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I was listening to an Acquired episode and the guest mentioned the role of computers (people) being replaced by electronic computers, and how programming/coding will/is seeing the same fate. Here’s the episode: How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) And here on YouTube where I got the transcript. Here’s the quote: I self-identify as a computer programmer. It’s like the thing I like to do the most. And I’m like, man, that’s sort of like saying I’m—do remember like the calculators, people who like calculated things before we had calculators? I’m like, am I that? ...

Among Ronald Fisher’s many contributions to statistics, genetics, and evolutionary theory at large was his “fundamental theorem of natural selection”: “The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.” See: Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection, Wikipedia. In plain language (with llm help): “The rate at which a population becomes better adapted (its average fitness increases) is directly proportional to the amount of genetic variation for fitness it already has.” ...

Machine Learning Street Talk is a YouTube channel and podcast by Tim Scarfe and sometimes Keith Duggar. I’m a fan of the podcast, and have been for some time. Follow them on X here: Machine Learning Street Talk Recently, like this northern hemisphere summer, they have been releasing fantastic episodes. Both the quality of the guests and the quality of the questions/discussion. Riveting stuff. Specifically: The Secret Ingredient for AI Creativity A chat with Kenneth Stanley. Did a 7 Year Old Really Solve the Universe? A chat with Guillaume Verdon. Mutually Assured AI Malfunction (Superintelligence Strategy) A chat with Dan Hendrycks. All three had be sitting and staring into space for a long time, thinking through things. Not sure I’m smart enough to keep up at double speed, a few listens are required. ...

I’ve created a new Quake archive, this time for the Navy Seals modification by Minh Le aka “Gooseman”. This was originally an ad hoc archive as a gist here: Navy Seals Quake I decided to make it a standalone archive as I came across rare/hard-to-find versions of the mod that I believed required independent hosting. You can see the full archive here: Quake Navy Seals

I listened to part 1 of the Acquired Podcast on the history of Google. Outstanding and nostalgic. I was a super early google user, thanks to a mention on slashdot on the late 90s. It got me thinking: what if… What if I travelled back to 2005 with my current knowledge, what would I do? What online business would I build? I was thinking about SEO and authority sites, based on the Acquired podcast episode on google. ...

After a long holiday where you eat like a pig and exercise not at all, how do you get back on the path? You must cut calories and get the body/brain used to the new regimen as fast as possible, e.g. avoid backsliding. Firstly cut all junk food and processed foods. Next, cut carbs. Then cut calories to below maintenance. All while exercising daily, as close to normal as possible. Don’t feel like going to the gym? Who the hell does? Fine, walk 5km. Lift at home. Get that body moving. Strain those muscles. ...

I created an archive of all official releases for Quake II (Quake2): Quake II Official Archive It complements my Quake Official Archive and Quake III Arena Official Archive. It seems that the Quake2 era circa (1998) was perfect for the wayback machine and almost all Quake2 files were archived. This Quake2 archive is the most complete of the three archives. The main files missing are a few solaris dedicated server releases, and these may or may not be “official”, more research is required. ...

I found and acquired a copy of the monograph: Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance, Patrick Wilson, 1977. From the first chapter: Scholars and scientists engage in attempts to make contributions to a public body of knowledge about the world. They do not work simply to increase their own private understanding of the world, nor simply to increase the understanding of their co-workers in a specialized branch of inquiry. Their work is incomplete until they have made their results public, available to anyone, now and in the future, who can understand and make use of them. ...

I read Samuel Arbesman’s “The Half-life of Facts” yesterday. Good book, great even. I’ll be reading more by Arbesman. One section got me thinking about LLMs, chapter 6 titled “Hidden Knowledge”. It is about how there are breakthroughs sitting in plain sight, in public hidden knowledge. For example, disparate facts spread across fields that need to be unified. “Hidden knowledge takes many forms. At its most basic level hidden knowledge can consist of pieces of information that are unknown, or are known only to a few, and, for all practical purposes, still need to be revealed. Other times hidden knowledge includes facts that are part of undiscovered public knowledge, when bits of knowledge need to be connected to other pieces of information in order to yield new facts. Knowledge can be hidden in all sorts of ways, and new facts can only be created if this knowledge is recognized and exploited.” ...

I have been thinking of coding up some more elaborate prompt scaffolding for writing projects. I guess I don’t need to. Today, I watched: I Got AI to Write a Book with One Click, and It Was… It’s a great video. It uses Make connected to models via OpenRouter. It’s you’re classic code-free workflow tool, but for prompting LLMs. It starts with a sequence for developing the story outline, then uses the outline to create 3 outlines of chapters in parallel. ...