- Andrej Karpathy: I’ve never felt this much behind as a programmer. (Dec 26, 2025)
Programmers feel left behind as a new programmable abstraction layer—agents, prompts, tools, plugins, memory, workflows, IDE integrations—reshapes the profession and reduces traditional coding contributions. - Simon Willison: A new way to extract detailed transcripts from Claude Code (Dec 25, 2025)
claude-code-transcripts is a Python CLI that converts Claude Code sessions into detailed, shareable HTML and can publish them as GitHub Gists. - WSJ: This Is What the World’s Smartest Minds Really Think About AI (Dec 19, 2025)
NeurIPS has grown from a niche academic conference into a huge industry event packed with researchers, VCs, tech executives, and recruiters. Big tech poured resources into AI infrastructure, while startups like OpenAI pursue large fundraising rounds. Attendees expressed tensions and anxieties. - WSJ: The AI Boom Is Opening Up Commercial Real-Estate Investing to New Risks (Dec 22, 2025)
Commercial real-estate investors are rapidly shifting into data centers to capitalize on AI-driven demand, boosting construction and delivering strong returns. But heavy exposure to niche tenants, construction, power, and lease risks — and a potential AI-market correction — makes these funds more vulnerable. - WSJ: Bitcoin Miners Thrive Off a New Side Hustle: Retooling Their Data Centers for AI (Dec 23, 2025)
As bitcoin mining becomes less profitable, many miners are repurposing data centers, power contracts, and cooling capacity to host AI workloads for hyperscalers, driving a rally in miner stocks. The shift can require costly upgrades, won’t suit all operators, and raises risks. - WSJ Opinion: Are We in a Productivity Boom? (Dec 23, 2025)
The U.S. economy grew 4.3% in Q3 despite a slowing labor market, possibly reflecting a productivity boom—partly from AI—driving healthcare, travel, and equipment investment. But spending is uneven, core PCE inflation rose to 2.9%, incomes and savings lag, and import declines plus tariffs threaten sustained growth. - Simon Willison: Sam Rose explains how LLMs work with a visual essay (Dec 19, 2025)
Sam Rose’s visual essay for ngrok explains prompt caching and expands into tokenization, embeddings, and transformer basics through interactive visuals. It’s a clear, accessible introduction to LLM internals. - WSJ: The U.S. Economy Keeps Powering Ahead, Defying Dire Predictions (Dec 23, 2025)
The U.S. economy powered through 2025 trade and immigration shocks, driven by strong household spending—especially among the top 10%—and heavy AI-related investment in data centers that fueled third-quarter growth. But stagnant real incomes, a weak job market, low savings, and policy risks leave the expansion fragile. - NY Times: Roomba Maker iRobot Files for Bankruptcy, With Chinese Supplier Taking Control (Dec 15, 2025)
iRobot, founded in 1990 by three MIT researchers and maker of the Roomba (2002), filed for bankruptcy and will be taken over by its largest creditor, Chinese supplier Picea. Years of regulatory scrutiny, privacy issues, stiff competition, and the failed Amazon deal depleted revenue and left the company heavily indebted. - WSJ Opinion: How Lina Khan Killed iRobot (Dec 18, 2025)
The planned $1.7B acquisition by Amazon was blocked in 2022 by the Biden FTC (led by Lina Khan) and criticized by Sen. Elizabeth Warren over antitrust and privacy concerns. After the deal collapsed, iRobot cut about 31% of its workforce and outsourced engineering to lower‑cost regions while facing aggressive competition from Chinese firms. - NY Times Opinion: Why Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Endures (Dec 19, 2025)
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings endures because its “broken” references, layered revisions, and varying styles give Middle‑earth depth, mixing sorrow with grandeur. Grieving his son Mitchell’s death, the author finds consolation in that world’s battered beauty and its fleeting eucatastrophic glimpses of joy beyond loss.
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