jackschultz

We expect demand for Fable 5 to be very high, and difficult to predict. On the Claude API and consumption-based Enterprise plans, Fable 5 is fully available from today. For subscription plans, we’d rather give access sooner than later, so we’re rolling out more conservatively, in stages:

- From today through June 22, Fable 5 is included on Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans at no extra cost. - On June 23, we’ll remove Fable 5 from those plans. Using it after that will require usage credits. If capacity allows, we’ll extend the included window. - After this point—when sufficient capacity allows us to do so—we aim to restore Fable 5 as a standard part of subscription plans. We intend to do this as quickly as we can.

I really wonder what their compute layout is for this. My guess from my understanding is that they know how to restrict during peak times and are willing to do this. Meaning we expect not the most fast responses and they can delay the inference to not have the service be down. Then, if that delay time is too annoying for token payers, they're saying they should be allowed to remove cost by taking away the subscription users.

Be Here Now network, which started with Ram Dass, still does mostly weekly videos from Goldstein and Kornfield. Search for their names where you listen to your podcasts. Incredibly good to listen to.

Other ones I listen to are in the Thai Forrest Tradition, started from Ajahn Chah and now talks from Abhayagiri, Amaravati. Other one from Mahayana, which has so many talks and probably the best book I've read, Seeing That Frees, is Rob Burbea. He died from cancer in 2020, which is incredibly sad given how young he still was and much he's produced for us.

All of these people give different angles on the teachings of the Buddha. I highly suggest listening and reading from these people and the differing traditions all talking for similar goals of how to look at the world for the acknowledgement of dukkha (pain / suffering) and how to deal with it. You don't need to sit and meditate either to get the benefits.

Very much agree. Gave a presentation on AI to a group earlier this week and I spent a third of the time talking about the Opus 4.5 inflection point in AI history. First time using that model the day it was released it was so clear that it knew what it was doing at a different level. People still jump around to different models or tools or time frames when talking about AI and usefulness, but those have no meaning if they’re not using the Opus 4.5 and 4.6 models and anthropic harnesses of Claude code or cowork.

I’m interested in the studies along with the history of AI and if they’re going to realize that was the point when things changed, because for us devs, that was the moment.

Massivly better and I cannot understand how many comments online say that they're comparable (other than paid actors which now fits the right wing angle that OpenAI takes because right wing paid online comments seems quite common overall).

I remember on the Opus 4.5 release data watching what it can do to my test app I wanted it to build and saying outloud to myself "oh shit" because of how much better it was at the conversation, planning, understanding, and building. Posts like this[0] say similar things, where Opus 4.5 release + Claude Code was the tipping point and the gap is widening and Anthropic has infinite more momentum and going in the better direction with useful models that aren't fully aligned with bad actors.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515696

https://archive.ph/uygcK

Edit for the good metaphors.

It has entered what mountaineers call the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 metres at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired.

Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems... The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy.

A recession is like fatigue: rest and you recover. Russia’s condition is like altitude sickness: the longer you stay, the worse it gets, regardless of rest.

But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers.

Always a fan of the writing style the Economist promotes.

I wonder how much this might change in the coming years purely from GLP-1s. Articles like this[0] (which yes, Betteridge's law applies) talk about how it’s pretty likely they’ll be able to be used by everyone. But even now, taking people with cardiovascular high probabilities and dropping that risk way down purely by giving them the feeling that they’re more full more frequently is crazy to think about. Not sure opinions here but I’m at the point of telling my parents they should both be on these right now in their upper 60s.

Some people shrug it off or claim that they’re higher status because they lost weight via diet and exercise, but I map that to people who think they’re better programmers because they don’t use llms for coding, when the real result is what matters. Similar to people thinking AI slop, there are news articles about what happens if you stop GLP-1s and gain the weight back. But the stories of people who either continue to microdose, or also learn the feelings of their body and how it differs have long term success. Similar to those who know how to work with llms get good results, but the news is about how smarter people don’t use it.

All very interesting subjects. What a world we’re in.

[0] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-...

I literally did this yesterday and had the same thought. Older computer (8 gigs ram) with crappy windows I never used and I thought huh, I wonder how good these models can take me through installing linux with goal of docker deploys of relatively basic things like cron tasks, personal postgres, and minio that I can used for self shared data.

Took a couple hours with some things I ran across, but the model had me go through the setup for debian, how to go through the setup gui, what to check to make it server only, then it took me through commands to run so it wouldn't stop when I closed the laptop, helped with tailscale, getting the ssh keys all setup. Heck it even suggested doing daily dumps of the database and saving to minio and then removing after that. Also knows about the limitations of 8 gigs of ram and how to make sure docker settings for the difference self services I want to build don't cause issues.

