In this issue: we summarize an essay, How To Do Words With Things, by French philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour. The original is presented as a fictionalized encounter that a future archaeologist has with an arcane object: the Berliner Doppelschlüssel (double-key).The Doppelschlüssel is a c
GPT-5 is out. The release went like this:Altman *official tone*: "this is the most powerful ai model ever made. it also simplifies our product offering by automatically routing your queries to the adequate level of intelligence so that you can focus on your work. enjoy."Reddit: "Wait—where's GPT-4o?
Today's links Millionaire on billionaire violence: Let them fight. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Private equity vs investors; French teens who fought Nazis Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'
Welcome to a subscriber-only deep-dive edition of my weekly newsletter. Each week, I help investors, professionals and students stay up-to-date on complex topics, and navigate the semiconductor industry.If you're new, start here. As a paid subscriber, you will get additional in-depth content. We
OpenAI GPT-5 is out. I didn't get the embargo because I'm a bit hard on OpenAI at times (which I think is good), but I've read all the early reviews: from Ethan Mollick, Tyler Cowen, Every, Latent Space, METR, Artificial Analysis, and a couple of others. I've watched the 1-hour-long demo, read the f
OpenAI just announced GPT-5. I stand by my predictions from a couple weeks ago; none of the problems I said would not be solved appear to have been solved.. Here's my hot take:• Took almost 3 years, many billions of dollars (over a half-trillion fieldwide).• Good progress on many fronts.• But still
Today's links Good ideas are popular: But they're impolitic. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Slinky treadmill; Ovipositors; Peter Thiel was right. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep wri
In this issue: learnings from the first month of our Special Interest Group on Protocols for Business. From the importance of conflict to ideas from basketball and bear management. Brackish (adjective): a mix of saltwater and freshwater, at once quenching and sapping. Sodium is a dual-action nutrien
Welcome to the weekday free-edition of this newsletter that is a small idea, an actionable tip, or a short insight that takes less than 5 minutes to read. If you're new, start here!Understand the semiconductor industry. Stay ahead of the curve! If you're not a premium subscriber, here's paid conten
The Desiderata series is a regular roundup of links and thoughts for paid subscribers, and an open thread for the community.Subscribe nowContents:GPT-5's debut is slop.10% of all human experience took place since the year 2000. Education is a mirror. What's Alpha School's reflection?The rise of the
Today's links Which jobs can be replaced with AI?: Jobs that have already be degraded to the point of uselessness. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Circular batteries; Prison for file-sharing, Satanic abortions. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: W
Today's links Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch: The reality is more complex. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: David Byrne vs Spotify; India's porn ban; Qanon ARG; Contextual ads; Leveraged buyouts aren't mortgages. Upcoming appearances: Where to fin
[Cartoon of bewildering 18th century democratic controversies, courtesy of the Met]Hahrie Han and I have a new paper, which has just been published by the Knight First Amendment Institute. We contend that when people in the AI debate talk about democracy, they usually do so in strangely limited ways
On chatbot sycophancy, passivity, and the case for more intellectually challenging companions
Today provides one of the most beautiful, delicate feelings that I know and wait for, and first I have to provide some backstory. I love cricket. In particular, Test cricket. A match lasts 5 days. So there’s room for back-and-forths, intense 20 minute periods of play forcing one team into sure defea
Derivative AI art is, by, definition. AI slop.I have been writing here about AI-induced enshittification (extending a term originally due to Cory Doctorow) regularly for the last couple years, using that specific term for the first time almost exactly two years ago to the day:Needless to say, David
Today's links AI software assistants make the hardest kinds of bugs to spot: Errors that are tuned to be statistically indistinguishable from correct code. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: A universal remote for killing people; Win10 spies out of the box; MacOS firmware wo
Made with a mysterious new AI modelGPT-5, OpenAI's new flagship model, is coming out anytime now. Before it does, I want to share how I'm feeling about it and what I think we should expect. My intention with this article is to contextualize a product release that's poised to be mistreated in all dir
Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on lattes, ramen, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now Meta makes CLIP multilingual:…Meta CLIP 2 will help AI systems reason about text and images in hundreds of languages…Resear
If chatbots answer your queries, AI agents are supposed to do things on your behalf, to actively take care of your life and business. They might shop for you, book travel, organize your calendar, summarize news for you in custom ways, keep track of your finances, maintain databases and even whole so
