Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

All we have are Mussolini cosplayers who can’t make the trains run on time, Rockefeller LARPers who can’t build a refinery, and Nikola Tesla tribute acts who’ve never shipped hardware. History will remember this as the age of the cover band. We are ruled by guys who watched a YouTube documentary about Napoleon and said “I could do that” but meant the hat.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I did a little end-of-year googling and was shocked to discover I made the front page of HackerNews 3 times last year! Shocked because I only knew of one of them. It's very odd reading a conversation long after the window when you could have replied.

Note to self: The commenters on HackerNews are a bit odd....

This is an important negative reality. It's also sustained by industry incentives—and the thing most likely to break it is a big company or two deciding it's bad business to network on a competitor's site. I am a fan of banning mean bsky account FlameTroll420, but that's not the tipping point.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:gvzkdtsyo6acyy6vfnr7kexq/post/3mbop4j4uo22n

#notesArt #mastoArt #art #illustration

LLMs are reshaping software dev. I don't buy "the end of software dev": Project ambition will grow dramatically.

Ancient Egyptians could build the Pyramids but not the Empire State Building.

Pre-LLM software will be viewed like we view the Pyramids.

Good news story!

Switzerland said "no" to Palantir after 7 years of Palantir lobbying
Journalists FOIA'd and published this
Now other nations are looking into the extraordinary pressure and whether it might not be prudent to let a USA-aligned corp handle citizens' most private data (medical, tax, residence, assets, etc).

we must have made them very nervous, since lawmakers in Germany and UK are questioning the contracts. It is possible that authorities are hesitating to sign new contracts. So we have triggered something that they are starting this PR campaign against us (I don't remember another media company being mentioned on their blog).

All of this thread https://infosec.exchange/@adfichter/115826298160548686 is encouraging! Now while the story is hot, it is a great time to email your local journos and ask if maybe your municipality, state/dept/province, or nation is being pressured to work with Palantir or other authoritarian-aligned corporations!

#GoodNews #news #Palantir #Switzerland

Not present at the CCC #39c3 in Hamburg ( (sometimes I just need holidays from the tech insanity too 😊 😉 )... but very honored about the mentioning yesterday of our recent pieces of Republik Magazin and WAV Recherchekollektiv by the great Constanze Kurz (CCC and netzpolitik.org).

Just re-watched it now.

And the best moment was when the audience applauding for the fact, that Palantir wrote the first time a blogpost and statement as a response about an media article. And reacting with lots of efforts on our investigation. We also feel honored about this😄

We will continue our reporting on this topic. Just follow me, Republik.ch or WAV Recherchekollektiv. 😊

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-blackbox-palantir#t=2908

When you travel to either Japan or Korea, did you know you can get everything you need from Daiso?

- Skincare: Daiso
- Cosmetics: Daiso
- Clothing: Daiso
- Trinket: Daiso
- Toys: Daiso

Gifts: Not recommended, as Daiso's packaging often has the price printed directly on it, which can be awkward for gifting - and the fact that you literally spent less than $1 to $3.50 on a gift.

anyone can cook by recipe, but what kind of person do you have to be to come up with one?

specialist: "I have forty years of experience treating x"

second specialist: "first guy was super wrong, with critical consequences, unbelievable, cease this treatment immediately"

third specialist: "don't worry, 2nd specialist has thirty years experience treating x" (I Am Still Worried)

Do I know anyone on the Bing team? I'm noticing abusive traffic that ignores robots.txt.

So Amazon buying iRobot is a competition problem, according to Lina Khan. A Chinese company "Shenzhen PICEA" acquiring it, however, is apparently no issue at all.

This reflects a deeply misguided approach to antitrust enforcement, under Lina Khan.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-15/robot-vacuum-roomba-maker-files-for-bankruptcy-after-35-years

So ... we're doing this thing, and we want to do it with you:

#ThePerspectiveStudio - A Collaborative Practice for a Fragmented World

with Marcus Neustetter

You can come to the studio — or we can bring the studio to you!

Just published on Andrea Hiott's #LoveAndPhilosophy Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/lovephilosophy/p/the-perspective-studio

I had the great honor to appear on the Quiet Little Horrors podcast to chat about the 1976 film (and the book that it’s based on) The Tenant.

https://quietlittlehorrors.com/episode-06-14-the-tenant/

OpenAI aren't talking about it yet, but it turns out they've adopted Anthropic's brilliant "skills" mechanism in a big way

Skills are now live in both ChatGPT and their Codex CLI tool, I wrote up some detailed notes on how they work so far here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/12/openai-skills/

Can Oxide Run in an Air-Gapped Environment? FAQ Friday #30

i think it kinda gets missed because of the larger backdrop of PASTAGANG and stuff but:

there's now a whole wave of live coders who perform without paste and without undo, whether performing alone or as a group, and i think that's pretty hardcore and that seems pretty LIVE to me

While we're talking about weird Python edge cases, what do you think this does?

```
class Foo:
def __getitem__(self, i):
return i

def __len__(self):
return 5

print(list(Foo()))
```