Give me a month and true strong intention and ability to google and read posts and find the answer on my own and I still don't think I would have gotten to this point with the amount of trust I have in the setup.

I very much agree with this topic about self hosting coming alive because these models can walk you through everything. Self building and self hosting can really come alive. And in the future when open models are that much better and hardware costs come down (maybe, just guessing of course) we'll be able to also host our own agents on these machines we have setup already. All being able to do it ourselves.

Reread Story of Your Life again just now, and all it made me want to do is learn Heptapod B and their senagram style of written communication.

Reading “Mathematica - A secret world of intuition and curiosity” as well and a part stuck out in a section called The Language Trap. Example author gives is about for a recipe for making banana bread, that if you’re familiar with bananas, it’s obvious that you need to peel them before mashing. Bit of you haven’t seen a banana, you’d have no clue what to do. Does a recipe say peel a banana or should that be ignored? Questions like these are clear coming up more with AI and context, but it’s the same for humans. He ends that section saying most people prefer a video for cooking rather than a recipe.

Other quote from him:

“The language trap is the belief that naming things is enough to make them exist, and we can dispense with the effort of really imagining them.”

Quote that I always like:

There was a man who was afraid of his shadow and disliked his footprints. So he tried to get away from them. He ran, but the faster he ran, the more numerous his footprints became, and his shadow kept up with him without lagging behind. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster, until he collapsed and died of exhaustion. He did not realize that if he had simply stayed in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared, and if he had sat still, there would have been no footprints.

And another one [0]:

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest; Every year the green ivy grows longer. No news of the affairs of men, Only the occasional song of a woodcutter. The sun shines and I mend my robe; When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems. I have nothing to report, my friends. If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.

[0] https://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2011/06/stop-chasing...

Meta about how important context is.

People see LLMs and tons of tests tests written in the same sentence, and think that shows how models love writing pointless tests. Rather than realizing that the tests are standard and people written to show that the model wrote code that is validated by a currently trusted source.

Shows the importance for us to always write comments that humans are going to read with the right context is _very_ similar to how we need to interact with LLMs. And if we fail to communicate with humans, clearly we're going to fail with models.

Sure, but the end of this post [0] is where I'm at. I don't feel the need or want to write the code when I can spend my time doing the other parts that are much more interesting and valuable.

Emil concluded his article like this:

JustHTML is about 3,000 lines of Python with 8,500+ tests passing. I couldn’t have written it this quickly without the agent. But “quickly” doesn’t mean “without thinking.” I spent a lot of time reviewing code, making design decisions, and steering the agent in the right direction. The agent did the typing; I did the thinking. That’s probably the right division of labor.

I couldn’t agree more. Coding agents replace the part of my job that involves typing the code into a computer. I find what’s left to be a much more valuable use of my time.

[0] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/14/justhtml/

Infinitely agree with all. I was skeptical, and then tried Opus 4.5 and was blown away. Codex with 5.0 and 5.1 wasn't great, but 5.2 is big improvement. I can't do code without it because there's no point. Time and quality with the right constraints, you're going to get better code.

And same thought with both procrastination because of not knowing where to start, but also getting stuck in the middle and not knowing where to go. Literally never happens anymore. Having discussions with it for doing the planning and different options for implementations, and you get to the end with a good design description and then, what's the point of writing the code yourself when with that design, it's going to write it quickly and matching the agreements.

Another video about this today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bg0Q1enwS4

Summary is that for agents to work well they need clear vision into all things, and putting the data behind a gui or not well maintained CLI is a hinderance. Combined with how structured crud apps are an how the agents can for sure write good crud apps, no reason to not have your own. Wins all around with not paying for it, having a better understanding of processes, and letting agents handle workflows.

Same. Never used worktrees before, but mapping a worktrees to tickets I’m assigned to for Claude to work on is really great.

Heck with the ai, I even have it spin up a dev and test db for that worktree in a docker container. Each has their own so they don’t conflict on that front either. And I won’t lie, I didn’t write those scripts. The models did it all and can make adjustments when I find different work patterns that I like.

This is all to the point of me wondering why I never did this for myself in the past. With the number of times I’m doing multiple parts of a codebase and the annoyance of committing, stashing, checking out different branch and not being able to go more quickly between when blockers are resolved.

This is what I'm doing, Opus 4.5 for personal projects and to learn the flow and what's needed. Only thing I'll disagree with is how the work takes similar amount of time because I'm finding it unbelievably faster. It's crazy how with smart planning and documentation that we can do with the agents, getting markdown files etc, they can write the code better and faster than I can as a senior dev. No question.

