Faisal’s Web Site
Monday, 15 September 2025
War for Ukraine Day 1,298: Putin’s Polish Gambit
Adam L Silverman, Balloon Juice: “My professional assessment is that Russia has now directly and intentionally attacked NATO member states. These are acts of war. These states, and NATO, need to accept reality and respond appropriately.”
Sunday, 14 September 2025
The iPhone 17 Event: Less Awe, More Unsexy & That’s A Good Thing
Om Malik: “The new iPhone 17 Pro only proves that they are the only company that will spend hundreds of millions to build a new cooling gizmo for the phone. … Most companies do vaporware. Apple does vapor chambers.”
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy
Noah Smith: “… most of the ‘new-graduate gap’ appeared before the invention of generative AI. In fact, since ChatGPT came out in 2022, the new-graduate gap has been lower than at its peak in 2021 … the recent rise in college graduate unemployment is entirely concentrated among men; women are doing just as well as ever.”
Sunday, 24 August 2025
New type of supernova ‘looks like nothing anyone has ever seen before,’ astronomer says
Ashley Strickland, CNN: “The discovery provides direct evidence of the long-theorized, but difficult to observe, internal structure of massive stars. It is also challenging the conventional ways in which astronomers understand stellar evolution.”
Saturday, 23 August 2025
Tinted sunscreen does something regular sun protection can’t
Andrea Muraskin, NPR: “A survey of U.S. dermatologists found that while over 90% of providers said that they counseled their patients about visible light protection, only about 10% made evidence-based recommendations.”
Also – Laura Baisas, Popular Science: Sunscreen may have kept ancient humans alive during a polar reversal
Tuesday, 19 August 2025
What Happens If AI Hits An Energy Wall?
Paul Krugman: “Side question: Why were tech industry ads so much better back in 1999?”
Saturday, 9 August 2025
Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97
Don Babwin, AP: “This is what I do. Yes, there’s risk involved. I measure risk.”
“A.I.”
the brain that can see a face in a wall outlet was always doomed to hear the voice of God in a markov chain
— Cohen is a Ghost (@skullmandible.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 3:05 AM
Friday, 8 August 2025
Congress wants to cut the smartest investment taxpayers ever made
David Patterson: “Every American taxpayer is a silent shareholder in that success. If we walk away now, we lose not just future breakthroughs but also what we have already earned.”
Sunday, 3 August 2025
Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog
Peter Gutmann, Stephan Neuhaus: “We anticipate that, as with current sleight-of-hand factorisations, researchers will in the future construct more sophisticated sleight-of-hand manipulations to allow even these rules to be bypassed. We therefore expect that updates to these rules will need to be made in the future as they are penetration-tested by quantum factorisers.”