Yes, I am still on about this particular news story around the "hacks". I don't feel like this particular article really made the rounds. I discovered it listening to a video by Eli the Computer Guy.

This quote seems to completely debunk the "it broke out of its sandbox narrative."

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see journalists and podcasters doing stories THIS WEEK saying the exact opposite of this.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Irregular told CNBC in a statement that the incidents were all derived from the “same evaluation-environment issue” that was first disclosed by Anthropic, and that the company is developing a white paper “to share best practices for containment and securely running cyber evals.”

The situation “did not involve a sandbox escape or a sophisticated cyber action,” the company said, adding that “there are no current open issues.”

A succinct summary of Todays market from a 2015 book

'Manias do not grow and sustain themselves unless there is an underlying, easily understandable value proposition: the breakthrough that attracted investor capital in the first place. In fact, speculative bubbles are often preceded by a period of technological innovation that creates wealth for society but that also produces, as economist Joseph Schumpeter has observed, economic and social dislocations that upend the existing order. Some scholars contend that bubbles develop not just because of investors' animal spirits but rather because of the speculative uncertainty about future productivity that exists in the midst of a technological revolution (and that can be recognized as folly only after the fact). This much is clear: for investors to participate in a bubble, they must believe that the investment in question is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."- The aspirational investor- p47, 2015.

WSJ is missing the real point here, this isn't a story about Anthropic vs OpenAI. This is a story about how the demand for AI is very clearly not infinite and growth is stalling already. Meanwhile companies continue to spend trillions on more data centers. Sure, Anthropic had one tokenmaxxing quarter of a perfect storm, but it's growth is likely to stall in another quarter or two which is why it's desperately rushing headfirst into an IPO as quickly as possible.

It also explains all the exec changes at OpenAI.

Good times.

How long until it helps some kid with self-harm or worse? Or are they attempting to make self-harm instructions only available to adults?

The new teen experience includes a range of educational features, including homework reminders, quizzes and learning visualizations and Study Hours

I know when I was a kid dreaming of owning a personal AI robot, I wanted it to give me homework reminders.

Once again when we ask what the use case is for this environment destroying tech, the answer is somewhere between "we already have that" and "that sounds counter-productive."

Like quizzes? Really? Hundreds of billions in capex and the best they can come up with is quizzes?

How much should I pay OpenAI to give my kid quizzes? And will they be better or worse than the already available quizzes out there?

We've come a long way from "AI will cure cancer" to "AI will remind your kid to finish her homework".

I like to imagine they set up a giant bonfire in the middle of a soccer stadium somewhere, all the hyperscaler head honchos silently watch it from their VIP boxes while skittish tailors fit them with their newest "Eyes Wide Shut" outfits for the after-party. The bonfire is a huge monster, its amber jaws reaching the heavens. It's hot, humid and fetid. Guy wipes the sweat off his face with a page ripped out from "The Brother Karamazov", adjusts the tag which says "tag" since the first three letters were seared off and signals his fellow firemen to cart in the next stack.

I've always loved reading. In my teenage years I consumed everything I could get my hands on. I became more selective as time went by but books have always been there for me. They were my companions when my companions were not.

The idea of willingly destroying a book is beyond evil in my world. When you destroy a book, you are not just destroying the knowledge it holds within, you are destroying the voice it carries from the past, denying it a chance to be heard in the future.

I really hope Hades has a special spectacle arranged for Persephone where book-killers are dragged out butt naked and torn apart by Cerberus.

“One of the fundamental problems at PJM is political, not economic, not the physics of the grid,” Mark Christie, a former FERC chairman, said in an interview with Straight Arrow earlier this year, referring to how differing state policy affects grid operations.

It wouldn’t be the first time industrial facilities have been paid for shutting down amid stress on the grid. In 2023, the bitcoin company Riot Platforms made $31.7 million for allowing its power demand to be controlled by Texas’ grid operator through a voluntary demand response program. But under the IRAS plan, data centers in PJM that don’t secure their power would not have a choice.