I've found Opus 4.5 as a big upgrade compared to any of the other models. Big step up and the minor issues that were annoying and I needed to watch out for with Sonnet and GPT5.1.

It's to the point where I'm on the side of, if the models are offline or I run out of tokens for the 5 hour window or the week (with what I'm paying now), there's kind of no use of doing work. I can use other models to do planning or some review, but then wait until I'm back with Opus 4.5 to do the code.

It still absolutely requires review from me and planning before writing the code, and this is why there can be some slop that goes by, but it's the same as if you have a junior and they put in weak PRs. Difference is much quicker planning which the models help with, better implementation with basic conventions compared to juniors, and much easier to tell a model to make changes compared to a human.

I'm in Wisconsin and if I drive on a county road, I see signs near the road that say "Save our S̶o̶l̶a̶r̶ Farms". Maybe some are fine with them, but seems like lots of internal pressure to say no or unfortunate reasons.

Go to usda.gov and two recent press releases are

1 - Secretary Rollins Blocks Taxpayer Dollars for Solar Panels on Prime Farmland

2- Secretary Rollins Prioritizes American Energy on National Forest Land

Both have quotes about putting "America first" to confuse people to make them think this is better for all. We think the USDA is about getting healthy food to people, but really they're about maximizing the money for farmers and people who own the land. Terrible.

[1] https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/08/... [2] - https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/08/...

My brother in law curls. Asked him about this and he said that it's been coming for a while, the men's teams at Canadian nationals has a self imposed a ban on them, and for amateurs it doesn't really affect them since they're not good enough to have it make a difference. Seems like it means it's not that big an issue and players aren't arguing to keep them.

Now golf on the other hand has a much bigger equipment issues if people want to see some big time drama.

I've been curious about what the best way to recording breathing rates with wearables would be. Thought was a chest strap with springs to measure tension with higher tension being air in lungs. But you're talking about a different way. How does the magnet work to get rates? I'd want something that can get rates and volumes from mouth vs nasal and also tell which vent the air in coming into the lungs from. Probably a case of how much intrusion you want vs how intricate and correct the data is.

They had banked on Murati calming employees while they searched for a CEO. Instead, she was leading her colleagues in a revolt against the board.

I finally finished the 4th of Caro's books about LBJ, "The Passage of Power", largest part about how LBJ dealt with assassination. Over and over shows how LBJ made sure that nobody, meaning world leaders, citizens, others in government, and, relevant here, also those in the Kennedy administration would feel lost and want to resign. Caro made sure to note how this is a very difficult task and required LBJ to act differently than normal, but also how important it is to not have things go into disarray which easily happens.

Side note: Astounding notes of how LBJ was able to get bills that weren't going to get through congress with Kennedy were pushed through and made possible by Johnson. Quote to end a chapter by Richard Russell, southern complete segregationist and racist, says "You know, we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Johnson." Other side, Caro makes certain however about how the coming issues of Vietnam show the darker side of LBJ and not get fully caught up in his stability of power and civil rights successes.

Maybe these are all cases of those who want power are usually those who shouldn't have it.

Stolen bases in baseball is similar to this. In 2023, MLB made two rule changes with stealing being at all time lows (and them thinking fans love stolen bases): 1) Limiting the number of pickoff attempts by pitchers, and 2) Slight enlarging of the bases. Take a look at the jump[0].

It's been interesting to follow some changes teams have made the past two seasons where teams are figuring out how to better time steals when a pitch is thrown, and which players to go after. For example, pitchers with slow releases and bad catchers.

Base running aggressiveness that some teams have been doing as well. The value of going 1st to 3rd on a single is massive and getting speed, and judgement and wanting your players to do that will be more and more valued.

I actually searched "base running aggressiveness" to see what articles had to say, and two months ago Statcast put in a new stat called "Net Bases Gained"[1]. Crazy.

This mimics the changes in NBA talked about here, where value in players changes over times when new ways of playing show their value. It's kind of like the 4 minute mile though, where until someone went out and was able to run under 4 minutes / make all those 3s / run that aggressive on the base paths / go for it on more 4th downs, teams are scared to be the first.

[0] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SB_leagues.shtml [1] https://www.mlb.com/news/breaking-down-statcast-s-new-baseru...

I totally remember 482 (Operating Systems for those reading) being really interesting. Story I remember is one of the final projects and dealing with locks in C++ world where I'd get close to full solution, but some errors from the locks, then I'd make a change and suddenly those previous failing tests passed but new ones failed. I didn't realize that could happen.

