I just had an amazing idea for a startup invent a virtual machine, except instead of writing an interpreter or a JIT, you just, for every instruction, package up the state of the whole VM, send it to an LLM, and ask it what the new state would be after the current instruction is evaluated
What the fuck kind of feature is this, Outlook??? You discovered the word "congratulations" in an email and decided that you should draw animated confetti coming from it??? Seriously what the fuck. No one wants this. Your feature makes your product *worse*. I just can't even.
Oh my gosh! Another article about how bars are making less money now, but *should* be about how people are being healthier now Do better, NYT www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/s...
What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze?
Yes, there are many benefits of cutting back. But bars are closing. Jobs are going away. And a way of being together can feel harder to find.
nytimes.com
I’m fairly disappointed about the reporting of what happened yesterday in Ceuta. 60,000 people entered a place in a single day that usually holds 83,000 residents, and then 37,000 of them went back within the same day, but AFAICT none of the reporting indicates *why* they did it. Why yesterday?
From reading about today’s Senate hearing with Fauci, it sure seems like Rand Paul is attacking Fauci not to represent his constituents, but instead just for himself. Rand Paul is such a prick.
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/t... > The largest development in Louisiana’s history: a … data center … that planners say could use seven times as much energy as New Orleans. Oh my god. Data centers are using New Orleanses as a unit for energy use 😳
How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal
A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.
nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/n... It’s so clear that Netanyahu is intentionally trying to conflate criticism of Israel with criticism of Judaism, to try to artificially increase sympathy for his regime. He should be ashamed.
Netanyahu Accuses Mamdani of ‘Hate Speech’ After Mayor’s Video Address
The Israeli prime minister criticized Mr. Mamdani for releasing a video last week in which the mayor called for the federal government to arrest Mr. Netanyahu for war crimes.
nytimes.com
Bold opinion: computer programming is a social endeavor (as well as a technical one)
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/t... > Anthropic and OpenAI have claimed that Chinese companies built the models by improperly harvesting data from their A.I. systems, which they said should not be allowed. So ironic…
Silicon Valley Splits Over Closing the Borders to Chinese A.I.
Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing with the rest of the tech industry over whether “open-source” models from China should be freely available or restricted.
nytimes.com
Today I discovered that PTX is publicly documented docs.nvidia.com/cuda/paralle...
As a mechanism that opens a car door, a button is strictly worse than a handle, for 2 reasons: 1. It’s unfamiliar to everyone who has ever gotten into a car before 2. Pushing something involves moving it away from you, but the action you want is for the door to move toward you
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/t... So OpenAI tests its hacking AI in a sandbox, and the hacking AI hacks its way out of the sandbox and then starts hacking real websites This is the world we live in
OpenAI Says Its A.I. Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library
The incident, which targeted the computer systems of another company called Hugging Face, happened while OpenAI was testing the systems.
nytimes.com
@tomforsyth.bsky.social I have a geometry shader question for you. Thinking about the clipper and the GS. Both of them generate a variable amount of work. Both require allocating the worst case amount of memory. Yet, the clipper just quietly does its job, whereas the GS destroys perf. Why?
Trump is going to be remembered in history (among many other things) about how he completely screwed up this whole Iran thing
The most interesting part of Nvidia’s SIGGRAPH course on neural shading: they said any network that’s small enough to run in real time won’t be smart enough to do the math ops required for applying normal maps, so you should do that part yourself analytically after running the model.
The best music does not, in fact, have a loud voice over saying “WE DA BES’ MUSIC”
Had to pause Uncharted 3 because I’m traveling, but I brought a laptop on the trip so I started Uncharted 4 (because that runs on PC) Holy crap, I know it’s from 2016, but this might be the best looking game I’ve ever played - It does live panning cuts between multiple scenes, like movies do
I have a nitpick: it isn’t “refusing” for a TV network to not air a politician’s speech. The default behavior for a TV network is to *not* air things. It’s a choice for them *to* air something, not to *not* air it
TIL Lindsey Graham never married and didn’t have any kids en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsey... I wonder if this contributed his consistently pro-war positions. He didn’t have a kid who was being shipped off somewhere.
You can’t call it Pax Americana if the American government keeps attacking countries
www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/u... I’m not in the House of Representatives, but if I was, I too would have voted to end aid to Israel, because their government is destroying Gaza and also tricked the US government into attacking Iran
Almost Half of House Democrats Vote to End Aid to Israel
The measure failed, but the level of support among Democrats exposed a stark shift in the party away from backing the Jewish state.
nytimes.com
Remember that time when Merrick Garland’s senate confirmation was delayed until after a presidential election, to “let the voters decide”? The confirmation of Lindsey Graham’s replacement should be delayed until after the midterms, for the same bullshit reason
Lindsey Graham is dead. I’m sad that a man died, but oh boy is the country better off now
I played the first few hours of Uncharted 3 last night, and it’s quite incredible to see the progression of the games (I’ve been playing 1-3 back to back) The graphics, in particular, are fascinating to compare. Each game is a step function up. #3 even added volumetric flashlights!
I hope I can see one of those GPUs with an Ethernet port on it in real life before I die
When reading about the sexual assault allegations against Platner, I can’t stop thinking about how Trump was found guilty by a court of law for raping someone. Also was found guilty of 34 felonies. Platner should definitely step down, but for fuck’s sake, Trump should absolutely not be president.