven development.

The paper argues that specifying how a model should implement a specific solution is significantly superior to writing prose. https://x.com/rockatanescu/status/2119346657511014591/photo/1

The motivation:

What I want, alongside Claude Code, is a coding agent that:

• Does what I tell it to do. Sandboxing is critical, but it’s something the operating system should enforce, not the coding agent.
• Runs locally, even offline. My code stays on my machine, there are no usage limits, and I can use it whenever I need it.
• Gets the job done. A local coding agent has to get real work done.

I kept ignoring this classic because I figured it was some dreary eastern philosophy thing, but I was so wrong! It's funny, playful, and reminds me of Vanity Fair -- A sprawling rich book that's a joy to read. https://t.co/WTnqlPgFRE

A lot of people don't realize that Windows has a built-in feature called Windows "Sandbox" that boots up a brand new virtual Windows machine in seconds. So I made an MCP server so you can test your apps inside a throwaway machine in seconds. https://t.co/huB9hAoxSv

WhiskerはGPUIと違い独自レンダリングを行いません。Rustで書かれたコードはRustの中でレイアウト処理を行った後、それぞれのOSのネイティブUIを表示します。
そのためそれぞれのOSの独自仕様に追従しつつ、一つのコードベースから各OSのアプリを作ることができます。

https://whisker.rs/docs/how-it-works

Today we're releasing Underdog Woof, the #1 frontier TTS model

It's only 31.7 MB and beats Text-to-Speech models 1000x larger on Word Error Rate

It's small enough to run fast in your browser, phone, watch... no data centers

It’s free and open weight with Underdog CC BY-NC 4.0. https://t.co/mjK2FvtjsQ

Hi friends! Meet octet.

I rebuilt @pidotdev coding agent in Rust, extensible in any programming language.

Built for speed, with Pi extension compatibility and optional extensions for codemode, subagents, MCP, and more.

free+open source
made with ❤️ in Toronto, ON, 🇨🇦 https://t.co/46vENZ5a3x

Introducing Arete-27B: Qwen3.8-27B, post-trained to reinforce Western values.

Chinese open models are currently the strongest available, but they ship with state-aligned behavior in the weights. We built an 803-prompt eval across seven value categories, including freedom of https://t.co/WT7YTVdm8H

The story of how Le Chonk was built, told by the team behind it.

Now on @askalphaxiv : https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2611.mistral-large-4 https://x.com/PierreStock/status/2117293394238013698

An hour of @prathoshap and I having a freewheeling discussion on AI in Sanskrit, because it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday!

https://youtu.be/R6tcmpQzblQ?si=S_Zs6f_8zmnxJA2e

and i'm a mess again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKcH-ZR7Fao

The Simpsons downfall https://x.com/seriesgraph/status/2114803953816711263/photo/1

cool work by @ivarvong and @zebassembly 👀

https://github.com/ivarvong/lantern

"Praneeth" is Praneeth Netrapalli of Google Deep Mind, based in BLR.

The preprint is here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16733

There is a lot of unpack here. Enjoy! https://x.com/karch_andreas/status/2110592983120916660

That didn’t take long: the model swallows the harness.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35738

You may have been told to watch this video about the OpenAI AI hack. You really should, even if you don't usually care about tech stuff.

If nothing else, click this link to the 18 minutes in & see how the agents spoke with each other. Its eye opening. https://youtu.be/87DyyMV0kCY?si=DMfqLlaJI9wmW_Rh&t=1088

The Essence of Value Investing:

Routines and Orgies

Peter Cundill turned $7M into $20B.

The best biography you'll never read in public. https://x.com/TheIcahnist/status/2017793929526009879/photo/1

The most underrated technical report of the year
https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2511.23404

What is the BEST episode of TV from this century?

In July of 2018, we published The 100 Best TV Episodes of the Century, and now, since we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it only felt right to update our ranking. https://x.com/ringer/status/1995905091782770759/photo/1

Good book on Game Theory. Under the radar. Highly Recommend. https://x.com/PEoperator/status/1987147104901357809/photo/1

Text-to-SQL is dead 💀

The next generation of querying is agentic - and it’s already here.

This paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00032) introduces a type of agentic querying called 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 that uses an LLM to structure queries using predefined function calls in https://twitter.com/victorialslocum/status/1897612417237983580/video/1

These days are a neverending succession of amazing things.

How is that one even possible.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03387

The Mathematics of Artificial Intelligence: In this introductory and highly subjective survey, aimed at a general mathematical audience, I showcase some key theoretical concepts underlying recent advancements in machine learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10465 https://twitter.com/gabrielpeyre/status/1881993062441980230/photo/1

paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15042

@Askeladam You should read Journal of a Cruise. It's real historical memoir of Master and Commander David Porter.
And as a side note the fictional Master and Commander is based on the British side of this story.

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Cruise-CLASSICS-NAVAL-LITERATURE/dp/0870213318

Trotsky's bodyguard until a year before the murder was Jean van Heijenoort, who had a subsequent career as a mathematical logician. He was also one of Frida's lovers. Anita Burdman Feferman's biography, which covers all this (including the math), is fascinating. #BookReview https://t.co/PsqQJUqo01

@Partisan_O You would like James Belich's "Replenishing the Earth."

https://t.co/ll7GPO9uGd

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75665931-the-maniac

Goodreads Review

John von Neumann was a titan of science. A Hungarian wunderkind who revolutionised every field he touched, his mathematical powers were so exceptional that Hans Bethe - a Nobel Prize-winning physicist - thought he might represent the next step in human evolution.

After seeking the foundations of mathematics during his youth in Germany, von Neumann emigrated to the United States, where he became entangled in the power games of the Cold War; he designed the world's first programmable computer, invented game theory, pioneered AI and digital life, and helped create the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was the darling of the military industrial complex, but when illness unmoored his mind, his work pushed further into areas beyond human comprehension and control.

The Maniac places von Neumann at the centre of a literary triptych about the dark foundations of our modern world and the nascent era of AI. It begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and close friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master, Lee Sedol, and the AI program AlphaGo.

Braiding fact with fiction, Benjamín Labatut takes us on a journey to the frontiers of rational thought, where invention outpaces human understanding and offers godlike power, but takes us to the brink of Armageddon.

@zenpundit btw, this is an absolutely phenomenal book and provided a better answer to the common hagiographies of why the USSR fell apart and was based upon 30 years of interviews: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Soviet-Vladislav-M-Zubok/dp/0300257309

#books

Completion of DVG collection, Lokmanya Tilak speeches, SLB collection continues

Thank you @subbubooks @sahityaprkshna for super fast shipping https://t.co/0nCJgq9F2y

Reading The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau
https://t.co/lrWQ0slYAN

Microsoft QBasic had one of the best built-in help systems I've ever seen. You could put the cursor on any code keyword and press F1.

The docs were written well enough that an 8-year-old with English as a 2nd language could understand, and completely informative. #docgoals 🤓💾

Name sites, Google featured snippet: Nirvansh is a Sanskrit/Hindu name for boys meaning “bliss, liberation”.

Facts: The Sanskrit word ‘nirvaṃśa’ (निर्वंश) means “having no family, childless, alone” or “without family, without descendants”.

Another #kunāma branded as a #sunāma.