Donald Knuth, who, adorably, effectively blogs by posting TeX-typeset PDFs:

Shock! Shock! I learned yesterday that an open problem I’d been working on for several weeks had just been solved by Claude Opus 4.6 — Anthropic’s hybrid reasoning model that had been released three weeks earlier! It seems that I’ll have to revise my opinions about “generative AI” one of these days. What a joy it is to learn not only that my conjecture has a nice solution but also to celebrate this dramatic advance in automatic deduction and creative problem solving. I’ll try to tell the story briefly in this note.

(Via Simon Willison.)

Douglas Fairbanks plays a pretend pirate in this enduring classic that helps explain why Hollywood can't quite pirates

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
A look at countries that moved to ban social media for kids in recent months, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Malaysia, Spain, Indonesia  —  Over the past few months, several countries have announced plans to restrict social media access for children and teens.

Pokopia is right at the top of Metacritic's all-time list of Pokémon games, but nobody was expecting that to happen. How come?

The opening notes of "Kravitz," which kicks off Mabe Fratti's 2024 record Sentir Que No Sabes, are lodged in my brain permanently. It's not a showy album, by any means. But there's something about the buzzing of her cello, plucked as you might an upright bass. The way the notes ring out before coming to […]