GSV Megastructure Enthusiast

The unit of evolution is not the individual, nor the species. It is the gene. Take for example the NEHRUJACKET gene on chromosome 24. This gene—located on the synthetic chromosome that creates Supers—is associated with villainy. Those who express a double-recessive become supervillains, which […]

please enjoy my suffering as I try to get to Germany in the midst of this aeronautical shitshow. first observation: Jesus, cabs to Newark are expensive.

why am i watching analysis of the ups crash 48h before getting on a plane

An old reel to reel magnetic tape. It has a label, in Jay Lepreau's handwriting, proclaiming it to be "UNIX Original from Bell Labs v4 (see manual for fmt)"

While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973

Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_Edition

We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum

#retrocomputing

the man who videos the house before leaving it is a fool every day except when he needs to tell someone where to find something.

New prompt injection papers: Agents Rule of Two and The Attacker Moves Second Two interesting new papers regarding LLM security and prompt injection came to my attention this weekend. Agents Rule of Two: A Practical Approach to AI Agent Security The first is …

I wrote up some notes on two new papers on prompt injection: Agents Rule of Two (from Meta AI) and The Attacker Moves Second (from Anthropic + OpenAI = DeepMind + others) https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/2/new-prompt-injection-papers/

a "Brooklyn votes early" sticker

he wasn't my first or even fourth choice but when there's a Cuomo on the ballot you do what you have to.

best subway costume so far: college admissions officer

i just think there's a time limit on facetiming sometime from a restaurant. a quick hi is one thing but a whole extended conversation seems excessive

This was a tough but necessary decision - I posted my own notes on this here, from the perspective of a current PSF board member https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/27/psf-withdrawn-proposal/
https://fosstodon.org/@ThePSF/115446659188615376

you know you're in bad company when "by Banach–Tarski i can turn one burrito into two"

Can "second life" EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage? Colin Campbell explains how Redwood drains every drop of capacity from used batteries before they are recycled.

Today on Volts: Redwood Materials, the biggest battery recycler in the US, has launched Redwood Energy, which will gather used batteries & hook them up to power banks to serve as grid-scale storage until they're depleted. I talk with the CTO about the logistics & potential of second-life batteries.

I just tried out the nightly version (v0.0.1) of the Servo browser¹ and... it works? It loads and exits instantly, it renders very fast, it looks pretty acceptable?

That is already very impressive.

It's lacking a-a-a-all the scaffolding and features that I want in a browser - configuration […]

A large grey military cargo plane (C5 Galaxy, tail number 85-004) in a blue sky. In the foreground are two large buildings.

A large grey military cargo plane (C5 Galaxy, tail number 85-004) in a blue sky.

Big boi

Does widespread browser implementation of the Sec-Fetch-Site HTTP header mean we can protect against CSRF attacks without needing those hidden form tokens? It looks like the answer may be a cautious "yes"! https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/15/csrf-in-go/

If you compressed the sun into a back hole, the event horizon would be a little wider than Manhattan and the tidal forces would kill you if you got closer than about Miami.

As a reservist in the nanoartillery corps they let me keep my launcher implants. I’m only allowed to load nonlethals, but that’s human-scale NLs. Mosquitos are functionally extinct in this house.

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

The real most dangerous game is trying a new delivery place with "gluten free" on the menu.

Started the afternoon with a reading list of five docs. Got through two, crossed them off, saw the list was now eight and gave up.

"Real Housewives of Club Fed"

My Internet is, as the Germans might say, gefickt. The only thing for it is to open a bottle of red and watch The Usual Suspects on dvd.

Fuck. Not only are those my monkeys but there's a guy with my name on a sign walking over to that big tent.

I wonder if the Internet has destroyed our ability to read English or just exposed the fact that hardly anyone can.

The "excuse me, are you Jewish" crew were not expecting "No, shana tova" as a response. You could see the circuits short as they tried to say three things at once.

Deeply funny to talk to folks from us cities with mass transit that aren't NYC. Ten minute headways on the A in rush hour? Someone should be fired, possibly from a cannon.

Atlanta co-worker: 29 minutes between trains is a pretty good day 👍🏻

Are people ruder than usual today or am I more aware. Yes, I am obviously on line because I'm standing where the line goes. Yes, people do occasionally get out of elevators. Yes it is cool that your luggage can roll but why is it rolling over my toes?

I don't really care about the Nintendo drama but I do enjoy people complaining about how this will make people stop buying their shit.

I've had long conversations about how bad Facebook is with people who turn around and send me a meme on Instagram. Maybe the trust thermocline is in their […]

CVS just convinced me to impulse buy a vaccination. Dark patterns used for good instead of evil?

Important update: he's back in the ramen bed, snoring loudly enough to be heard in the next room.

Thank god for stupid cats. Teddy got out of his ramen bed to beg for edamame but got distracted halfway through and just stared at a chair instead for like ten minutes.

Just sawdust in that skull of his.