Tim Wesson

Claude Opus 4.6 spends $20K trying to write a C compiler : AI agents build something that mostly works but worries the project's creator

Terrible waste is just the beginning.

www.theregister.com/2026/02/09/c...

The alignment problem should be bourne in mind. Consider the Underhanded C contest to see what kinds of things that could be hidden in the code.

underhanded-c.org

a black and white photo of a person 's face Alt: A stapler gets close to a photo of Ripley from "Alien" depicting her iconic terrified squint. The stapler ejects its staple tray in a similar way to the Alien releasing its inner jaws.

Everyone knows staplers are xenomorphs.

Transcript from screenshotted video: and I'll be very specific about this now because uh I was having a conversation with someone that was working for Palanteer up until very recently and in that conversation I had a number of strokes or qua strokes because he was telling me how enthusiastic how great Gaza was for them and I asked him to elaborate and he after he said, ‘Oh, of course, what's what was happening to the Palestinians is terrible, but for us it was fantastic.’ And I said “Please go ahead, explain this to me.” And he said,

Transcript from screenshotted video: ‘Well, you know,’ and he pointed at my phone, which was sitting there on the on on the table while we the coffee table idle. And he said, ‘Your phone now is useless to me because it's not moving. If it's not moving, it's not producing data. But if it's moving around with it and I can correlate the movements of your with of your phone with everything that you're doing in your life, what you're talking about, what you're you know discussing on the phone,

Transcript from screenshotted video: what you and so on, I create a lot of statistical correlation that can help me gain my algorithm. So when you bomb a densely populated area, you create a lot of movement. People die, but others survive and they run around and pick up the phone. They tried to find to call uh their friends to find out about their loved ones and that is how they trained the algorithms which they now they are selling to the British National Health Service uh stateowned public hospitals,

The sociopathy here is off the scale!

Screenshots from transcript of interview of Naomi Klein and Yanis Varoufakis with alt text.

youtube.com/live/7iRc3Zk...

How to give money to children without paying inheritance tax – even if you’re a millionaire Financial gifts can be caught in HMRC’s net. Luckily, there are several ways to limit your estate’s inheritance tax bill

Guide to avoiding inheritance tax.

To be honest, I'm not opposed to some of these, such as becoming a tenant in one's own former home if it means one's inheritor cares for you in your remaining years.

But where is the corresponding piece for benefit claimants?

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/ebd00c2...

Scientists De-Aged Cells—And Found the Key to Turning Back the Clock, New Research Suggests This could be the way we stay biologically younger in the future.

#in_mice @inmice.bsky.social

www.popularmechanics.com/science/heal...

Image Angel — Invisible Forensic Image Protection for Platforms Image Angel offers invisible forensic watermarking to trace image & video misuse, protect users, meet regulatory compliance (UK/EU/US), and block image-based abuse before harm occurs.

An important tool in the fight against deepfakes.

imageangel.co.uk

The other half is that AI analysers need to be able to process such imagery. They need to get their head out of the sand and figure out whom they're helping by blocking it.

For ‘modest’ imagery, there's:

isgen.ai/ai-image-det...

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.

The same grift, updated for a new era.

It appears that Rudyard Kipling's poem about East and West (1892) was simply mistaken.

academic.oup.com/stanford-sch...

I disagree with this.

The cost is too great. We do not properly hold our MP to account if our condition of support is what party they are affiliated to. It leaves no room for principle on either the MP's part, or on ours, to vote on other than partisan lines.

The reason for defection matters.

So I post pics that are sometimes nude and more seldom explicit. I do not post these on your page, but on mine. You can curate your news feed to avoid these by blocking adult content. You can unfollow me. It is not invasive for me to post where you can decide to see or not to see my images.

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Two photos, side by side. On the left, Elle Fanning in a flowing punk dress, smiling, with her hands up in the air. She appears to be walking on stage, to chat with some talk show host. On the right, Anya Taylor-Joy in an elegant pink jacket and short skirt combo. Her jacket features white buttons and detailing. She is striding forward, apparently into a hotel lobby, with following, balancing arm movement, matching her stride, each arm extended to mirror the opposite leg.

