Conferences done for another year. Next one: June 2027. For now, a bit of a break from organising and hosting and back to focusing on design research and writing.

Run a meetup or a community for people building with AI? December 6–13 is the best week you'll ever have to run it — NeurIPS is in Sydney, AI Engineer Sydney is on. We'll list it, promote it, send people your way. Costs nothing, stays yours. aiweek.com.au/host

Why are anthropic models in particular obsessed with rooms?

AI Week Melbourne had two hackathons, one from Google DeepMind. Vercel brought their Sydney AI Meetup down with Maincode. Microsoft, Atlassian and Zendesk all hosted events. Sydney is Dec 6–13, with NeurIPS in town. Want your company in it? Now's the time to talk. aiweek.com.au/partners

Most of AI Week Sydney hasn't been announced yet. The conference and the Hack Day are locked in. The meetups, workshops and evening events land between now and December. Sign up and we'll email you as each is confirmed: aiweek.com.au

the first in a 3-part series on @honeycomb.io's AI norms and values is up. this one is called "How We Do Business at Honeycomb." www.honeycomb.io/blog/ai-norm... values are not supposed to be aspirational slogans. values should codify how things actually work. this is how it works at ours.

AI Norms & Values, Part 1 of 3: How We Do Business

AI amplifies what's already there, it doesn't fix or ruin you. Charity Majors on a year of Honeycomb's AI mandate and the values behind how we do business.

honeycomb.io

AI Week Melbourne brought two dozen AI events to the city in a week. So we're bringing it to Sydney: December 6–13. Conferences, hack days, meetups, workshops — from AI Engineer, our partners, and maybe even you. NeurIPS is in town the same week. aiweek.com.au

Run a meetup or a community for people building with AI? December 6–13 is the best week you'll ever have to run it — NeurIPS is in Sydney, AI Engineer Sydney is on. We'll list it, promote it, send people your way. Costs nothing, stays yours. aiweek.com.au/host

🎙️ New Episode of Igalia Chats State of CSS 2026: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly @bkardell.com and @meyerweb.com discuss the results of State of CSS 2026 www.igalia.com/chats/state-...

AI Week Melbourne had two hackathons, one from Google DeepMind. Vercel brought their Sydney AI Meetup down with Maincode. Microsoft, Atlassian and Zendesk all hosted events. Sydney is Dec 6–13, with NeurIPS in town. Want your company in it? Now's the time to talk. aiweek.com.au/partners

Most of AI Week Sydney hasn't been announced yet. The conference and the Hack Day are locked in. The meetups, workshops and evening events land between now and December. Sign up and we'll email you as each is confirmed: aiweek.com.au

This is the coolest article I've ever written. Genuinely. All of you should read it.

ngrok@ngrok.com · 3w ago

Compression and LLMs are trying to solve the exact same problem: predicting what comes next. @anniesexton.com's interactive essay walks us through the basics of compression to reveal its surprising overlap with every language model you've ever used.

Here's a podcast we recorded with @democrats.org.au back in 2023 about it: podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/k...

AI Week Melbourne brought two dozen AI events to the city in a week. So we're bringing it to Sydney: December 6–13. Conferences, hack days, meetups, workshops — from AI Engineer, our partners, and maybe even you. NeurIPS is in town the same week. aiweek.com.au

Every year someone asks why we don't run multiple tracks. Honest answer: multi-track quietly hands you a worse day. Single track means the whole room shares the same three days. Sydney, 26–28 Aug: webdirections.org/uxaustralia/...

Dr. Anthony Fauci urges Americans not to accept "Normalization of Untruths".

Most of AI Week Sydney hasn't been announced yet. The conference and the Hack Day are locked in. The meetups, workshops and evening events land between now and December. Sign up and we'll email you as each is confirmed: aiweek.com.au

Big new release of my LLM CLI tool and Python library for talking to hundreds of different LLMs - reasoning traces, OpenAI Responses support, server-side tools, smarter logging and a whole lot more simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/4/n...

New release of LLM adds support for reasoning traces, OpenAI Responses, server-side tools, and smarter logging

I released LLM 0.32 this morning, the most significant new version of LLM since the initial launch of the project. The new version includes support for visible reasoning traces, server-side …

simonwillison.net

Kicking it in Sydney at Homebrew Agents Club tonight @johnfallsopp.com @webdirections.org

Homebrew Agents Club is tonight — Blackwattle, 76 McEvoy St, Alexandria, from 6pm. A couple of short demos, plenty of good conversation, food and drinks on us. homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

Homebrew Agents Club is tonight — Blackwattle, 76 McEvoy St, Alexandria, from 6pm. A couple of short demos, plenty of good conversation, food and drinks on us. homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

I’m exploring the mental health effects of AI coding. This is a super quick (blazing fast), anonymous survey. Please fill out and share so that the responses will be well rounded. forms.gle/dpD8Tk1QnXAz...

AI Coding & Mental Health

All answers are anonymous.

forms.gle

Homebrew Agents Club is back Tue Aug 4, 6–9pm — Blackwattle Bar & Brewery, Alexandria. Monthly night for people building with agents. No talks, no pitches. Free, food and drinks on us. RSVP: homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

Homebrew Agents Club is back Tue Aug 4, 6–9pm — Blackwattle Bar & Brewery, Alexandria. Monthly night for people building with agents. No talks, no pitches. Free, food and drinks on us. RSVP: homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

Oh hi

Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真)@lizthegrey.com · last mo.

It's out! As of today you can order the PRINT 2nd edition of Observability Engineering from any major bookseller; no more waiting for preorders. Co-written w/ @charity.wtf, @gmiranda23.bsky.social, @aparker.io & guest authors Buy: www.indiebound.org/book/9781098... or www.amazon.com/Observabilit...

Most conference programs this year have an AI talk. Ours has about six, and they don't agree with each other. That's roughly where the honest conversation is right now. UX Week, Sydney 26–28 Aug: webdirections.org/uxaustralia/...

LLMs can help us write talk proposals, but first think about who your talk is for, and what you want them to takeaway. "Designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it 'to whom it may concern.'" — Nancy Duarte www.lenareinhard.com/articles/how...

How To Write CfP Submissions That Get Your Tech Conference Talk Accepted — Lena Reinhard

You've got a great idea for a tech talk, but your submissions keep getting rejected. The problem is (in most cases) not your topic—it's how you're representing it in your abstract. After reviewing…

lenareinhard.com

Design Research: nine talks, one day. Sydney, Wed Aug 26 — the day before UX Australia, same venue, and the bundle covers all three days. Full schedule now live. webdirections.org/design-resea...

I am a huge fan of Erin's work. She is consistently ahead of the curve in terms of probing at and understanding how technology affects actual humans. Very happy that she is digging into this space, and we hope others will support this work too: opencollective.com/atprotocolde...

Cloud Atlas - Open Collective

Building an initial map of the atproto ecosystem. Featuring 12-15 apps with interviews of builders.

opencollective.com

Erin Kissane@kissane.myatproto.social · last mo.

I would like to bring more of the fruits of the AT Protocol to the people who don't care about protocols, which is most people. www.wrecka.ge/launching-a-...

"It's 10 out of 10 for AI Engineer, it's 10 out of 10 for Web Directions and John Allsopp." — Ron Au, Canva, at AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer