"Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP) has launched a new ‘safety cover’ designed to help users create privacy and discretion should they happen to be reading about potentially sensitive subjects in a public or unsafe setting." ... https://crank.report/2026/08/05/jessica-kingsley-publishers-jkp-has.html

"The engraved Mac Mini is the Patagonia vest of the AI era. The Patagonia vest signalled membership in a financial elite that valued the appearance of rugged practicality over the display of wealth. The numbered Sequoia Mac Mini signal... https://crank.report/2026/08/02/the-engraved-mac-mini-is.html

"In other words, REST is a set of architectural principles for serving resources, usually over HTTP. It is so ingrained in web development, and so standardized, that it feels strange when we do not see it." What it means for an API to b... https://crank.report/2026/08/02/in-other-words-rest-is.html

"We’ve been building a new system for running evals against different models, prompts, and harnesses, with the goal of being able to identify the most appropriate small and inexpensive models for different categories of task." smevals... https://crank.report/2026/08/01/weve-been-building-a-new.html

Finished reading: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚So good that I immediately started the next book in the series. Something I rarely do. The formation of groups, interplay of power, use of AI, and control of the climate make it so applicable right now.

"We made a different bet. We believed the future of professional AI would require more than general-purpose intelligence. It would require models built specifically for the domains, standards, and consequences of professional work. We b... https://crank.report/2026/08/01/we-made-a-different-bet.html

"Something I’ve come to appreciate about MCP is that it’s much easier to reason about agent capabilities and what might go wrong than with arbitrary command execution in an open network environment - the default for most of tod... https://crank.report/2026/08/01/something-ive-come-to-appreciate.html

"Opposition is not a principle. The political winds will inevitably shift, leaving polarization behind. Building a better web is much more universal. Empowering people to own their identity, publish more freely, form many kinds of... https://crank.report/2026/07/19/opposition-is-not-a-principle.html

"Open models aren’t an experiment or a research project anymore. They’re now running inside the largest companies in the world – Ollama is used by 85% of the Fortune 500 – and it’s just the beginning." Ollama: all aboard open m... https://crank.report/2026/07/19/open-models-arent-an-experiment.html

"The IndieWeb does not invent a platform; it defines a handful of small standards that compose with each other. The official index orders them by age and breadth of implementation." I joined the IndieWeb, here’s what I learned | A... https://crank.report/2026/07/19/the-indieweb-does-not-invent.html

"The best thing here is that I prepared Codex and Antigravity to be used as Claude subagents, orchestrated by Fable, using the headless nature of both. Why is it cool? Because tokens are taken from the Codex and Antigravity subscriptions... https://crank.report/2026/07/19/the-best-thing-here-is.html

"What is already easy for everyone will not create any lasting value for you. I don’t think building a successful startup has gotten any easier with AI. It’s just that certain parts of it have gotten faster. I don’t think speed of codi... https://crank.report/2026/07/14/what-is-already-easy-for.html

"Two decades of anti-LGBTQ legislation, documented bill by bill." LGBTQ Legislation Tracking Project — LegiAlerts Now let’s map it and put it against other community demographics to see the impact.

What Infrastructure Does Civil Society Need? I recently had the chance to look closely at the work of a group of organizations. They were different sizes, working with different communities, over different lengths of tim... https://crank.report/2026/07/11/what-infrastructure-does-civil-society.html

"The organization will reportedly serve as both a leadership pipeline for students interested in public service and a research center examining issues affecting democratic governance, including political polarization, the... https://crank.report/2026/06/30/the-organization-will-reportedly-serve.html

"Today’s AI boom is unfolding through a highly concentrated ecosystem of hyperscalers, suppliers and private lenders linked by debt and increasingly opaque financing arrangements." AI boom carries with it a big risk All the more r... https://crank.report/2026/06/30/todays-ai-boom-is-unfolding.html

"[Tyler Cowan] now describes ChatGPT Pro as approaching “the pocket-calculator level” of reliability for many of the ways he uses it. And because he has written online for more than 20 years and recorded years’ worth of public... https://crank.report/2026/06/27/tyler-cowan-now-describes-chatgpt.html

"Physical media fosters community. Flea markets, record fairs, used bookstores, and game swaps provide spaces for exchanging recommendations, sharing stories, and discovering unexpected finds. These interactions create con... https://crank.report/2026/06/27/physical-media-fosters-community-flea.html

On browsing knowledge Prompted by one of TechSoup’s board members, I’ve been walking around saying, “Websites won’t exist in two years.” Every time I say it, I keep whittling down the amount of time—18 months, 12 months, 9 mo... https://crank.report/2026/06/25/on-browsing-knowledge-prompted-by.html

"So it must be that a key ingredient to blogging is simple: have a willingness to state something that seems obvious to you but nobody else is saying it." Blogging Can Just Be Stating The Obvious - Jim Nielsen’s Blog Noted.

simonw/browser-compat-db Too geeky for me still. It will get there.

"The AI boom needs electricians. It also needs line workers, substation technicians, grid engineers, mechanical contractors, welders, construction crews, and commissioning specialists. These are not jobs that can be filled insta... https://crank.report/2026/06/15/the-ai-boom-needs-electricians.html

Exclusive: ICE obtains local voter files in Texas and North Carolina More related than relevant. This article started me thinking about community efforts that brought together non-voters with voters so the legal voter could cast a representative ballot.

"The consequences will be dire for utility or for privacy, and possibly both. It’s hard to understate this point: future statistical releases will either be useless compared to past ones, or they will be incredibly unsafe." Banni... https://crank.report/2026/06/14/the-consequences-will-be-dire.html

"We don’t get chances to rewrite the rules very often, but this is one of those times. Last one was in the early 1990s with the advent of the web. My plan is to give all the new power back to the web." On AI | scripting.com This. I thi... https://crank.report/2026/06/14/we-dont-get-chances-to.html

"There are three ways to do AI coding at home without spending like a company, and which one fits depends mostly on how much you trust the next year of hardware and model releases." AI Coding at Home Without Going Broke | Stephen Bochi... https://crank.report/2026/06/14/there-are-three-ways-to.html

"Data centers now seek amounts of electricity that used to be associated with entire cities — raising questions about who pays for new infrastructure, who gets access to scarce power and how quickly projects can connect to the gri... https://crank.report/2026/06/14/data-centers-now-seek-amounts.html

Finished reading: Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood 📚I didn’t realize this novella, almost a collection of vignettes, was the basis for Cabaret. The slow way a society changes is instructive reading.

"Does knowing more stuff mean the model is better at the tasks we pose to it? I can certainly imagine how a coding model with deeper knowledge of modern libraries and patterns could crunch through coding tasks more effectively." Claude Fable 5 | Simon Willison