Why can’t you tune your guitar? (2019)
Short answer: because math. Longer answer: because prime numbers don’t divide into each other evenly. [embedded content] To understand what follows, you need to know some facts about the physics of vibrating strings: When you pluck a guitar string, it vibrates to and fro. You can tell how fast the string is vibrating by listening […]
BMW Group to deploy humanoid robots in production in Germany for the first time
Munich. The BMW Group is consistently advancing the digitalisation and use of artificial intelligence in production. A key element in this effort is “Physical AI”, which combines digital artificial intelligence (AI) with real machines and robots. This enables intelligent systems such as humanoid robots to be integrated into real-world production processes. For the first time, […]
The View from RSS
I read a lot on the web. I almost never look at websites, though. I consume almost everything through an RSS reader. As AI reshapes the way online information is organised and consumed, it increasingly feels like I’m behind the scenes, watching the performance from the wings rather than seeing it from the front as […]
You need to rewrite your CLI for AI agents
Human DX optimizes for discoverability and forgiveness. Agent DX optimizes for predictability and defense-in-depth. These are different enough that retrofitting a human-first CLI for agents is a losing bet. I built a CLI for Google Workspace — agents first. Not “built a CLI, then noticed agents were using it.” From Day One, the design assumptions […]
Faster C software with Dynamic Feature Detection
I’ve been building some software recently whose performance is very sensitive to the capabilities of the CPU on which it’s running. A portable version of the code does not perform all that well, but we cannot guarantee the presence of optional Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) which we can use to speed it up. What to […]
Making Firefox’s right-click not suck with about:config
On a fresh installation of Firefox on MacOS, right-clicking an image while some text on the page is highlighted (to show as many buttons as possible) looks like so: Freshly installed Firefox, right-clicking To be blunt: holy fucking shit, what the fuck is all of this shit? 26 rows of which 2 are greyed-out (aka: […]
NanoGPT Slowrun: Language Modeling with Limited Data, Infinite Compute
NanoGPT Slowrun – Q March 2026 NanoGPT Slowrun is an open effort to implement data-efficient learning algorithms; 5.5x data efficiency in the first week and improving. Compute grows much faster than data . Our current scaling laws require proportional increases in both to scale . But the asymmetry in their growth means intelligence will eventually […]
macOS code injection for fun and no profit (2024)
2024-07-20 Look, ma, code injection I love Live++ by Molecular Matters, aka Stefan Reinalter. It’s an exceptionally fantastic C/C++ hot-reload/live coding solution for Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 5. If you do any kind of C/C++ development on these platforms, you absolutely owe it to yourself to get a license. I’ve been using it to work […]
CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ precise movements over time, in a process that often involves siphoning data from ordinary apps like video games, dating services, and fitness trackers, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media. The document shows […]
Something is afoot in the land of Qwen
4th March 2026 I’m behind on writing about Qwen 3.5, a truly remarkable family of open weight models released by Alibaba’s Qwen team over the past few weeks. I’m hoping that the 3.5 family doesn’t turn out to be Qwen’s swan song, seeing as that team has had some very high profile departures in the […]