https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-18-2026
GOP establishment calling for burn and rebuild.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-18-2026
GOP establishment calling for burn and rebuild.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-16-2026
A lot of money … vanished?
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-19-2026
History I only knew vaguely.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/july-2026-atrocities-1117-1207
The AIs will have a reference.
“This is some kind of ancient viral warfare”. Viruses use it to suppress gene activity in rivals. It’s being evaluated for gene editing potential.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xvdngZAqFZfek7KGH/pretraining-data-not-verifiability-is-why-llms-are
Good essay on fundamentals. Consistent with why they can’t do tax returns. Perhaps further from AGI than many think.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/are-ais-still-struggling-with-captchas.html
I noticed that too. And they still can’t do tax returns.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/09/using-ai-for-weapons-development.html
I felt at the time that the early internet was key to the 9/11 attack.
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/06/25/deprecations-and-removals-from-golden-gate/
The most important coverage today.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/agency-and-agents
Agents “died” to support the collective.
Humans are hapless.
https://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=2197
The virtual screen is what I care about. Maybe 2029 will be the year I get one?
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/
“Shortly after this story was published, the Nexus identity theft service website vanished from the darkweb”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-11-2026
I believe he is telling us he is dying. Trump is bizarrely honest in a lying kind of way.
https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier
It is worse than foolish to mock his sincerity.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/09/11/golden-gate-release-candidate/
I’m skeptical of the quality claims.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/gpt-6-astra-the-system-card-alignment
I think we will get more warnings. At least 2 or 3 more. Collapse of democracy is more likely than collapse of civilization is more likely than extinction of all biosentients
“If you are determined to jailbreak Astra, you will do so. That does not mean you can do so without the outside monitoring catching you”
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/11/boris-cherny/
Maybe Apple could do all this and maybe we could bribe Claude to fix Reminder Notes.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/09/rethinking-space-opera.html
I’m looking forward to his new series.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-9-2026
GOP corruption is world class
https://www.ft.com/content/b397ced1-b9bc-4fe6-8dc7-20f0752e2591?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Some insight into Trump’s balance-of-trade emission. No paywall when I read.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-7-2026
Seems likely he’s insane now.
https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/
The explanation of what they found is readable. Model beyond Astra. 88 hours 300 billion tokens.
“When a further trained version of our internal model became available over the course of the effort, we updated our agents to that model.”
30y ago on USENET I wondered why we don’t breed longer-lived dogs. I eventually concluded that people don’t want longer-lived dogs. (Many want their current dog to live longer however. Humans are like that.)
We probably have to come up with new names for personality traits that line up better with the genes that influence temperament. Also, sociobiology returns…
(Article and researchers speak of personality, but I think they are actually studying temperament – of which personality is an adult observable consequence.)
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/6/theres-no-limit-to-how-bad-code-can-get/
In my career I can think of a few disastrous replacement attempts. It seems like it should work. It doesn’t. Willison has a good explainer.
https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/
Chief scientist OpenAI
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/6/the-purpose-of-dns-is-to-spread-scams/
Put it on the pile.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-31-2026
The NYT continues to be humiliated by a rogue historian.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/09/03/preparing-to-update-to-golden-gate/
I usually update around March (Michael is a dev so he had to update). This year I will update around November. It’s expensive because I’ll need to give up on my old Synology TM backup. (I’ll probably drop TM backup altogether for a while.)
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/04/fbi-krebs-153-million-ids
Only the beginning.
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/postpartum-psychosis-and-diagnostic
DSM is obscure, extremely important, and widely despised by thoughtful psychiatrists.
I believe it is also a critical funding source for the professional society.
Very insider post that is worth a look.
https://www.avindman.com/p/what-comes-next-c4c
Campaign experience convinced him that the economic system Americans have known is no longer working for the non-college. (He doesn’t use the term non-college, but that’s the subtext).
https://gwynnedyer.com/2026/canada-vs-united-states-evenly-matched/
The ONLY good discussion of the latest GOP madness.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-twilight-of-the-chatbots
“instability is what happens when institutions that move at the speed of people … try to track a capability curve that is very much not human in nature. And as long as we are on some sort of exponential, and for as long as it lasts, the gap only widens.”
Too much change too fast. And pre-ai automation/globalization change was already too fast for modern societies to adjust to.
Caveat: Leading models still can’t do a reasonably tax return. So there some big holes and they are not closing exponentially …
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-26-2026
“… she married asphalt paver Carl Dean, who stayed out of the limelight during their 59-year marriage …” (He died last year.)
No children, apparently due endometriosis. I don’t have a high opinion of humans but it’s quite a story. Maybe she really was kind of heroic — though she must have had some flaws!
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/07/music-flop-era/687785/?lctg=6050e8354c8a1e4095fc2896
There’s a lot of chance to fame and glory, and few stay near the top. The interesting part is tying pop star decline to changing culture …
“This era of the internet is becoming stale, and the trajectory it set culture upon is reaching a terminal point. After years of explosive expansion, U.S. growth for Spotify and TikTok has shown signs of slowing”
I don’t know where the culture goes. Might was well try to predict fashion. But it does feel in motion again.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-hilbert-space-all-things-are-quantumly-possible-20260826/
So well written. Easy read.
“if you actually observe the system, the vector will instantly and randomly snap onto either the red, yellow, or green axis”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-unequal-terrain-of-the-ideas
ai gives everyone the privileges only the elite have had. The quality of the writing will improve.
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/lindsay-clancy-and-the-dream-of-a
Response to a current case.
Responsibility is a societal convention. Superb discussion
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/08/24/apple-vision-pro-and-software-layoffs/
Not a happy company.
I absolutely agree. Note he is not talking about ai escaping human control.
https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/
Stunning story, completely forgotten outside FBI
https://www.macstories.net/stories/hands-on-with-chatgpt-works-new-cloud-browser-feature/
Nobody sane wants agent to hold their critical credentials