From the GPT 5.3 model card. "GPT-5.3-Codex is the most capable model we’ve ever deployed in the Cybersecurity domain. As discussed in more detail below, this is the first launch we are treating as High capability in Cybersecurity." cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107...

really important this: some schools more-or-less require a good deal of connectivity, and that is going to have to change if schools are going no-phone-zone

"The AI Con" Con The shockingly terrible arguments of the AI naysayers

Fun Bentham's Bulldog review of the very silly-sounding book The AI Con benthams.substack.com/p/the-ai-con... it really amazes me there are still people saying "AI is just a stochastic parrot and also it's racist" in 2026, as though they can't just log on and use one themselves right now

New report: a serious unintended consequence of the Government’s tenancy reforms.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary tenants will be dragged into an annual stamp duty calculation and filing regime.

Maybe Russian and Polish speakers could handle that? The first bit sounds quite like the Polish word for 'who' (kto)

They’re already complaining about the platform. AGI

Canaries in the coal mine. Worth paying attention to.

(And yes, they are both obviously interested in seeing their own products used, but hearing enough from other, independent coders that make me believe them. I wrote more about the shift here: www.oneusefulthing.org/p/management...)

Airport Book Brain How faddish ideas keep seducing.

Several people have said this by @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk is good. They're right.
www.joxleywrites.jmoxley.co.uk/p/airport-bo...

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls ...

A really interesting look at the current state of play in regard to prediction markets, with some notes on AI prediction too www.astralcodexten.com/p/mantic-mon...

Maybe LLM tutors might be able to work... The best study I have seen so far

Latest on our Substack - the most promising LLM tutor so far!

I've written a summary of a new paper by Google & Eedi. Their LLM tutor dramatically reduced hallucinations.

In total it made 5 errors out of 3,617 messages. Would a human teacher make fewer?

substack.nomoremarking.com/p/maybe-llm-...

This is huge—Cassi came 2nd overall and 1st on "Dataset" questions on @Research_FRI Forecastbench! 🥈📈

What this means: 🧵

Specialist batsmen playing at the highest level.

I think you are maybe thinking of the Taiping Rebellion rather than the Boxer Rebellion?

It is a fascinating piece that really tries to bring out the subtleties of the whole story and the varying, and conflicting, motives of the different actors - recommended.

Best of luck to you with that: art, craft and play are so important.

I thought so; what will doubling down look like for you? Is the intent then to be a (more?) visible beacon of this human approach?

That sounds an interesting and exciting move. Is there anything which you were doing before that you won't be doing in this coming year? More hand-drawn/coloured maps and illustrations rather than digital? More hand-sculpted models rather than 3D printing?

Bloom's famous 2 sigma tutoring paper is incredibly misleading One-to-one tuition is not what it's cracked up to be

Bloom's famous 1984 paper on the 2 sigma tutoring effect has justified huge spending on human tutors & massively influenced modern ed tech.

But the underlying data cannot bear the weight of these conclusions.

Latest on our Substack.

substack.nomoremarking.com/p/blooms-fam...

Perhaps we as viewers/readers do/did infer that communicative intent. But I think that sufficiently convincing AI products will break that confidence in our own inferences.

If I am insufficiently skilled to visually tell the difference between original and copy, how can I justify different reactions to them? If someone then gives me the different histories of the creation of the original and copy, then I must be reacting to the history, not the art.

Because people value history for its own sake, hence 1st editions of books are valued more than the latest paperback? Even though, as literature, they are exactly the same.

I think...yes? Those other things are the history of art, history of literature and so on. Important for sure, but ultimately those things aren't the art.

And you too, Henry

Looks great. And on a quick go, easy to navigate.

How much space can you afford to rent? - YIMBY Alliance A map of rent per square metre for renters in England and Wales If you rent, you probably don’t think in square metres. You think about how many bedrooms and space you can actually get for your monthl...

As a Christmas present to renters, we’ve build a new public zoomable map of rents per square metres in England and Wales! Have fun browsing and please share:

yimbyalliance.org/2025/12/18/h...

How the UK government spends £100 of its budget—

What does the British government spend its budget on? The chart shows spending broken down by category, scaled to £100. It combines both central and local government spending.

Stacked bar chart showing the number of reported natural disasters globally from 2000 to 2024. Disasters are categorized by type: drought, flood, earthquake, extreme weather, extreme temperature, volcanic activity, wildfire, glacial lake outburst flood, dry mass movement, and wet mass movement. The data source is EM-DAT (2025). The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

📊 Data update: We’ve updated our charts with the latest data on natural disasters.

Tracking the occurrence of natural disasters can save lives by helping countries prepare for future ones.

In our work on natural disasters, we visualize data from EM-DAT, the most comprehensive disaster database.

Whoa. This new GDPval score for GPT-5.2 is something.

GDPval is probably the most economically relevant measure of AI ability, suggesting that in head-to-head competition with human experts on tasks that require 4-8 hours for a human to do, GPT-5.2 wins 71% of the time as judged by other humans.

strange

A really great body of work, taken together. I think Issue 23 was my favourite, for Simplicity in Practice & Bob Barnetson's 6mm painting guide; but there was lots of great stuff. I think it must have been quite influential on other magazine editors too.