Faisal’s Web Site
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.”
Monday, 21 July 2025
In the Shadow of Silicon Valley
Rebecca Solnit, London Review of Books: “I thought of this place in terms of liberation and protection; we were where the environmental movement was born; we were the land of experimental poetry and anti-war marches, of Harvey Milk and gay rights, of the occupation of Alcatraz Island that galvanised a nationwide Indigenous rights movement as well as Cesar Chavez’s farmworkers’ movement in San Jose and the Black Panthers in Oakland. We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We’re still that lab, but we’re no longer an edge; we’re a global power centre, and what issues from here – including a new super-elite – shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways.”
Saturday, 12 July 2025
Accidental find in planetarium show could shift scientists’ understanding of our solar system
Jacopo Prisco, CNN: “The problem with trying to imagine what the Oort Cloud looks like is that scientists have never seen it, even though we are technically surrounded by it.”
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
This paint sweats to cool off buildings. No energy required.
Anthropocene: “Air-conditioning uses 7% of the world’s electricity.”
Friday, 27 June 2025
Mamdani Did All the Things the Establishment Hates. He Won Anyway.
Elizabeth Spiers, The New Republic: “The only major polling firm that predicted that Mamdani would win was Public Policy Polling, which discarded the usual assumption that polling firms make that the people who will vote in the upcoming election are the same people who voted in the last one.”
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers
Thomas Germain, BBC: “(Microsoft declined to comment for this article.)”
Thursday, 15 May 2025
Approximation
Mike Hoye: “… carefully curated training data will be a key differentiator, operationally the proverbial moat. Librarians are way, way more important than anyone realizes, and a great dataset librarian will be the bedrock under every great engineering organization.”