Nearby peer discovery without GPS using environmental fingerprints
Your phone can see dozens of WiFi networks right now. So can mine. If we’re in the same area, we’re probably seeing many of the same networks. Can we use that overlap to discover each other without either of us revealing which networks we actually see? Without directly communicating in that particular environment? This is […]
FAWK: LLMs can write a language interpreter
After reading the book The AWK Programming Language (recommended!), I was planning to try AWK out on this year’s Advent of Code. Having some time off from work this week, I tried to implement one of the problems in it to get some practice, set up my tooling, see how hard AWK would be, and… […]
It’s Hard to Build an Oscillator
Especially if you want it to work. There’s an old electronics joke that if you want to build an oscillator, you should try building an amplifier. One of the fundamental criteria for oscillation is the presence of signal gain; without it, any oscillation is bound to decay, just like a swing that’s no longer being […]
Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI
Language models are often treated as snapshots—brief captures of a long and carefully curated development process. But sharing only the end result obscures the rich context needed to modify, adapt, and extend a model’s capabilities. Many meaningful adjustments require integrating domain-specific knowledge deep within the development pipeline, not merely at the final stage. To truly […]
Streaming platform Twitch added to Australia’s teen social media ban
6 hours ago ShareSave Lana LamSydney ShareSave Getty Images Twitch, a streaming platform popular with gamers, has been added to Australia’s teen social media ban which starts next month. It joins other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Snapchat that must ensure under-16s cannot open accounts and existing ones are closed from 10 […]
Everything You Know About Latency Is Wrong
Okay, maybe not everything you know about latency is wrong. But now that I have your attention, we can talk about why the tools and methodologies you use to measure and reason about latency are likely horribly flawed. In fact, they’re not just flawed, they’re probably lying to your face. When I went to Strange […]
Why top firms fire good workers
Elite firms’ notorious ‘revolving door’ culture isn’t arbitrary but a rational way to signal talent and boost profits, a new study finds. Why do the world’s most prestigious firms—such as McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and other elite consulting giants, investment banks, and law practices—hire the brightest talents, train them intensively, and then, after a few years, […]
The three thousand year journey of colchicine
The Works in Progress print edition will be shipping soon. Subscribe to receive Issue 21, as well as five other full-color editions sent bimonthly, plus subscriber-only invitations to our events. In the summer of 1760, a French military officer named Nicolas Husson was brewing his Eau Médicinale, a medicinal draught that would eventually find its […]
Over-Regulation Is Doubling the Cost by Peter Reinhardt
After building a software company to a multi-billion dollar exit, I made the jump to hardware. Now I’m working on carbon removal + steel at Charm Industrial, and electric long-haul trucking with Revoy. It’s epically fun to be building in the real world, but little did I expect that more than half the cost of […]
GitHut – Programming Languages and GitHub
GitHut GitHut is an attempt to visualize and explore the complexity of the universe of programming languages used across the repositories hosted on GitHub. Programming languages are not simply the tool developers use to create programs or express algorithms but also instruments to code and decode creativity. By observing the history of languages we can […]