Today's links AI's pogo-stick grift: The hard part is operating in an unpredictable, adversarial, unstructured world. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Galaksija, TSA shock-wand, Reverse-centaur apocalypse. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I
In this issue: we had o3 translate and summarize the recent German-language book Das Protokoll. The book provides a fresh glimpse of how protocols have evolved and proliferated over time. While this summary will surely miss details and nuance of the original version, it's been hand-edited to highlig
Vibe code is legacy code by Steve Krouse
Today's links Mattie Lubchansky's 'Simplicity': A tale of walled cities, omnisexual communes, and Cthulhoid horrors. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: MP3s on punchcards; German Potter fan-trans; Healthy Boundary Tree. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearan
1. Lightning maps: Next time there’s a lightning storm, open that page or grab an app. It’s a live view of lightning strikes, globally. The map focuses on where you are. What’s neat: when a dot flashes for a new strike, a circle expands around it. This circle grows at the speed of sound; if you watc
A respected source in the community says that a "shocking number" of frontier AI researchers are not using AI tools—not even their own. Coincidentally, a new Substack survey has found that half of the platform's writers do. In other words: forward-minded nerds are not into the cutting-edge technolog
Today's links You can't fight enshittification: (But we can.) Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Apple and trusted computing; TSA mocks travelers; Self-bricking med-tech. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep read
Welcome to the quiz edition of this newsletter! If you're new to this publication, start here! The content published here every week is only possible with your generous support.Upgrade to a paid subscription for all the benefits! Stay ahead in semiconductors.Here are the answers to Semi Pub Quiz #1
"The Reading Lesson," by Leon Basile Perrault (1866)What is literacy lag?Children today grow up under a tyrannical asymmetry: exposed to screens from a young age, only much later do we deign to teach them how to read. So the competition between screens vs. reading for the mind of the American child
Welcome to the quiz edition of this newsletter! If you're new to this publication, start here! The content published here every week is only possible with your generous support.Upgrade to a paid subscription for all the benefits! Stay ahead in semiconductors.Special thanks to Samantha Iyer for sugg
Today's links Delta's AI-based price-gouging: Running an airline like a hedge-fund. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: DHS RFIDs tourists; Solar heroin; International development and the copyfight Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. L
In this issue: we reflect on the conclusion of our first protocol fiction serial The Librarians, and we are live for a Guest Talk with Charity Majors in one hour at 10am Pacific Daylight Time. Stay tuned for Ghosts in Machines! contest updates.Last week, we published the sixth and final act of The L
["One Third of a Nation," by O. Louis Gugliemi, from the Met Collection]A few months back, I argued that political scientists should read Chris Hayes' fantastic book, The Siren's Call, and Chris's subsequent conversation with Ezra Klein, to understand the relationship between the attention economy a
Today's links Boss-politics antitrust and the MAGA crackup: The Tunney Act stirs the pot. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Hearware, 10,000 superballs; Bitcoin is not socialist; Stupid and dangerous video game cheating lawsuit. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recen
Today's links How twiddling enshittifies your brain: They preferentially mess with the stuff you rely on the most. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Used books economics; Adbusters sf; Branson vs virgins; Shark knife; Protesters must pledge souls to Satan; Cop "unions" aren
Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on lattes, ramen, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. Subscribe now Chinese scientists do a comprehensive safety study of ~20 LLMs – and they find similar things to Western researchers:…Despi
@WickerViper23/Stable DiffusionFor years we have been hearing, endlessly, about how GPT-5 was going to land imminently, and those predictions turned out to be wrong so often that a year ago I wrote a post about it, called GPT-5...now arriving Gate 8, Gate 9, Gate 10, not to mention a couple of April
Welcome to the occasional free Sunday deep-dive edition of my weekly newsletter. Each week, I help readers learn about chip design, stay up-to-date on complex topics, and navigate a career in the chip industry.If you're new, start here. As a paid subscriber, you will get in-depth content like this p
Note: Logpodge posts are a break from my usual long-form writing and book reviews, presenting short, topical essays. If I wanted to optimize my Subtack, I would drip these out as separate posts, but as I'm looking for readers, not followers, I send them out collected in a single post to avoid spammi
I was on the Paul Krugman show yesterday and it was good (for "talking about how the world is swirling down the pipeline" values of good). Paul's tastes and mine in science fiction shaped the conversation - on a different timeline I could imagine a 'here's how this SF writer's ideas explain the head
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