Two photos side by side. On the left is Anya Taylor-Joy looking demure in a period piece, wearing a pink corset with integrated bra that goes over her shoulders. Her arms are by her sides. On the right is Elle Fanning in a pink corset over a sheer (but covered) bra and long pink flowing crepe skirt. Her arms are up to both sides, brushing her shoulders and her hair.

Alexandra Daddario has her arms on the roof of an off-white car in an empty car park. She is wearing a white, black, and green sports jacket, green trim demarking white and black regions.

Model Jessica Ashley Deluge is standing on a veranda leading against the wrought iron railing. She is wearing a flimsy black teddy, turned away, but turning her head to look at the camera. She is smiling and her left hand is reaching up to touch her shoulder. Behind her is a leafy pot plant, and into the distance there is a road with trees and greenery on both sides.

Blonde or Brunette?

Team GB skier urinates ‘F--- ICE’ in snow before Winter Olympics opening ceremony Gus Kenworthy should escape sanction for social media post as Italians launch protest against US agency in Milan

Team GB skier urinates ‘F--- ICE’ in snow before Winter Olympics opening ceremony

(Gift article, as I have a two week long freebie for installing the app)

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/59b6859...

An honest relationship requires a certain amount of confrontation.

Measuring spin correlation between quarks during QCD confinement - Nature The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in $$\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }$$ Λ Λ ¯ hyperon pair...

Not a huge result, but this open access paper came up in my news feed.

Open access science. What's not to love?

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

'We've heard from many who want nothing to do with AI': Mozilla is rolling out AI controls for Firefox in the next build Ah, my letter appears to have made it to the Mozilla postbox.

Howzat? Mozilla seems to have actually listened!

www.pcgamer.com/software/bro...

Man ponders if he is still a good person if helping others benefits him. The universe answers and tells him: 'Be kind, I don't care why'

Pentagon warns Scouts: Ban girls or we will pull your funding Scouting America urged to return to its ‘core value’ as defence department reviews its partnership with group

I guess it's Woodland Folk or similar for would-be progressive adventurers as scouting won't disaffiliate.

There is value in activities we can all partake in, and with so many women in uniform, the exclusion of girls from scouting has to be a step backwards.

www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026...

Image stolen from @xkcd.com (see alt text).

XKCD cartoon: https://xkcd.com/149/ Stick figure (1) in chair speaking with standing stick figure (2) Figure 1: Make me a sandwich. Figure 2: What? Make it yourself. Figure 1: SUDO make me a sandwich. Figure 2: Okay.

Simon says, help this developer! 🐧

www.theregister.com/2026/02/03/s...

An elegant demonstration of how Gödel's theorem relies upon philosophical, rather than mathematical reasoning.

New Research Reveals Humans Have a Remote Touch “Seventh Sense” A new study suggests humans can sense hidden objects without touching them, by detecting faint movements in sand. This unexpected form of “remote touch” challenges traditional ideas about how the sens...

Remote kinesthesis (given a third, transmissive medium) FTW!

scitechdaily.com/new-research...

Billie Eilish: "No one is illegal on stolen land"

I'm Kat Abughazaleh and I approve this message.

To all the Minnesotans who are making their voices heard and protesting peacefully:

The world is watching, and when change comes, it will be because of you.

It definately shows, Jia! 😏

Why do I not see models supporting one another more on bluesky? I am grateful for the models who visit my page and I theirs we compliment each other and share ideas or problem solve and support each other. But so many completely ignore other models. Many that follow me and I them, I never hear from.

Great photo, Jia!

Eric Alper (@thatericalper.com) has written an interesting and informative post on where social media seems to be going.

My question: whither our attention span when this inevitably becomes ubiquitous?

www.thatericalper.com/2026/02/01/t...