What I’ve been reading (and watching) this week ending 12 October 2025
“Memory access, both in theory and in practice, takes O(N^[1/3]) time: if your memory is 8x bigger, it will take 2x longer to do a read or write to it.”
“It’s also become clear to me that LLMs actively reward existing top tier software engineering practices:”
I generally see it as practices developed to address over-optimism are highly relevant.
We simulated if you can really reach anyone in 6 steps
Here’s why you shouldn’t bring your whole self to work — Fast Company
“That is the paradox of safety and authenticity at work. To build trust, leaders must be human, vulnerable, and real. But to sustain safety, they must also regulate, filter, and discipline their impulses. The same is true for peers. Authenticity is valuable only when it is paired with accountability to others.”
AI-Generated Tests are Lying to You | David Adamo Jr.
A good test says: “Here’s what should happen, no matter how it’s implemented.”
A bad test says: “Here’s what happens, so let’s call that correct.”
Best coding performance? → Claude Sonnet 4.5 (77% SWE-bench)
Unified simplicity? → GPT-5 (auto-switching)
Large document processing? → Llama 4 Scout (10M tokens)
Real-time data access? → Grok 4 (X integration)
Cost optimization? → Mistral Medium 3 (90% performance, 10% cost)
Custom solution building? → Llama 4 (open-source)
State of the software engineering jobs market, 2025: what hiring managers see
- Flood of applications.
- Few hires via inbound.
- ‘Top’ candidates are hard to find.
- Remote jobs: more competition for less comp?
- Fake applicants + AI: a growing problem.
- Higher demand for founding engineers and product engineers.
- Early-stage startups have their own hiring problems.
Start where you are.
Start with what you’ve got.
Start now.
The Quantum Mechanics of Greenhouse Gases | Quanta Magazine
There’s a simple story of the greenhouse effect: A blanket of carbon dioxide envelops the planet, letting sunlight in but trapping its heat. As a result, Earth warms.
But how does this actually work? Carbon dioxide amounts to only a tiny smattering of gas molecules — 0.042%, or roughly 420 parts per million — in our thick atmosphere. And yet, we know that doubling carbon dioxide levels can change the character of life on Earth.
The answer is quantum mechanics, which determines whether a molecule can interact with the right type of radiation.
sketch blog: The 7 Prompting Habits of Highly Effective Engineers *
- Draw the owl
- Send out a scout
- Fail early, fail often
- Go concurrent
- Provide goals, not instructions
- Farm out step 0
“Like putting on glasses for the first time” — how AI improves earthquake detection — Ars Technica
Over the past seven years, AI tools based on computer imaging have almost completely automated one of the fundamental tasks of seismology: detecting earthquakes. What used to be the task of human analysts — and later, simpler computer programs — can now be done automatically and quickly by machine-learning tools.
State of AI Report — 2025 ONLINE — Google Slides
Research: Technological breakthroughs and their capabilities.
Industry: Areas of commercial application for AI and their business impact.
Politics: Regulation, economic implications, and the evolving geopolitics of AI.
Safety: Efforts to identify and mitigate catastrophic risks that highly capable future AI systems could pose.
Survey: Findings from the largest open-access survey of 1,200 AI practitioners and their AI usage patterns.
Predictions: Our outlook for the next 12 months, alongside a review of our 2024 forecasts to keep us accountable.