Great times. And I really liked how we did it all in C++ (other than computer vision 442 that was in matlab) rather than Python which some places do. Having that lower level understanding of languages in school makes understanding code so much easier, and something I didn't have to learn on my own.

For engineering we had to pick either multivariate calculus or linear algebra for more upper level math courses. I picked multivariate, and I'll say it was also my least enjoyable there. I look back wondering what would have gone different if I picked linear algebra instead, but who knows, maybe I'd have just as blech of an experience with that. Lot of great classes in the EECS department though.

Same with async and throwing threads at a problem. People love do those and think it's the right answer, but you can do a ton with smarter memory management and actually looking at what the code is doing lower level rather than abstractions.

Video about this that was very interesting to follow and somewhat related to what you're doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rb0vvJ7NCY

Great stuff. We get told O notation is what matters for data structures / algorithms, but improvements low level with memory and storage with things like rust is much more where improves can be made. These types of tricks for anctual run times are so valuable, and interesting to follow.

In the tl;dr at the start

So is Zig a better alternative to writing unsafe Rust?

The title here and what he has in his post are the same, but in the tl;dr along with the slug of the url which is "unsafe-rust-vs-zig".

We need to realize it's a very specific case he's talking about, rather than in general. The pain of titles.

It seems like the options are 1) MicroPython, which is really easy to use (use python for everything) but lacking in anything lower level to a quick restriction on what you can do. 2) C, which I've used before and understand, but going from the Arduino or PlatformIO experience would require a lot of learning as well. 3) Rust (with embedded_hal and embassy), which is newer, along with different language, but with ability to go lower level with complies, and seeming overall goal to be more widely used.

College was all C/C++ so I've used that before, so I can understand and pick up the code. Since I have brief experience rather than your experience, I'm betting that the time it'd take for me to get up to speed with C and fuller dev environments would take as long as with Rust, and since I can use rust in more applications for what I do professionally, I'm figuring to put the time there.

What have you built and with what in your 25 years? Too many posts and vids about these things are intro rather than more in depth. It's great to hear from people who actually do this into production rather than mini-projects.

Back to embedded systems, particularly with Rust.

I did computer engineering in college some 10-15 years ago, where these projects were super basic and difficult to get into. Seems like massive advancements in the past decade. Maybe my eye has been watching for these, but I'm seeing many more posts about ESP32 projects, for example, being linked here. Same for RP2040s, along with sensors galore and wifi / bluetooth connections.

Picking Rust as language for the chips instead of the C and MicroPython. Rust has applications beyond the embedded systems and learning it lower level can be helpful if wanted in other cases.

Great timing. I've been wanting to learn how to do projects like this, but been so unsure what types of microcontroller I should get and what else could be needed. Similar in the software world where we all have our preferred tech stacks, I was so uncertain of what stack to use for these projects that it definitely causes a hurdle.

His mention of the ESP32 and how

While working on the game I used my newfound ESP32 skills to do some other projects, such as automating the remote-controlled blinds in our bedroom as well as a motion sensor that would send Pushover notifications to my phone.

is absolutely what I'm wanting to be able to do. Learn the tech needed for one controller that can be used on tons of different places. That, plus that talk with MicroPython (and other parts) gives some confidence about learning this hardware stack.

So many great parts in this.

1) The sense and importance of community. Both the mention of them coming together when he returned where "the ghosts will be laid". And also the mention of "there was no “I” in his war, only “we”. We're stuck in such an individualist culture where we're told to work hard to stand out, and seem to be shamed if we're weak and in receiving help from others.

2) Words as metaphors. Beautiful examples given in the post, but we should remember the roots of many of our words are also metaphors. My favorite being "persona"[0], coming referring to an actors mask that air goes through. Helps remind me that we're always actors in the world, not some defined Self we're stuck with. Good book[1] on that topic from Jay Garfield.

3) Explanation at the end of his "Navajo Code-Talkers uniform". Mentions that yes, it's more than ok to imagine clothes as images and have meaning beyond "something to wear for efficiency". The Emerald podcast talks about these things, both ornaments in general from human history [2] and more specifically about guardians [3] which is what he considered the Navajo colors were for, to protect him.

The similarity of all these cases, to me, comes to they're not all thoughts he had in his head as words, which is what we're told to do from the smallest of ages. We're told to think hard, and use words (like I'm doing here) to be smarter than others. When looked at, words and thoughts are nothing compared to the experienced feelings that come from community, imaginal metaphors like hopping rabbits that leave tracks in the snow, or looking at colors you're wearing and feeling protected.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691220284/lo...

[2] https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast/universe-adorned-ornam...

[3] https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast/guardians-and-protecto...