Tom MacWright

observable announced "notebooks 2.0," here are my thoughts and a rough lil history summary macwright.com/2025/07/31/o...

every time github refactors something from a trad-web rails/turbo/web-component interface to react i notice, because it always introduces bugs

i think they're doing weird tech company stuff, it's supposedly at a 1.4b valuation and trying to ipo

friendship ended with liquid death seltzer (they added stevia)

it's just been tricky to write & read from programs in my experience, too many ways to customize and write it in slightly different ways. plus i would love something human-readable. but it is a good format!

arrow is kind of 'obsessed with performance' and cool for what it does but not the kind of thing i want to build a cute table editor tool on

i really want a nextgen file format alternative to xlsx - tabular like csv but typed like json but not obsessed with performance like parquet. probably doesn't exist?

compression culture is making you stupid and uninteresting why the death of nuance should scare you -your fav gen z philosopher xx

"We want the wisdom without the patient work of becoming wise." maalvika.substack.com/p/compressio...

did you find a way to get the screen contrast with highlighting to work?

my short-lived attempt to replace my instapaper+kindle workflow with an instapaper+boox workflow macwright.com/2025/07/23/o...

Leaked Memo: Anthropic CEO Says the Company Will Pursue Gulf State Investments After All “Unfortunately, I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on,” wrote Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a note to staff obtained by WIRE...

This is an incredible admission: “It’s perfectly consistent to advocate for a policy of ‘No one is allowed to do x,’ but then if that policy fails and everyone else does X, to reluctantly do x ourselves.”

www.wired.com/story/anthro...

The Longer This Goes On, by Forth Wanderers 10 track album

extremely good new album alert forthwanderers.bandcamp.com/album/the-lo...

More than two thirds of New Yorkers are tenants. Andrew Cuomo compared them to hotel guests.

We need a Mayor who will bring our city together around an agenda to lower costs for everyone, whether they rent or own.

unfortunately i have written a personal llm policy github.com/tmcw/tmcw/bl...

merging your prs

merging your prs except if they're ai-generated

unfortunately necessary to update my github status today

A photo of Dave on his birthday last year, wearing a colorful shirt and smiling under a sign that says "Happy Birthday"

I'm turning 37 this week, and to celebrate, I'm offering 37% off a year of Fingers to the first 37 people who upgrade. Or, to put it another way, in lieu of gifts, please buy subscription: www.fingers.email/upgrade?_bhl...

Text message about weather delays, ending with (Powered by GenAI)

yesterday in the chaos of messed-up flights, united airlines needed to inform me that their text message about a messed-up flight was "Powered by GenAI"

instinctually i want to foia the faa for records, but that is an instinct from an earlier time, a time in which reason and correctness had a role in the world and it was useful to be clever

my flights to and from lga/ord were delayed for ~4 hours for weather, and yet there does not seem to be weather

“airlines are making up a thunderstorm” is stupid, conspiratorial, probably false usually but 2025 us breaking me/everyone and i won’t be surprised if it’s true

the chatter is that employees at these companies are treated well, but notably it seems like they aren't legally required to be treated well with this new financial trick, and they somewhat are, for ipos/sales

the scenario where you (an employee) build 'value' through hard work and then management find a way to sell out without cashing out anyone else is kind of a third rail / final straw of how the startup world works - there are some vague laws against stuff like reforming a company to screw over people

OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off — and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google Key researchers are joining Google DeepMind, too.

if i were working for an ai company, the signal i'd get is that equity is worthless and to insist on an all-cash salary if the likely exit strategy is one that completely tears apart the traditional math? www.theverge.com/openai/70599...

the scale/windsurf 'reverse acquihire the ceo' move is so weird. it made some sense during the biden admin (fear of khan enforcement) but nowadays, why, the current admin is not going to block mergers, is the theory really that the ceo and a few 'top engineers' are really 90% the value of companies?

The purveyors of these tools treat this as a kind of freedom: you’ll never have to think alone again. Your teachers can’t force you to spend hours chipping away at a single essay — you can plug their essay prompt into an app and then use your time however you want. But while startups like Cluely promise freedom, they’re actually selling a form of voluntary subjugation. Because if you never learn to think — if you never spend enough time in intercourse with yourself to really get to know who you are —then you’ll never act freely. You’ll become one of those who, to again quote Arendt, “dispose of a set of learned or innate rules which we then apply to the particular case as it arises, so that every new experience or situation is already prejudged and we need only act out whatever we learned or possessed beforehand.” That is not the life of a free person but of an automaton. Or, more accurately, it’s the life of an ideal totalitarian subject.

a good chaser to this hogwash publiccomment.blog/p/you-ll-nev...

