This week, I learned:

  • Though I’m connected on LinkedIn with people I can’t remember (weak ties), pruning them shrinks serendipity. Weak ties, despite noise, are disproportionately valuable for opportunities, e.g. intros, jobs, and pruning reduces future upside. Science
  • Claude has a Python + Node code interpreter that can access GitHub, PyPi, npm and Google. Simon Willison
  • SuperTinyIcons has very small icons for many websites and is available via CDN. Sample: http://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/super-tiny-icons/images/svg/github.svg
  • Clock bench is an LLM benchmark based on how well LLMs tell the time from an analog clock. Humans (89%) are much better than the best model (Gemini 2.5 Pro - 13%).
  • Veo 3 is now available via API. Veo 3 fast is 15s/second. Google
  • ChatGPT has full support for MCPs via Developer mode in Plus and Pro accounts, via “Developer mode”. OpenAI
  • In Pyodide, you can use from js import document and then document.querySelector to manipulate the DOM directly from Python. from pyodide.http import pyfetch lets you use fetch.
  • gtrending is a Python package that fetches trending GitHub repos, users, etc. uvx gtrending repos --language rust --since weekly fetches trending Rust repos of the week.
  • astgrep lets you search in code (across languages) using AST patterns. Like semgrep but more about code search than security. uvx --from ast-grep-cli ast-grep runs from the CLI. Useful for code rewriting, fast linting, code search.
  • hurl is a CLI config-based HTTP automation tool. Useful for tests, bulk (templatized) HTTP requests, etc.
  • rustdesk is an open-source remote desktop software. TeamViewer alternative. Self-hostable.
  • prek is a much faster version of pre-commit - a cross-language pre-commit hook manager.
  • ⭐ mise is a tool version manager. Combines nvm/fnm, pipx, etc. Supports running several tools with a smooth installation.
  • The npm phishing email was a great one. It compromised chalk which is used in most npm packages. This may be one of the best supply chain attacks in recent times and makes me want to pin versions instead of using npx -y. Also makes me glad that I’m sponsoring @isaacs and @sindresorhus - two critical open source maintainers.
  • “I pay for YouTube Premium. For my money, it’s the best bang-for-the-buck subscription service on the market”. - Gavin Andregg
  • LLMs are non deterministic because GPUs add floating point numbers concurrently and FP addition is non associative - order matters. Thinking Machines
  • Claude.ai can natively work with Excel, PPTX, DOCX, and PDF files now.
  • With embeddings, atomic labels + hierarchy beat instruction-heavy prompts. Prefer short, concrete sub-labels (e.g., “promotion,” “job security,” “flexibility”) that roll up to a parent “career” rather than a composite instruction like “Total Rewards and Career Growth”. Embedding similarity is not smart enough to figure this out.
  • Today, RPA is cheaper than LLMs in some areas. But it’s a moving target. LLM costs are fall fast: 70–90% declines across major providers in 1.5 years. Therefore, waiting has option value. But classic IT compares static quotes, not declining curves, and hence is likely to under-procure LLM solutions.
  • ⭐ The biggest near-term ROI for LLMs in data science is like ‘boring’ data work: PII tagging, data dictionaries, ER/joins, SDTM mapping, etc.. People expect flashy GenAI, but LLMs can bootstrap schema matching and data-cleaning, speeding engineer verification, which is more useful at scale.
  • You can create an infinite leaflet map with nano banana.
  • Codex CLI with high reasoning effort seems far more comprehensive than Codex online. I asked both to identify the system requirements (URLs to access, software to install, ports to open) for my Tools in Data Science course. Codex CLI got it right one shot (after 10 minutes of thinking). Codex online missed several items even after 4 attempts.
  • The Reod on Elantris might have been triggered by Jaddeth who might be an Autonomy avatar. ChatGPT
  • Output tokens dominate latency. Decoding is sequential (one token depends on all prior tokens), so long completions are the main throttle. Shrinking returned text (e.g., send spans/tags instead of echoing paragraphs) yields a far bigger win on latency than shrinking inputs.