The tooling layer determines how quickly AI capability enters daily work. This hub tracks developer tools, productivity software, plugins, frameworks, AI coding, evaluations, deployment, and collaboration workflows so readers can separate real workflow gains from demo noise.
Happy hormones | Fuel costs | Drive-in parking | Guys and girls | Young or old? | Singapore pollution Re your report (‘Pull the plug’: protesters resort to direct action against AI firms, 6 October), the US neuroscientist Ben Rein has shown that there is a fundamental difference in our cognitive response according to the type of interaction we have. In-person meetings and conversations show a dramatic increase in serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine – “feelgood” hormones – compared with online interactions. I have been encouraged to speak to people at bus stops. Judith Furner Eastbourne, East Sussex • Re easing winter fuel costs (Report, 6 October), it would benefit everyone if the outrageous daily standing charges were reduced or on a sliding scale based on usage. I can’t be the only person…
Are we really living through ‘end-times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so. In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaires to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightback You can watch the full interview with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor here. Aditya’s suggested reading: Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism is out now and available here. It began life as a special essay in the Guardian, which you can read here. A different take on whether Trump 2.0 is fascist comes from the economist Brank…
I remember hearing a while ago that Dwarf Fortress didn't use version control. That fact has been lodged in my head, because given its inherent complexity I have trouble imagining a codebase that would benefit from version control more. That's art. I went looking and I'm sad to report that the days without version control appear to have ended. Quoting Tarn Adams over time: March 2013: "I don't use version control -- I didn't like the feeling of having the code get committed into a black box thingy with no immediate upside" March 2016: "I don’t even use version control. If you don’t know what that is then you’re not gonna yell at me. If you even know what version control is you’re gonna be like, ‘You don’t use version control? You don’t use source control? What is wrong with you? How can y…
Python 3.15.0 added to actions/python-versions Bit of a niche link, but I've been waiting for this for a couple of days - I even told ChatGPT to check for it: Clone https://github.com/actions/python-versions and git pull once an hour until they add the stable 3.15 - then tell me about it Now that this has landed, you can add "3.15" to a GitHub Actions testing matrix to run tests against the new Python 3.15.0 release. Tags: github, python, github-actions, chatgpt
Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment. They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition. Continue reading...
Five stories that feel like five answers to one important question: in a world where AI chatbots can help us through a breakup, listen like a friend, be a life coach, draft a difficult text message and do our work, where do we draw the line? Listen to Black Box: The Chatbots series Continue reading...
George Williamson says ‘national resilience’ is key focus of ATI amid US and China’s runaway leadership in field The UK must not become dependent on foreign AI systems that can be switched off at short notice and must develop its own versions of the technology, according to the head of the Alan Turing Institute. The country needs a stronger domestic position in AI in response to the US and China’s runaway leadership in the field, with “national resilience” a key focus for ATI said George Williamson. Continue reading...
Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase The owner of a recruitment firm has been accused of being at the centre of a so-called “doxxing” campaign against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), anti-racism activists and business executives who recruit black, Asian and minority ethnic workers. Tom Watson, from Worcester, is alleged to be behind an X account calling itself “Big Time Charlie”, which was deactivated shortly after he was named by the campaign group Hope Not Hate. Continue reading...
Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so. In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightback Radical Thinking will be published every Saturday in the Politics Weekly feed You can watch the full interview with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor here. Aditya’s suggested reading: Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism is out now and available here. It began life as a special essay in the Guardian, which you can read here. A…
Deno is joining Cloudflare The Deno team released the first version of celld back in August - their open source implementation of the Durable Objects pattern from Cloudflare Workers. Today, Cloudflare are acquiring Deno outright, with the goal of building on celld to "make workerd self-hosting a first-class supported way to build and run apps using the Workers programming model" (see the Cloudflare blog.) The bad news is that Deno itself will not be maintained by Cloudflare beyond the next year: We will support the Deno runtime for another year with monthly releases containing bug fixes and security updates. After that year we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development. Deno (and Node.js) creator R…
Commercials once launched careers from Ridley Scott to Guy Ritchie, now automated production is cutting costs – and the chance to learn by doing When Ridley Scott was awarded the UK’s highest accolade for a glittering career directing films from Alien and Blade Runner to Gladiator and The Martian, he reminded those attending the Bafta event eight years ago that making commercials had been his “film school”. The advertising industry has long been a breeding ground for British film and TV talent who have gone on to make the jump to Hollywood productions, including Guy Ritchie, who started out making music videos and commercials, and Paddington in Peru director Dougal Wilson, whose credits include a number of John Lewis’s famous Christmas ads. Continue reading...
A spokesperson behind the tech company’s AI chatbot has not yet specified what counts as abusive or cruel content Anthropic has barred users from exhibiting “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models, as the company’s leaders continue to ponder machine consciousness. The Verge first reported the change in policy. Continue reading...
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, with US midterms a month away, the president held a ceremony to celebrate our tech overlords – again He stands accused of being out of touch, enriching himself and his family, building a lavish White House ballroom and, with elections looming, neglecting the hardships of the voters who brought him to power. Time for Donald Trump to show he still has the common touch? Nope. Continue reading...
Anthropic's offering to help open-source projects track down security vulnerabilities with a new service called OSS Scanner. It says open-source projects that opt-in will get "thorough, periodic security scans by our strongest models at no cost." That could mean open-source projects get alerted about possible security issues sooner, but the trade-off is that OSS Scanner's reports don't come with human review: The outputs of this opt-in vulnerability scanner will be fully model-generated, without human review or triage. This will enable faster and more frequent scanning, but means that it is possible reports will be incorrect or invalid. Th … Read the full story at The Verge.
