1. A.I. and Vibecoding Helped Me Create My Own Software: The limitation here is my imagination.

2. Humanoid Robots are coming. Wild dogs will not stop me from paying good money for a bot that can iron and fold clothes.

3. First world problem?: Nebraska Man Struggles to Change Daughter’s Name From ‘Unakite Thirteen Hotel’. For two years.

4. Michelle Trachtenberg: I did not watch Buffy or any of her other work but it is always depressing to see so many child celebrities die early deaths. This job is hazardous. To be clear cause of death is not known and I do not want to speculate.

   What struck me was this bit in the report:

   In a 2012 interview with Complex magazine, she recalled a scene in the 2006 film “Beautiful Ohio,” starring William Hurt and Rita Wilson, that featured her “naked tush.” It was, she said, “probably one of the most horrendous moments of my life.”

   “It would take an army — or Martin Scorsese — to ever get me naked again,” she added.

   As a viewer, I almost never think about the person behind the character. Sure if a Christian Bale loses nearly 30kg for a role, its visible enough and stark enough that one is forced to think about the how of it. But for the most part, I watch the program and move on. Maybe if there is something really interesting or shocking, a comment to my SO.

   So it is a jarring to see that the impact of a brief scene stuck with the actor for years after the fact.

   These days there is enough nudity on screen that most of us are desensitized to seeing it and I hope the actors are too, to performing them. Even in 2006 or 2012, when maybe it was less common, I would not have imagined an actor, and especially an American¹ actor, would be so traumatized by such a scene.

   Maybe it is because she grew up in a time when that was a much bigger deal that it was harder on her. Perhaps actors like her were the trailblazers and paid a price and it is easier for actors now.

   It is, however, possible to imagine a possibility where being naked on screen is traumatizing, no matter how common and acceptable. According to Claude, the “being naked in public” dream genre is common across cultures and age groups and more common in adoloscents.

   If that is the case I shudder to imagine the cost of all the content on Netflix and other services in a few years time.

   The report also has a bit on another scene she was not happy about. And guess what? At the time (and thankfully no longer), the report carried a photo from that scene.

1. 50 years of Travel Tips: Some great tips.

   For the best travel experiences you need either a lot of money, or a lot of time. Of the two modes, it is far better to have more time than money. Although it tries, money cannot buy what time delivers. You have enough time to attend the rare festival, to learn some new words, to understand what the real prices are, to wait out the weather, or to get to that place that takes a week in a jeep. Time is the one resource you can give yourself, so take advantage of this if you are young without money.

2. 100% HIV Prevention:

   …we now have evidence that in real-world use it can do something that has never been seen before: twice-yearly injections in thousands of female trial volunteers in high-risk areas (South Africa and Uganda) showed a one hundred per cent prevention rate of HIV infection.

3. Stable Systems (X):

   I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don’t understand or even realize exist.

4. AI or No I (X):

   Me using LLMs for fun little personal projects: wow this thing is such a genius why do we even need humans anymore.

   Me trying to deploy LLMs in messy real-world environments: why is this thing so unbelievably stupid and dumb.

   This fits with my experience. But also for doing “real” work, prompt engineering matters. Giving the right instructions in the right order does make a difference.

   See more scepticism in this thread. Along with some of the comments I am hearing Satya Nadella made in his podcast with Dwarkesh, I wonder if we are seeing a vibe shift on AI?

5. My LLM codegen workflow atm(via):

   I have been building so many small products using LLMs. It has been fun, and useful. However, there are pitfalls that can waste so much time. A while back a friend asked me how I was using LLMs to write software. I thought “oh boy. how much time do you have!” and thus this post.

Again, for real work, prompt engineering matters.

6. Consensus projections on AI (X):

   I think Grok 3 came in right at expectations, so I don’t think there is much to update in terms of consensus projections on AI: still accelerating development, speed is a moat, compute still matters, no obvious secret sauce to making a frontier model if you have talent & chips.

7. Three Observations: Obligatory link to every Sam Altman post.

   Anyone in 2035 should be able to marshall the intellectual capacity equivalent to everyone in 2025; everyone should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine. There is a great deal of talent right now without the resources to fully express itself, and if we change that, the resulting creative output of the world will lead to tremendous benefits for us all.

1. Translating with LLMs: A fantastic guide from a professional translator on how he is using LLMs to do his job better.

   For my day to day queries, I simply ask Claude, like I would ask a colleague or a friend and it just works. But for professional work, correctly prompting the LLMs improves the quality of output significantly. I hope to find (and create) more such examples.

2. Wisdom:

3. Wisdom II: A lot of AI cheerleading takes this form. Yes, you can just do things. I have also thought and posted along those lines. But as Gergely points out, the hard thing in building a payment system is not the code - its fraud, AML, KYC, tax, reporting, reconcilliation…

   That is true for most other hard things too. The hard thing in pharma is not finding the compound but getting the trials and approvals done. The hard thing in politics in not the manifesto but the consensus.

4. Tarriffs and Modern Supply Chains: Tarriffs are more disruptive than I thought.

5. How My Dad Reconciled His God and His Gay Son: Beautiful.

   This is me with my dad, Bill White. For decades, he has been an evangelical pastor. Before I was born, he wrote a letter to my future wife. He didn’t know what we both do now: that I’m gay. When I came out nearly 16 years later, it shook his faith and fractured his church. But it never separated us. I wanted to understand how. So I read his journals.

6. Strongly endorse:

   One of the reasons making things is satisfying is that it’s a concrete demonstration of the notion that you can have some amount of control over your environment and circumstances. Passive media consumption is the opposite of that.

7. Should you value the life of your brother more than that of a stranger?:

   But again, this is a distraction from any real issue! Oh, you should value the life of your brother more than a stranger? You don’t say? I’m hearing this for the first time! Now let’s kill five million foreign children to fund one sixth of a broadband boondoggle.

   I am happy to “concede” that if you face a choice between saving a stranger and saving your brother, save your brother! Or your cousin, or your great-uncle, or your seven-times-great-grand-nephew-twice-removed. I’ll “concede” all of this, immediately, because it’s all fake; none of your relatives were ever in any danger. The only point of this whole style of philosophical discussion is so that you can sound wise as you say “Ah, but is not saving your brother more important than saving a complete stranger?” then sentence five million strangers to death for basically no benefit while your brother continues to be a successful real estate agent in Des Moines.

   When will I be able to write so well?