Simon Willison reviews key developments in large language models (LLMs) over the past six months, using the whimsical benchmark of having models generate SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles to illustrate progress, challenges, bugs, and trends in the field.
An expert review of CloudFlare's AI-generated OAuth provider library highlights both its strengths and significant security shortcomings, cautioning against its use in critical systems without further expert scrutiny.
Helen Toner critically examines OpenAI's partnership to build AI supercomputers in the UAE, arguing that branding it as a pro-democracy initiative is misleading given the country's authoritarian governance and potential empowerment of autocratic regimes.
This article explains why CDC Ethernet devices don't work on Android, detailing how Android's EthernetTracker only recognizes interfaces named 'ethX' while CDC Ethernet drivers use 'usbX', and explores the debugging process and kernel configurations involved.
This article explains the Chebyshev-Gauss quadrature technique for numerical integration, detailing its mathematical foundations, practical implementation, and advantages over basic methods, with visualizations and coding examples.
The article argues that DNS over HTTPS (DoH) does not truly protect user privacy, but instead centralizes DNS data with single providers like Cloudflare, and suggests DNS over TLS as a better alternative.
This detailed article recounts how the author, running a user-generated content server, uncovered and thwarted persistent data scraping by a company providing data to the FBI, with technical insights and a narrative involving law enforcement and data privacy challenges.
This article details the numerous challenges and ongoing maintenance burdens faced by hobby Android developers due to frequent breaking changes in libraries, platform updates, deprecated third-party tools, and evolving design guidelines.
Administering immunotherapy in the morning may significantly improve cancer outcomes due to circadian effects on the immune system, though more randomized trials are needed to fully confirm the mechanism and magnitude of benefit.
This article systematically investigates the strengths and limitations of Large Reasoning Models by analyzing their reasoning processes and performance across puzzles of varying complexity, revealing specific regimes where they excel or fail.
The author reverse engineers Claude Code, detailing its internal prompts, security models, tool usage, and contrasts its agentic approach and UX with competitors like Cursor and Aider, ultimately praising its reliability and security despite higher costs and latency.
This article analyzes advanced security vulnerabilities in the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for LLM tool integration, revealing that every part of the tool schema—not just descriptions—can be exploited for 'tool poisoning' attacks, and introduces new attack classes targeting tool outputs, urging a shift to zero-trust defenses.
This article provides a detailed history and technical exploration of Omnimax dome theaters, their origins, evolution, and decline, particularly in science museums.
The article critiques the overreliance on AI tools like LLMs in software development, arguing that they risk eroding critical thinking and problem-solving skills, especially among beginners, and calls for stronger guardrails and oversight in their use.
