Owning a $5M data center - comma.ai blog:

These days it seems you need a trillion fake dollars, or lunch with politicians to get your own data center. They may help, but they’re not required. At comma we’ve been running our own data center for years. All of our model training, metrics, and data live in our own data center in our own office. Having your own data center is cool, and in this blog post I will describe how ours works, so you can be inspired to have your own data center too.

Things have changed since 2014 when I was last administering a data center.

February 15, 2026 - by Heather Cox Richardson:

Extremist Republicans attacked their opponents as socialists even as their tax cuts and deregulation were moving money dramatically upward: at least $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% to the top 1% between 1975 and 2020. Republican leaders and media figures fed their audiences the story that the middle class was imploding not because of Republican policies but because undeserving Black people, people of color, and feminist women demanded government handouts. This narrative fueled Trump’s political rise. He promised to fix the economic dispossession of those the modern economy left behind, by “draining the swamp,” restoring white men to control, and rebuilding the American middle class.

Plans unveiled for Australia's first new city in over 100 years:

American studio SOM and Australian studio Hassell have revealed plans for Bradfield City, a new, 114-hectare city in western Sydney, which is set to include 10,000 homes, a university campus and a two-hectare park.

What would it take to start building like this in the States?

I Built the Perfect AI Robot. Then I Pulled the Plug - MacSparky:

That’s when it hit me. I’m not a security expert. If I can find these holes, imagine what someone who actually knows what they’re doing could exploit. The fundamental problem is that AI agents need access to work. You have to open doors. But 30 years of computer security has been about keeping those doors locked.

I am a security expert, and this is a time bomb. I'm not sure if they'll ever be trustworthy enough for me to allow them to go rifling through my personal and work data.

American - kieranhealy.org:

It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth—as you please—that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is.

It's easy to get lost in the events of the day and forget that the worst of us, even though they hold power right now, are not the most of us. To forget that what we are going through as a country right now will not last. I believe that our American experiment will continue, and that starting this Fall we will reject authoritarianism and start restoring decency and dignity to our government.

Sierra Hull – Mad World (Tears For Fears) | DelFest (2022) – Rhoneisms:

Beautiful.

Write about the future you want - daverupert.com:

There’s a lot that’s not going well; politics, tech bubbles, the economy, and so on. I spend most of my day reading angry tweets and blog posts. There’s a lot to be upset about, so that’s understandable. But in the interest of fostering better discourse, I’d like to offer a challenge that I think the world desperately needs right now: It’s cheap and easy to complain and say “[Thing] is bad”, but it’s also free to share what you think would be better.

This is the challenge we need. Enough complaining, start dreaming of something better, then go build it.

Liberty as Resistance — Matt Gemmell:

Then there are the services and subscriptions. We use the iCloud family features, and so we pay for additional iCloud storage. Our photos are in iCloud, automatically shared between my wife and I, and we have a couple of AppleCare warranty plans. We currently subscribe to the Apple TV streaming service, and I use a few subscription-based third-party apps which are of course billed through the App Store. Even without money being a factor, we have shared folders of household documents in iCloud, shared notes for shopping lists and such, shared passwords for relevant sites and services, shared calendars and reminders, and we all use Messages and FaceTime extensively. I look at it all with despair.

Matt and I are in the same boat.

The Dangers of “Vibe Reporting” About AI - Cal Newport:

Both of these articles cover the same announcement, but they produce two very different impressions. The Quartz article strongly implies that Amazon is firing people because it can now offload their work to AI. (I mean: look at the Andy Jassey quote they included in the sub-head, they clearly wanted readers to believe AI caused these job losses.)

The CNBC article, by contrast, makes it clear that the connection between AI and these layoffs is more coincident than causal.

It's increasingly important to understand if the article you're reading is trying to convince you of something, trying to anger you, or actually trying to inform you.

Fantastic video. Long, but worth it. Make some popcorn and learn a thing or two.