The case against JPEG XL
Investigating JPEG XL’s place as a Web image codec. Why? JPEG XL is a technically impressive image codec; it is a definitive upgrade over JPEG, more versatile than WebP, and well-equipped to serve use cases beyond the Web. However, it was famously rejected from Chrome in 2023. Because this happened to a royalty-free, flexible, compression-efficient […]
Open-Source AI and Open Models Reading List
Hey all! I’ve been prepping for some public-audience and policy-facing writing on open models, so I figured I would share my research materials. There’s lots of wonderful stuff in here. This is my list of the best writing on open models in the last few years. If someone decides they want to get up to […]
The Contagion of Fear
I have a difficult confession to make — a shameful incident that I have never spoken of, even to those closest to me. Late one night in my first year at university and having found computer science to be my life’s calling, I was in the back of the large computer science lab, talking with some fellow […]
Registration without a phone number on Signal will use zero-knowledge proofs
I’m quite sure that there are issues similar to this one.I would like to have the possibility to register to Signal without a phone number but maybe with an email or just an user name . I have got really young cousins that have got phones just to play games and sending whatsapp messages and […]
Claude Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
Problem We gave Claude Fable 5.1 an open task: solve Sir Thomas Urquhart’s Cyphral Distich. It appears to have actually solved it, and the solution is quite embarrassing for humans in hindsight. At the end of Urquhart’s Logopandecteision is a cryptogram consisting of two lines of 32 numbers each, called the Cyphral Distich. A cryptogram […]
Flawed Routers Flood University of Wisconsin Internet Time Server (2003)
Flawed Routers Flood University of Wisconsin Internet Time Server ABSTRACT In May 2003, the University of Wisconsin – Madison found that it was the recipient of a continuous large scale flood of inbound Internet traffic destined for one of the campus’ public Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers. The flood traffic rate was hundreds-of-thousands of packets-per-second, […]
There Is No AI (It’s Just People) with Jaron Lanier
Share & Care! Editor’s Note: In this special edition episode of StarTalk, host Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Gary O’Reilly, and comedian Negin Farsad sit down with computer scientist and “father of virtual reality” Jaron Lanier. Together, they explore the evolution of the internet, the societal impacts of social media addiction, and why we should view […]
I’m being cyberattacked by Tesla, Inc
2026-09-13 While it’s not unusual for everything on the dark dungeons of the IPv4 Internet to be subject to a barrage of drive-by scanner traffic and the occasional bizarrely persistent attacker, I noticed something strange while looking through my nginx logs. Persistent attack traffic coming from three particular IPs, with the strange thing being that […]
Global Shortage Has Led to Motor Oil Rationing at Costco
Changing your own oil has traditionally been one of the easiest ways to save money on car maintenance. For Costco members, Kirkland Signature synthetic oil has made the DIY approach particularly attractive thanks to its relatively low price. That bargain has suddenly become much less compelling. According to The Auto Wire, a 10-quart case of […]
Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
TLDR: AI is really good at detecting deceptive adverts – why isn’t Google using it? A couple of months ago I noticed this advert popping up in the YouTube app. The main reason I noticed it is that I accidentally clicked it – I knew I was running out of space on my iPhone and […]