dark.ronacher.eu/2026/7/21/ne...

Never Enough

Comparison is the thief of joy.

dark.ronacher.eu

I’ve been building my own software factory over the past year. It again changed the way how I do software engineering fundamentally - similar delta compared to coding by hand vs using agents. I’m thinking of writing a blog post about it. What are your biggest questions?

I've started a new internal R&D project at @dfdxlabs.com: robotic manipulation research on real hardware! This is the first post in a series of research notes, covering the whole setup: robot arm, cameras, teleoperation, observability, data recording, and safety. dfdxlabs.com/research/202...

Building a desktop robotics research setup

The first note in an independent robotics research project, covering the physical setup, control stack, observability, data recording, and safety systems needed to run experiments on real hardware.

dfdxlabs.com

My independent R&D company, @dfdxlabs.com, has a new website 🎉 dfdxlabs.com It explains what the company does: take on hard technical problems, figure out how to solve them, and build the first working prototype. I plan to use it as an outlet for the research I’m doing, so watch this space. 👀

dfdx labs

dfdx labs is an independent R&D company led by Matthias Plappert. We take on problems at the frontier, figure out how to solve them, and build the first working prototype.

dfdxlabs.com

📝 New blog post: AI wants direct access to your data Why I switched my note taking app and built my own personal finance app: AI works best with direct, bidirectional access to your data. https://matthiasplappert.com/blog/2026/ai-wants-direct-data-access

📝 New blog post: You Have to Earn Your Calculator On the temptation of LLMs, and why sometimes you still need to do the work by hand. https://matthiasplappert.com/blog/2026/earn-your-calculator

📝 New blog post: Deepfakes for Code and the Asymmetric Internet AI hasn't just given us a new kind of spam—it has broken the economics of noise. The filter exists, but only if you can afford it. https://matthiasplappert.com/blog/2026/deepfakes-for-code

📝 New blog post: Let's Talk About the Humanoid Robot in the Room General purpose humanoid robots are like self-driving, but actually much harder. https://matthiasplappert.com/blog/2026/humanoid-robot-in-the-room

Is it just me or has Claude Code UI really gone downhill recently? Just got this beauty...

I’ve decided to start blogging! The idea is to share short opinion pieces on topics in AI, machine learning and tech more broadly. Here’s my first post 🎉 matthiasplappert.com/blog/2026/la...

How sure are we that the problem is only a software problem and not also a hardware limitation?

I'm actually very confused by the GPT-4.5 release

We still don’t have broadly available self-driving cars but somehow humanoid robots for our homes are imminent. Yeah sure 🙄

I’m actually quite bullish on Europe: I think it’s culturally well equipped to deal with the onset of increasing automation due to AI. We already have strong social security systems that can buffer the disruptions and peoples lives are less focused on work.

Essays like the one from Dario (darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-...) miss the point on why DeepSeek matters so much to investors. The key issue for OpenAI and Anthropic (and any other VC model company in this space) is that they absolutely require outside investments. (1/n)

Dario Amodei — On DeepSeek and Export Controls

On DeepSeek and Export Controls

darioamodei.com

DeepSeek R1 appears to be a VERY strong model for coding - examples for both C and Python here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/27/llamacpp-pr/

Finally got around to read the DeepSeek-v3 and r1 papers in detail and I’m very impressed. They keep things simple and pragmatic but go deep and optimize when worthwhile. I think access to compute remains key but they demonstrate how much more can be squeezed out when faced with constraints.

It’s almost as if you build a toxic hell-hole of misinformation, conspiracy theories and crypto scams, people don’t want to be there. Who would’ve thought 🤷‍♂️

Techmeme@techmeme.com · 2y ago

In email to X staff, Musk says "user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even"; sources: banks plan to sell their debt in X (Wall Street Journal) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Ladies and gentlemen: we did it

Techmeme@techmeme.com · 2y ago

In email to X staff, Musk says "user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even"; sources: banks plan to sell their debt in X (Wall Street Journal) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Excellent (old but still very relevant) article by @molly.wiki on crypto market caps and the pitfalls with these numbers. So if your friends or the mainstream media say things like “Trump made $10B in a few days” you can be the person that goes “Well, actually …”

Cryptocurrency 'market caps' and notional value

A naive equation works well when estimating the value of small quantities of popular crypto tokens, but it's also being used to estimate values of illiquid tokens and the market capitalization of all ...

blog.mollywhite.net

Deleted (or I guess deactivated 🤷‍♂️) my Twitter / X account yesterday. I no longer wish to be associated with a platform that is this toxic. Quite happy that I finally pulled the plug.

I can now solve IMO problems thanks to AI but if I have to do any chore (schedule a meeting, make a reservation at a restaurant, collect and forward invoices to my accountant) it’s completely on me. This obviously sucks since I never want to solve IMO problems in the first place.

The year is 2024. The W&B UI is still clunky, buggy, slow and overall terrible. Such a useful service but the frontend web UI is really letting it down massively.

Incredible work, super impressed. Also that rate of improvement 🤯

Jack Parker-Holder@jparkerholder.bsky.social · 2y ago

Introducing 🧞Genie 2 🧞 - our most capable large-scale foundation world model, which can generate a diverse array of consistent worlds, playable for up to a minute. We believe Genie 2 could unlock the next wave of capabilities for embodied agents 🧠.

I don’t use X anymore because it’s a shitty product, not because of me wanting to be in an echo chamber. Like I can’t even post links to interesting stuff on the internet over there 🤷‍♂️

I’m genuinely confused why we’re still arguing about the stochastic parrot claim. It never made much sense to me (or tbh most people who worked on these models) even back then. There’s also a lot of evidence against it. I think it’s also pretty straightforward to see why it’s unlikely to be true.

Because some damn fool asked, here's a thread about Baxter. This was taken on the day I brought home Baxter and threw away all hope of an easy life. Look at him. Absolutely irresistible. And that's how they get you, the utter bastards

JP@writesjp.bsky.social · 2y ago

@russincheshire.bsky.social - Can we have an update on Baxter, please? Failing that, can you post on here THAT update on the other place from a few years back? (I’m new here, so might have missed either, or both.) Yours in anticipation.

This Lex Fridman interview of Dario, Amanda and Chris is quite good (though unreasonably long): youtu.be/ugvHCXCOmm4?...

Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO on Claude, AGI & the Future of AI & Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #452

YouTube video by Lex Fridman

youtu.be

Pretty wild how you only realize how terrible X has gotten once you get out. I can post links again! Nobody has yet tried to run a crypto scam on me! My notifications aren't randomly filled with Elon! What a bliss 🌈

Have you ever done a dense grid search over neural network hyperparameters? Like a *really dense* grid search? It looks like this (!!). Blueish colors correspond to hyperparameters for which training converges, redish to those for which training diverges. Even better, a video: vimeo.com/903855670