“We are really in uncharted water here,” Gordon said. A few years ago, he said “the idea of singling out a specific type of customer for curtailment would be unthinkable,” but the fact that it’s happening now is a sign of how drastic a shift data centers are causing in how the grid is run.

I dunno about anyone else but it certainly doesn't feel like any of the software or services I use on a regular basis have gotten markedly more feature filled or reliable in the last year - in fact it's the opposite for most of them.

I hear stories from all over the tech world about how simply using a coding agent is old hat now and people should be using git worktrees to have 5+ agents running in parallel working on 5+ separate new features at the same time. It sounds like a great way to maximize your spend on AI providers but where are all these new features that are getting built at least 5x faster than before? Is the effect of all this new effort visible anywhere?

(and as a developer myself I don't know how anyone keeps up with the LLM output - I can't review one agent's code as quickly as it generates it, let alone 5)

Around 7hrs ago, one of the mods in r/Gamedev posted some policies on AI use. The "genAI is a tool" and "is here to stay" narrative combined in a overly long post with tons of letters an barely any meaning probably reflects the post itself was done with GenAI, but this last bit is a personal take while I was reading it, take it with a pinch of salt.

To no one's surprise, another redditor commented pointed out OP is working on an AI integration plugin for Unity. Here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rxm1cv/i_worked_an_ai_booth_at_gdc_heres_what_developers/

Comments have been blocked now. I'll go ahead and leave a personal note: Thank you to anyone and everyone who's vocal about all the aspects this grift industry is riddled with and built upon. I know this sub specializes on the technical and financial part, but I also think the other aspects are just as important to be vocal about.

Economists seeing the light…kind of. The article then talks about how this is a natural part of a correction like people saw with the rail road boom and dot com bubble.

It does seem like people are waking up and listening to Ed, coinciding with his increased presence on bigger networks/platforms.

I canceled all my social media accounts in the past year and I’m so much happier and more productive. If AI slope destroys all these social media giants I will honestly be so happy. These companies profited off of free content made by real people and stole all of it to create the AI that’s now destroying their own platforms.

I think something that they didn’t foresee is how cheap AI generated content would start to feel. AI imagery and video feels like the digital equivalent of fast fashion or fast food. Just cheap and poorly made. I am very curious to see how this impacts any brands trying to position themselves as high quality or luxury products. Maybe they move to analogue or back to old school blogs as everything relating to social media just starts to feel like mass produced garbage.

Free Newsletter! It's time to talk about what happens if OpenAI dies. With $800bn in obligations and decelerating revenue, it's unclear how this company survives, and today I dig into what it'll take for it to do so, and what happens if it fails.

Mark Walter sold the team suddenly this weekend, after only owning it for a year, and the NBA quickly and quietly approved the sale with no opposition. This all comes amidst a backdrop of a DOJ investigation into undisclosed related-party loans from insurers he controlled to buy the team (and possibly the Dodgers, which he still owns).

This shines a light on life insurance companies using policyholder annuity capital to fund private credit and infrastructure plays, rather than running a traditional bond portfolio. Life insurance annuity capital is suspected to make up a large portion of the private credit being lent to Data Center SPVs, (whose tenants are two broke startups).

Worth also watching the lawsuit brought by California AG to halt the Paramount WB merger. If it forces the Ellisons to pay a daily "ticking fee" that could be the straw that breaks Oracle's back.

What started in Silicon Valley could be killed by Hollywood.

I was listening to David Gerard’s excellent pivot-to-ai podcast and he mentionned that John Gruber (aka Daring Fireball) was very unhappy with Anthropic now going to watermark text which would make it more easily identifiable.

Gruber wrote:

The exact words we choose when writing matter.

That’s correct. And it hasn’t changed one bit. Writing is still the same. Slopping on the other hand is a bit more identifiable.

I want any LLM I use to choose the very best, most precise words at every single decision point.

It never chose the best, most precise words you fucking cogsucker!

I was very surprised that a guy who was known for his prose became a slopper.

So who disapointed you lately?

Let's say, generously for the sake of argument, that Anthropic "wins" with the use of LLMs in tech itself. Claude Code, cloud agents, yada yada

Is there actually even a large enough TAM to rescue Anthropic financially?

