From another parent: But now he just launches into diatribes about how we’re so mean and we don’t let him do anything and we’re hateful people because we didn’t let him keep watching Bluey a…

Hello, Fine People. Here's issue #15 of Studio Notes—quick bits delivered to you each Friday. This is a weekly newsletter that I'm publishing here on the blog as well. You should subscribe if haven'…

Robin Rendle quoting Chris Armstrong: I have these two opposing thoughts: The difference, I suppose, is that a personal blog and a site designed to get people technical information, have different con…

Manual inspection of data has probably the highest value-to-prestige ratio of any activity in machine learning. — Greg Brockman, OpenAI, Feb 2023 Tags: machine-learning, openai, ai…

[...] much of the point of a model like o1 is not to deploy it, but to generate training data for the next model. Every problem that an o1 solves is now a training data point for an o3 (eg. any o…

Film director David Lynch has died at the age of 78. RIP, Lynch was a real one. “It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.” �…

Datasette Public Office Hours Application We are running another Datasette Public Office Hours event on Discord tomorrow (Friday 17th January 2025) at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 10pm GMT / more…

Evolving GitHub Issues (public preview) GitHub just shipped the largest set of changes to GitHub Issues I can remember in a few years. As an Issues power-user this is directly relevant to me. Th…

I was sent this article yesterday. This reminded me of this gem from a few years ago : He talked about electric cars. I don’t know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figur…

We've adjusted prompt caching so that you now only need to specify cache write points in your prompts - we'll automatically check for cache hits at previous positions. No more manual tracking of…

Last Tuesday, January 14th, I had the delightful honour to co-host the premiere of Eno, the documentary by Gary Hustwit and Brendan Dawes. On stage a…

100x Defect Tolerance: How Cerebras Solved the Yield Problem I learned a bunch about how chip manufacture works from this piece where Cerebras reveal some notes about how they manufacture chips…

First, we had the Nest thermostat. Gotta have that, right? The first thermostat in the history of time that feels well-designed. Works great. Pleasure to use and look at. Then we got the smoke alarm.…

OMG, this is such great news! My favorite newsletter Sidebar is back from its break. Designer Fabricio Teixeira is taking over the duties. He explains the spirit of Sidebar: Sidebar has always felt d…

Like everyone else, the tragic wildfires ravaging Los Angeles area make our hearts ache. We feel for all of our friends, industry pals, and everyone who has been impacted by the fires. LA-based de…

Today's software ecosystem evolved around a central assumption that code is expensive, so it makes sense to centrally develop and then distribute at low marginal cost. If code becomes 100x cheape…

ChatGPT reveals the system prompt for ChatGPT Tasks OpenAI just started rolling out Scheduled tasks in ChatGPT, a new feature where you can say things like "Remind me to write the tests in five…

My son, aged 13, was given this question for his homework recently. As someone (me!) having worked on the web professionally since 1999, I felt a connection to this particular bit of homework. Obvious…

Rogue has a 1000LB Club. Find your cumulative total of a 1 Rep Max Bench/Squat/Deadlift in one hour I’m not particularly interested in actually doing it. You have to record a video with a bunch…

Ooooo, this looks great. Studioworks is business management software for creative studios. It’s made by my pals Jessica Hische and Chris Shifflet. I freaking love seeing good people make good honest…

Simon Willison And SWYX Tell Us Where AI Is In 2025 I recorded this podcast episode with Brian McCullough and swyx riffing off my Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 review. We also touched on…

I could do a deep dive into the UX of login codes, but I’ll do my best to keep it short. If your product texts/emails login codes, the experience better be amazing. Bad The text/email n…

I just got a Squire Bass VI, an instrument I didn’t know existed until developer/musician Tim Hilton mentioned it to me in a LinkedIn message (of all places!). I had a few holiday/birthday gi…

LLMs shouldn't help you do less thinking, they should help you do more thinking. They give you higher leverage. Will that cause you to be satisfied with doing less, or driven to do more? — Alex…

Codestral 25.01 Brand new code-focused model from Mistral. Unlike the first Codestral this one isn't (yet) available as open weights. The model has a 256k token context - a new record for Mistra…

Steward Brand has talked about Pace Layering for a long time: Pace layers provide many-leveled corrective, stabilizing feedback throughout the system. It is in the contradictions between these layers…

Hey folks. After a busy and productive fall & holiday season, kottke.org will be closed this week for some much-needed rest, relaxation, and recharging. I will be back next week, ready to g…