Linear Algebra Explains Why Some Words Are Effectively Untranslatable
Marco Giancotti, November 13, 2025 Cover image: Image by vackground.com, Unsplash A part of me still hasn’t recovered from learning that some people believe there is no such thing as an untranslatable word. I’ve written about why I disagree before, but that explanation didn’t satisfy me completely. There was a stronger argument to be made, […]
I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
Mozilla is developing a built‑in AI assistant for Firefox that will be offered as a third browsing mode alongside Normal and Private tabs. They’re calling it “Window AI.” Details are still scarce. Based on Mozilla’s official announcement on Thursday (13th), it looks like a deeper implementation than the existing sidebar that gives access to third‑party […]
AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering
14 Nov 2025 Reading Empire of AI by Karen Hao, I was struck by how people associated with OpenAI believe in AGI. They really do think someone, perhaps them, will build AGI, and that it will lead to either the flourishing or destruction of humanity. Elon Musk founded OpenAI because he thought Demis Hassabis was […]
Nvidia is gearing up to sell servers instead of just GPUs and components
The launch of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform for AI and HPC next year could mark significant changes in the AI hardware supply chain as Nvidia plans to ship its partners fully assembled Level-10 (L10) VR200 compute trays with all compute hardware, cooling systems, and interfaces pre-installed, according to J.P. Morgan (via @Jukanlosreve). The move would […]
Weight-sparse transformers have interpretable circuits [pdf]
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Gnome 50 Ends the X11 Era After Decades
Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself. In other words, […]
V8 Garbage Collector
Let’s talk about memory management! Following up on my article about 5 years of developments in V8’s garbage collector, today I’d like to bring that up to date with what went down in V8’s GC over the last couple years. methodololology I selected all of the commits to src/heap since my previous roundup. There were […]
RegreSQL: Regression Testing for PostgreSQL Queries
TL;DR – RegreSQL brings PostgreSQL’s regression testing methodology to your application queries, catching both correctness bugs and performance regressions before production. As puzzling as it might seem, the common problem with production changes is the ever-present ”AHA” moment when things start slowing down or crashing straight away. Testing isn’t easy as it is, but there’s […]
Fastmcpp (Fastmcp for C++)
High‑performance C++ implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), with support for tools, resources, prompts, and multiple transport layers (STDIO, HTTP/SSE, WebSocket). fastmcpp is a C++ port of the Python fastmcp library, providing native performance for MCP servers and clients with a small, focused dependency set. Status: Beta – core MCP features track the Python […]
Hooked on Sonics: Experimenting with Sound in 19th-Century Popular Science
Of all the senses cultivated throughout the 19th century, it was the sense of hearing that experienced the most dramatic transformation, as the science of sound underwent rapid advancement. Lucas Thompson delves into a particular genre of popular acoustics primers aimed at children and amateurs alike, which reveal the pedagogical, ludic, and transcendental strivings of […]