Computer programming is, fundamentally, about two things: Problem-solving using computers Learning to control complexity while solving these problems I have a hard time imagining a future where knowing how to solve problems with computers and how to control the complexity of those solutions is less valuable than it is today, so I think it will continue to be a viable career even with the advent of AI tools. — Carson Gross Tags: computer-science, carson-gross, careers, ai
The incident is the latest to raise questions about the growing reliance on digital maps for wilderness navigation The route up the Widowmaker Arete, a 1,700-foot wall in British Columbia, is deceptively described as “mostly easy slab climbing”, interspersed with “short steep sections that can include finger cracks, blocky face climbing”. It requires careful planning, and the right equipment. When 16-year-old Bryce Vincent Gowryluk found himself facing its sheer headwall last week, he had neither. He did, however, ask the AI chatbot Claude for directions. Continue reading...
If Elon Musk and SpaceXAI were going to back any Linux distro, it seems obvious they'd back Omarchy. Today it was announced that SpaceXAI would be joining the Omacom Foundation, which oversees Omarchy, as a Founding Corporate Patron and donating $1.5 million worth of Grok tokens to David Heinemeier Hansson's Linux project. According to Hansson's blog post announcing the partnership, the tokens will primarily be used to accelerate development, review code, and patch bugs. Hansson is the Danish entrepreneur known for creating Ruby on Rails and co-founding the company behind Basecamp. But he's also becoming known for promoting anti-immigration … Read the full story at The Verge.
The inflammatory clip shows the wild west of online politicking created by unrestricted access to AI – and why watchdogs need more powers to do something about it Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast One Nation’s new AI-generated campaign video is a new low – even for them. The video – reportedly played at the party’s Victorian campaign launch over the weekend – is an AI-generated collection of racist tropes, depicting a man who appears to be African brandishing a machete, an apparently Middle Eastern man with an explosive vest, a South Asian man in a turban talking about “mass migration” and an Indigenous elder talking about people receiving “money … on the basis of need, not identity”. Continue reading...
We’d like to hear from people who have been monitored or assessed by AI at work and what they thought about the experience Firms are increasingly using AI to monitor or assess their employees, leading to concerns about workplace surveillance. Instructors at tech training company Multiverse recently blew the whistle at their “remorseless” and “unnerving” AI monitoring system, while The Co-Op has used automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers. Continue reading...
Students in MIT’s Concourse program delve deeply into the human condition, debate challenging questions, and learn to develop judgment about issues that can’t be quantified.
As AI moves into K-8 instruction, district technology leaders must weigh external evidence, data protection and results-based contracts before scaling these systems.
A preview of OpenAI’s College Planner. | Image: OpenAI OpenAI is bringing new tools to ChatGPT for Teens, a mode for teens introduced in August with safeguards and break reminders, to help users with the college application process. "College Planner brings together application requirements, deadlines, tasks, and financial-aid steps for schools on a student's list in one plan," OpenAI says. "Students applying to several colleges can return to it to update their progress, use the timeline to plan ahead and see what's left to do. They can also ask ChatGPT questions along the way, from what a requirement means to how to get started." The new College Planner feature will arrive "soon," according t … Read the full story at The Verge.
Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging Some excellent writing advice from Michael Lynch. Michael warns against "meandering intros", misjudging your reader's existing knowledge, assuming they'll read your previous posts, and excessive formality. He also warns against overreliance on links as an excuse not to explain terminology. This one hurt! I do this all the time, but I have a nagging suspicion that almost nobody ever clicks on them. (In a Lobste.rs comment Michael clarifies that "My rule of thumb is that my article should still make sense to the reader even if they don't click any links". That works for me.) This point about using your own voice is crucial: Beginner software bloggers suffer from a mass delusion that you have to write in a stiff, overly formal way for people to take you ser…
Housing construction is at its strongest level since 2016, but it’s AI that is sucking up resources for builders The latest series of data on housing and building activity has been released, showing residential building is growing strongly but also that the datacentre boom is massive and ongoing. As political parties look to keep housing on the agenda, the massive resources devoted to building datacentres is going to hit anyone wishing to increase housing supply. Continue reading...
The triple release of The Social Reckoning, Musk and Artificial is less a clear political stance, more like movie studio opportunism Hollywood is sending a clear message: it’s a friend of tech. Netflix is no longer a lone disruptor: historic studio MGM is now the property of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos; David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount and subsequent Warner Bros merger was supported by his tech giant father; and Apple TV has acted as a patron for multiple film-maker passion projects. Everyone, including trendy auteur-factory A24, is tying themselves financially to AI. The enormous pull of the tech industry – including its many trillions of dollars, oversized influence on politics and heavily pushed algorithms and AI products – means Hollywood is not alone in courting its wealth, but it has i…
Project lead says it celebrates ‘incredible contributions’ Jamaica-born sociologist made to Britain’s culture Whether it was Thatcherism, populism or the story of the Sony Walkman, Stuart Hall was a public intellectual famed for defining the times. Now a major digital archive of his previously unpublished papers, notebooks, recordings and videos has been launched. When the Jamaica-born sociologist and seminal figure in postwar Black British history died in 2014 aged 82, his obituary in the Guardian said he had been “among the first to identify key questions of the age”. Hall coined the term Thatcherism and in 1985 warned of the dangers of “authoritarian populism”. Continue reading...