A publication about technology and the people shipping it. What just changed, what it actually does and what it costs when it breaks.
Model releases, product decisions, opinions with the reasoning left in and real incidents with the code attached. Written so that anyone who works near software can read it, not only the people who wrote it.
CosmologyFor three years the James Webb telescope has been finding little red dots in the early universe that nobody could explain. A new object in Nature suggests they are black holes hiding inside a cloak of gas.
PolicyThe transparency clauses of the EU AI Act came into force in August. The clauses that actually decide who can use AI on your medical file or your job application were quietly pushed back by more than a year.
Model releasesOpenAI and Anthropic both shipped new flagship models in the same July. Neither headline was about a jump in intelligence. Both were about the same intelligence costing less.
PaymentsThe demos show an agent buying your groceries. The unglamorous problem underneath is how you let a piece of software touch your card, and the answer taking shape at Google, Visa and Mastercard is a signed permission slip for every purchase.
SemiconductorsSilicon transistors are running out of room to shrink. A team at TSMC and a Taiwanese university got a two-dimensional replacement to behave, and the fix was a buffer of aluminium oxide a fraction of a nanometre across.
CosmologyTwo ways of measuring how fast the cosmos grows have disagreed for a decade. The telescopes have ruled out a mistake. Now machine learning is being pointed at the messiest part of the problem.
PolicyFrom 2 August, an AI talking to someone in the EU has to admit it is an AI, and deepfakes have to be labelled. The office that enforces all of it finally has teeth. The rules are clear. Whether they can be enforced is the open question.
Model releasesNo new flagship. Instead a cheaper workhorse, the fastest small model yet and a security model locked to governments. The most interesting AI release of the summer was not about intelligence. It was about price.
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