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Research results are cultural artifacts, not public goods (2 minute read)
Knowledge and scientific progress are very much private goods. It's all about specific people and how they think. Cultural artifacts can and will spread, but there's nothing free about it, and it won't spread equally everywhere. The view that scientific research is a public good is a naive and indefensible view.
Oct 20 | AI
Andrej Karpathy on AGI timelines, Animals vs Ghosts, and more (7 minute read)
Andrej Karpathy was recently on a podcast where he discussed AGI timelines, Animals vs Ghosts, Reinforcement Learning, AI agents, and job automation. Some of the explanations on the podcast were botched. This post expands on the topics that Karpathy discussed on the podcast to clear things up. It includes links to previous discussions Karpathy has had on these topics.
Oct 20 | Infosec
Two New Windows Zero-Days Exploited in the Wild - One Affects Every Version Ever Shipped (3 minute read)
Microsoft fixed three actively exploited vulnerabilities as part of the final Patch Tuesday for Windows 10. One of the vulnerabilities is a secure boot bypass, whereas the other two are privilege escalation vulnerabilities. Notably, a vulnerable legacy modem driver could allow for privilege escalation in every version of Windows.
Oct 20 | Data
MinerU — Open-Source Document Parser for Agentic Workflows (GitHub Repo)
MinerU transforms complex documents (e.g., PDFs) into LLM-ready Markdown/JSON, preserving layout, tables, formulas, and reading order. Built for agents and enterprise use, it supports OCR in 84 languages, GPU/CPU/NPU acceleration, and outputs richly structured representations interpreted by downstream AI systems. Trade-offs: sophisticated deployment and resource requirements; edge cases (handwritten docs, comics) still limited.
