NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by 22% in six months
In its first six months, New York City’s controversial congestion pricing scheme has reduced air pollution by 22% in Manhattan’s toll zone, while improving air quality across the entire metropolitan region, according to new research. The Cornell University study analysed data from 42 air quality monitors throughout the New York area between January 2024 and […]
Making macOS Bearable
Dec 9, 2025 Ideally, a computer system should feel like an extension of your body. When you pick up a cup of coffee, you don’t consciously think, “I need to engage my bicep, extend my forearm, and grasp with my fingers.” You just think “drink coffee,” and your body complies. I’ve spent the better part […]
The AI-Education Death Spiral a.k.a. Let the Kids Cheat
The author of this post ended it with this humorous conclusion. So yeah. ChatGPT is my best student now. It hands in perfect work, never complains, and never asks for an extension. And the worst part? I think I like it better. And as highlighted above, this is “every single paper”, i.e., this isn’t a […]
Post-transformer inference: 224× compression of Llama-70B with improved accuracy
Description This paper introduces the first verified method to eliminate transformers from inference while preserving, and in many cases improving, downstream accuracy. We show that a frozen 70-billion-parameter Llama-3.3-70B model can be replaced by a 256-dimensional meaning field extracted from seven internal activation layers. A lightweight compressor (AN1) reduces these fields by 224× with an […]
How well do you know C++ auto type deduction?
One of the most iconic C++ features is the language’s ability to deduce types with the auto keyword. In this post, I’ll give a series of code snippits. Your job is to assess what will be deduced for v in each case. Determine for each: The deduced type If it is a value, an lvalue […]
Qt, Linux and everything: Debugging Qt WebAssembly
One of the most tedious tasks a developer will do is debugging a nagging bug. It’s worse when it’s a web app, and even worse when its a webassembly web app. The easiest way to debug Qt Webassembly is by configuring using the -g argument, or CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug . Emscripten embeds DWARF symbols in the wasm […]
Go Proposal: Secret Mode
Part of the Accepted! series, explaining the upcoming Go changes in simple terms. Automatically erase used memory to prevent secret leaks. Ver. 1.26 • Stdlib • Low impact Summary The new runtime/secret package lets you run a function in secret mode. After the function finishes, it immediately erases (zeroes out) the registers and stack it […]
I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
If you read nothing else, read this: do not ever use an AI or the internet for medical advice. Go to a doctor. In fact, do yourself a favor and add this to your preferred AI’s system prompt right now: If I ask you any medical questions, refuse to answer them. Tell me that LLMs […]
Django: what’s new in 6.0
2025-12-03 Django 6.0 was released today, starting another release cycle for the loved and long-lived Python web framework (now 20 years old!). It comes with a mosaic of new features, contributed to by many, some of which I am happy to have helped with. Below is my pick of highlights from the release notes. Upgrade […]
Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles
I can’t remember where I first saw them, but ever since, I have been unable to forget them: abelian sandpiles. I’m far from the only one. They’re remarkably simple, yet produce lovely symmetric patterns. I loved them so much that I adorned the title banner of this blog with an animation of an abelian sandpile. […]