The Web Should Work For You We believe curiosity is a superpower. It's the spark that propels humanity forward. Yet, the web-our greatest source of information-was never designed to nurture curiosity; instead we've been asked to "browse" it through a one-way lens. That's why we made Comet. Comet gives curious minds a thought partner for every aspect of online life. Comet moves every tab or task into a simple space for asking more of the world. With Comet, the web becomes a tool of curiosity, helping you connect ideas, move faster, and turn wonder into momentum.

big dumb words from perplexity: the web wasn't made to nurture curiosity, they say. because it needs a thought partner! boy this… this takes the cake

today on x, the house chatbot has finally achieved the desired level of antisemitism. the supreme court just paved the way for more mass layoffs. a prominent venture capitalist is spending the day attacking islam.

is it worth spending time nitpicking a good candidate's transit policy, no

July 8, 2025 ATF Access to RPD License Plate Readers Terminated In June, administrators of the Richmond Police Department’s license plate reader program learned an analyst with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been granted access to the RPD system and had made queries for immigration enforcement in violation of RPD’s operational standards. The ATF analyst’s access was immediately terminated and, moving forward, no federal agencies will have access to RPD’s license plate reader program. “ATF is a valued partner in our efforts to combat violent crime in Richmond. But their analyst should not have been granted access to our system — and absolutely should not have used it for immigration enforcement purposes,” said RPD Chief Rick Edwards. “I’ve been clear with the public, with city leadership, and within this department: the Richmond Police Department does not enforce federal immigration law, and we do not investigate a person’s immigration status. If ATF had formally requested access for that purpose, I would have denied it.”

Facts and details:  The ATF analyst requested access to the RPD license plate reader program on February 7, 2025, to “assist our agents and TFOs [Task Force Officers] with investigations in and around Richmond.”  At that time of their request, the ATF was not actively involved with immigration enforcement.  The RPD administrator of the program granted access to the ATF analyst.  The RPD administrator of the program has since separated from the department.  In March 2025, the mission of the ATF changed to include immigration enforcement.  In early March, four detainees from an ICE detention facility in Farmville, Virginia escaped. In the effort to assist the investigation, the ATF analyst made numerous inquiries to RPD’s license plate reader program in an effort to apprehend the escapees.

Overall, the ATF analyst queried 49 unique license plates receiving over 400 results to those inquiries.  Over a quarter of the results received related to the incident in Farmville.   The cases involved in the ATF analyst’s queries were a mixture of a) cases that the ATF traditionally investigates with RPD and other partners, e.g. firearms offenses and/or violent crime, regardless of a subject’s immigration status (35 of the 49 unique license plates) and b) cases that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) pursues regarding immigration enforcement (14 of the 49 unique license plates).  According to the ATF, all of those cases in the second group involved individuals that had committed a crime or had a criminal background.  The analyst did not include the name of the state for a license plate query which produced a result from a different state for the same license plate numbers and letters. According to the ATF, all queries made using the system were for investigations in the state of Virginia. Pursuant to the new Virginia law taking effect on July 1, 2025, other states no longer have connections to Virginia license plate information.  On June 11, the new RPD administrator received an alert from Flock Safety, the vendor of the license plate readers, that two searches from the ATF analyst inadvertently accessed Illinois vehicle data with “ICE” in the query field which is a violation of Illinois law.  Within five minutes of the new RPD administrator recognizing the ATF analyst had access to the RPD system and was using it in violation to RPD guidelines, the administrator terminated the ATF analyst’s access to the system.  An immediate audit was conducted to ensure no other federal partner or other user outside of RPD personnel had access to the license plate reader program. No other user was found to have access.  The new administrator began an internal investigation on how and when access was granted to the ATF analyst by the previous, departed manager.  Last…

“We value our partnership with the Richmond Police Department and regret that this situation occurred,” said ATF Special Agent in Charge Anthony Spotswood. “Our ATF analyst accessed RPD’s system in support of ATF’s overall mission and although all the queries involved criminal activity, they were not in compliance with RPD’s guidelines. While our investigative analysts support both criminal and immigration-related efforts, the majority of these searches were directly tied to local investigations involving gun trafficking, violent offenders, and fraudulent firearms purchases. In one instance, a potential residency violation may have prompted the use of ‘ICE’ in a search field — but all queries were related to criminal activity, not civil immigration enforcement.” “It is frustrating this occurred. However, I appreciate ATF’s willingness to acknowledge what happened and clarify the nature of the searches,” said Chief Edwards. “We remain committed to working with our federal partners on the investigation and prosecution of violent crime. But moving forward, no federal agencies will have access to our license plate reader program. This tool is vital to solving serious crimes in our city, and we will ensure it is used lawfully, responsibly, and in alignment with Richmond’s values.”

NEW: Approximately 1hr after I submitted an inquiry to Richmond Police Department asking if the city's Flock Safety ALPR data had been shared with/accessed by feds, a spokesperson issued a statement acknowledging an ATF "analyst" in June "had made queries for immigration enforcement." Full release:

Supabase MCP can leak your entire SQL database Here's yet another example of a lethal trifecta attack, where an LLM system combines access to private data, exposure to potentially malicious instructions and a mechanism to communicate data back …

happy to not be the guy writing the supabase-critique article this week simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/6/s...

anaerobic heart rate zone chart Your anaerobic heart rate zone is 80-90% of your max heart rate. Your personal anaerobic heart rate zone is based on your max heart rate for your age. The first step is finding your max heart rate and a commonly used equation is subtracting your age from 220. By this method, the max HR for a 45-year-old is 175 beats per minute (BPM). However, this formula doesn’t consider your specific variables like gender, conditioning or genetics. Here are other formulas for finding your max heart rate. Other factors that can affect heart rate include: Emotions

the watercoloring-to-pagerduty-alert sunday afternoon vibe shift