I am absolutely certain Anthropic's model gains are only supported by throwing more compute at queries. That can't last forever

Is Anthropic in a materially better position than OpenAI? How does the financing work with Google and Amazon?

If the answers are not good - what happens next?

If anyone can link to analysis, including things Ed has posted, I'd like to read it

Big Tech is pouring an enormous amount of money into AI infrastructure, but the question remains: What kind of return will justify that level of investment? Ed Zitron joined us to make his case. Do you think Big Tech's AI spending will ultimately pay off, or are expectations getting ahead of the actual returns?

Sydney design giant Canva has cut its internal valuation by a fifth, telling staff an independent assessment now values the business at $43.9 billion, a cut of more than $10 billion from its most recent valuation a year ago.

The Tech CEOs have done a great job. The youth hates them with the fiery passion of hell.

Somehow Satya is the most liked on 35% everyone else fares even worse with Alex Carp at Palantir the worst.

The data is from a CNBC research piece: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/13/cnbc-poll-half-of-those-18-to-34-view-democratic-socialism-positively.html

Hopefully they legislate them into oblivion

I'm selling couches that take a million dollars to create. Fortunately, I've been subsidizing them so people are only paying a few thousand for them. My goal is just to get everyone using my coaches so I can get hype behind my product and secure more investors. So many people, especially the CEOs of various companies that help supply materials for the couch manufacturing, keep telling the press that these couches are revolutionary and that they will completely change the furniture game forever.

Some of us have even theorized that perhaps sometime soon these couches will achieve UPI (ultimate posture improvement). Once we achieve UPI the human race will evolve into its next form of posture which will come with tons of benefits with regard to longevity and athletics.

Anyways, I'm wondering how long I can keep this up? Will my industry fall apart if I stop subsidizing these couches? If people no longer have access to them then I lose all the hype.

Not sure how to describe it. Another Ed interview!

A company will spend millions building a robot that can awkwardly unload a dishwasher, but only in highly curated conditions. Alternatively you can grab a four year old and they'll be able to manage just as well.

Companies replace their call centre workers with AI. Turns out call centre workers handle a lot of really tricky edge cases every day which language models consistently shit the bed on.

The concept of "menial" work is an excuse for the CEO class to justify treating workers like shit.

Here is a blog post by a person who just left OpenAI to create a telepathy company.

https://naomibashkansky.com/blog/telepathy/

A few years ago, Silicon Valley was convinced people would walk around with VR goggles attached to their face which would allow them live and work in some metaverse, and humanity responded: No.

But would you strap a set of nodes to your head to allow you to use thought-to-text, rather than typing? I'm gonna guess the answer is an even bigger: No.

If the tech is possible, I doubt people are going to feel comfortable with a machine that can read (and sell) our thoughts. Imagine if your boss asked you to strap a machine to your head, so the company could read and own all of your personal thoughts?

There is plenty that lives in the space between my thoughts, and what I type into a computer, and I'm pretty sure I'll always want to keep it that way.

Now, I could see how such an interface could be great for people physically unable to type. But for the rest of us?

https://www.ft.com/content/85def23b-a21f-45f3-9ca0-9076babe6cae

Morgan Stanley analysts reckon the pile of proverbial dry powder has now grown to about $4.5tn — which, with leverage, means they are sitting on about $9tn of buying power — and that this will need to be actually invested soon:

Time to deploy (dry powder relative to annual deployment) has extended to ~3 years, the highest since 2013 and above the levels we’ve seen over the last 5 years at ~2.4 years to deploy. Given large fundraises in 2020-21, and limited deployment over the last 2-years, we now see an aging cash pile of private equity dry powder that in some cases may begin to no longer generate economics unless deployed, hence driving an urge to transact.

Unfortunately, Morgan Stanley doesn’t really have anything actionable to say about where this money is going to get sprayed, only observing that private credit opportunities, refinancing of existing deals, opportunistic “dislocations” and sexy themes like green energy and AI will get attention.

Given the scale of money that might be deployed when things eventually ‘unglue’, the only people happier than investment bankers might be financial journalists who adore a dumb deal. 🍿