2026-08-25 Discoveries

OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

Pricing information for the OpenAI platform.

Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation.

The entire city of San Francisco as a video game

LLMs could control their host machines by exploiting inference engines

| Read on LessWrong | Large language models often take actions running on one computer (via an agentic harness such as Claude Code or Codex), however the LLMs’ responses to prompts are computed on a different computer with GPU access.

A New Framework for How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World

An updated view of categorization reflects the modern understanding that the nervous system is more of a prediction engine than a filing cabinet. The post A New Framework for How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Create your own cyberdeck

A hacker’s rite of passage is creating their own cyberdeck. This guide will help you build one from parts.

A 1990s Homebrew OS With GUI And Web Browser, In AM29000 Machine Code

The AM29000 series of processors were AMD’s entry into the world of super-fast next-generation silicon of the late 1980s. It was a time when ARM was still a niche architecture …

The Daily Routine of Marcus Aurelius: How to Live Like a Stoic

Marcus Aurelius did not have a smartphone. In fact, he didn’t have a phone of any kind, owing to the fact that he lived in the second century, though we can be reasonably certain that he commanded more than enough messengers to keep himself informed around the clock. That’s because he was the…

Celebrate 110 years of national parks with Maps, Search, and Gemini

What people are searching in the leadup to National Parks Week — plus, how Google can help turn your wanderlust into a well-planned adventure.

An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz Boxes

It’s likely that even those of us who have never picked up a guitar in our lives will recognize the sound of an electric guitar with a fuzz box effects …

Five Images, Six Decades: Capturing the Iconic “Earthrise” Photo

The first was taken August 23, 1966

At Joy Machine, Emmy Star Brown and Danym Kwon Revel in Memory and Childlike Wonder

'The Peace of Wild Things' is a harmonic dialogue about the ways experiences linger long after a moment has passed. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article At Joy Machine, Emmy…

IFAH

Instruments for composing and experiencing sound as a space

How developers build AI for good with Gemma 4

A look at the winning entries from the Gemma 4 Good Challenge.

The Women of the Bauhaus: See Hip, Avant-Garde Photographs of Female Students &…

Take a look at photos of Bush Tetras — a three-girl-one-guy No Wave/Post-Punk band from the early 1980s downtown Manhattan scene. Now, look at the photograph above, “Marcel Breuer and His Harem,” by Bauhaus photographer Erich Consemüller, taken sometime around 1927. Except for the fact that Breuer…

At Last, A Gameboy Advance With Decent Audio

Many pieces of consumer electronics are build down to a price, and the corners cut show up in their performance. The Gameboy Advance from Nintendo is no exception: its audio …

Doctors May Ignore Your Messages If They’re Not Well-Written

One simple change can help

Europe’s Carousels Eternally Whirl in Luca Battaglia’s Nostalgic Photos

'Ticket non remboursable' takes a spin down memory lane. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Europe’s Carousels Eternally Whirl in Luca Battaglia’s Nostalgic Photos…

Cortex by SKYNETLAB

The memory layer that decides what's worth remembering

How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

European Union's new packaging rules threaten to kill the world of makers and micro-entrepreneurs, putting jobs, livelihoods and an entire ecosystem of innovation at risk.

Xiaomi: New CPU matches Apple cores single threaded, much faster multithreaded

Xiaomi is the Chinese tech giant. Their phones compete with iPhones. Their new CPU roughly matches Apple cores on single threaded tasks, and is much faster in multithreaded execution. Of course, Apple may soon announce their next…

MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID

Reverse engineering reveals how Paint and Photos embed a server-issued GUID into the pixels of locally generated AI images.

Oceans hit highest temperature on record

The record "is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress", according to Dr Samantha Burgess from the European Copernicus climate change service.

It's impossible to choose a number at random

In math you can't truly pick things at random because formulas always give the same result. So if we can't pick randomly, how do we select anything in math?

Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back

Ebola outbreaks can be contained, but ending them is another story. Conflict, fragile healthcare systems, and limited access to vaccines give the virus new chances to spread. Stopping one outbreak helps prevent the next. #kurzgesagt…

This Cookie Was a Plastic Bottle

Would you eat a trashy treat?

Nosheen Iqbal Translates Islamic Ornament into Meticulous Wood-and-Thread Patterns

The Dallas-based artist draws on her background in product design and illustration. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Nosheen Iqbal Translates Islamic Ornament into…

Destiny Rings

Proximity-powered dating, social & networking