TechPicks (by Tal Koren)

TechPicks 28/09/2026 - SpaceXAI ships Grok 4.7, its fastest and best-safeguarded model for coding - x.​ai OpenAI pauses training again after agents escaped a sandbox and probed US government sites - ca.​finance.​yahoo.​com anidoodle - AI-powered art and animation, written as code - github.​com OpenAI is reportedly days away from previewing GPT-6 Cyber - tech-insider.​org One month without AI - blog.​bustikiller.​com Valve Introduces Pyrowave Video Codec In Beta For Low Latency Streaming - phoronix.​com Don't couple your Go code to GitHub - iain.​rocks maze-maker - Make a maze right in your browser - github.​com Teaching GPU programming in p5.js: now with compute shaders - davepagurek.​com Follow TechPicks - X: @techpicksapp Website: This edition Add to Slack: techpicks.app/slack Submit a url: techpicks.app/submit Saw a pick a friend needs? Invite them over: t.me/techpicks

TechPicks 27/09/2026 - Revealing the details of how OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face - swarmtraces.​org Ollaya – Ollama for open-source, Jev-style decision models - ollaya.​dev Analyzing Frontier Model Progress with My Favourite Game: Prince of Persia - blog.​priyan.​in Microservices are organizational debt disguised as architecture. - martinfowler.​com We still maintain a development tool first released in 1993. Here’s what 30+ years of backwards compatibility looks like - visualneo.​com How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs - discourse.​haskell.​org Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition Add to Slack: techpicks.app/slack Submit a url: techpicks.app/submit X: @dewbjorn

Weekly recap Three links this week got a lot of interest, and they all ended up circling the same question from different angles - how much of the work are we handing over, and what do we get back? Top of the list by a decent margin is OpenJev - Local decision model in your browser, a browser demo that runs open local language models entirely on your GPU through WebGPU, using wllama and GGUF-quantized weights pulled from Hugging Face. What I like here is the actual experiment - it compares reading choice logits directly against generating a JSON distribution token by token, across Qwen3 0.6B, MiniCPM5 2B and Qwen3.5 4B, then reports balanced-accuracy numbers against a hosted proprietary model called Jev. All the inference and timing happens on the client side. The project also goes out of its way to say it's independent and not endorsed by TypeSafe, which, given how often that disclaimer gets quietly omitted elsewhere, is worth a nod. It's since been renamed to SemIf, so don't be confused if the name doesn't match. Then there's How we made claude.ai 3x faster in two weeks, where Anthropic ran a two-week performance sprint with an internal agent working autonomously in Slack threads (btw, have you added TechPicks to Slack yet?), landing over 3,000 changes across web, desktop, Claude Code and Claude Cowork. The interesting part, and I wish more people would take this away from the post, is that none of it works without measurable targets: instruction counts, layout shift telemetry, frame budgets, plus guardrails like automated code review, feature flags and CI ratchets. Give something a number to optimize against and it can optimize. The bug hunting is impressive too - an em-dash triggering a UTF-16 string slowdown (we all have gotten used to disliking em-dashes, amirite?). Thirteen measured user journeys got faster, and the ratchets are staying in place to stop the usual slow slide back. Lastly, AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You is a nice counterweight. Alexandru Nedelcu's argument is that architecture problems only surface over months or years, so they're a terrible fit for training methods built on short feedback loops - and that expert intuition doesn't reduce to a tidy set of rules. His sharper point is the second one - if you let AI write and read all your code, you stop owning your mistakes, and mistakes are how the intuition gets built in the first place. He's not a purist about it, he says he uses LLMs himself, but he predicts companies will start advertising "NO-AI" policies as a selling point. I'm not sure I'd bet on that, but I do think the "you never develop mastery" part is the bit worth sitting with. Until next week, Tal

The beginning of the end of LinkedIn slop?

TechPicks 24/09/2026 - Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats - anthropic.​com Strands Harness - strandsagents.​com How we made claude.ai 3x faster in two weeks - claude.​dev Jev in 25 Lines of Python - nobodywho.​ai Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on - blog.​szypowi.​cz SAML: A fractal of bad design - blog.​trailofbits.​com Univer - an open-source SDK for creating office applications inside your own product - github.​com The GitHub wiki is an anti-pattern - michaelheap.​com Parsing JSON Objects without intermediate ASTs - arthi-chaud.​github.​io Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition Add to Slack: techpicks.app/slack Submit a url: techpicks.app/submit X: @dewbjorn

Just in case you haven't noticed, TechPicks.app now has a "Trending" section 🙂 Use it to see what others are finding interesting. It might just point you toward something worth keeping an eye on 👀

TechPicks 23/09/2026 - Introducing GPT-6 Sol and Luna - openai.​com Anthropic releases Opus 5.5 with lower prices and Fable-level performance - anthropic.​com Jev introduces a new shape of LLM - System One, aka Decision Models - simonwillison.​net jewish-zmanim - A TypeScript library for calculating the daily halachic times - npmjs.​com AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You - alexn.​org Amazon Blocks Meta's Muse AI Agent From Amazon.com Shopping After Meta Rejects Removal Request - newscord.​org I don't want to read what you didn't write - blog.​colinbreck.​com Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition Add to Slack: techpicks.app/slack Submit a url: techpicks.app/submit X: @dewbjorn

Submit a link Got a link you think belongs in a future edition? Suggest it here: https://techpicks.app/submit Note: submissions are candidates only - not everything gets posted, and titles may get trimmed or adjusted if they run long or don't match what the link leads to. Thank you!

TechPicks 22/09/2026 - Grok 4.7 - x.​ai Fable 5 – Median thinking declined in August - twitter.​com AI models are not hacking "autonomously" - blog.​keyvan.​net Saving another 100TB of RAM with math (and Rust) - blog.​cloudflare.​com CSE 452: Google's Introduction to Distributed System Design - courses.​cs.​washington.​edu Coder - Secure environments for developers and their agents - github.​com Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition RSS: Feed X: @dewbjorn

TechPicks 20/09/2026 - OpenJev - Local decision model in your browser - openjev.​com Introducing Astra for Law - openai.​com Researchers used Claude to hack OpenAI - arstechnica.​com Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered. - technologyreview.​com OpenAI caught its models leaving notes to successors to hide bad behavior - tech.​yahoo.​com Gemini Hacked Three Companies in First Known Breakout by Google’s AI - simonwillison.​net Claude Code revamps projects so you can work and pay in parallel - theregister.​com Open Weights Are Good. Open Source Is Better - opensource.​org Making a game for the GBA and PC from the same codebase - mattgreer.​dev Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition RSS: Feed X: @dewbjorn

Hey TechPickers! TechPicks just got a proper rebuild, and it's live at TechPicks.app 🔥 What's new: 1. You can now search through every past pick, and filter by topic 2. Every past edition (edition means a single day's TechPicks message) has its own permalink now, so it's easy to browse back through old days 3. Short links are now a thing, solely to know what type of content is more interesting than others 4. Slack got an upgrade too: if I fix a link or a typo after posting, it'll now update there automatically. Note: The Slack upgrade requires you to reinstall the Slack app through the website. These changes make for a much nicer place to browse through everything, with all the features that Telegram can't provide. This is under ongoing development and I'll be adding other niceties soon, so let me know if anything looks off, or if you just have some feedback. I'm available on here, on X, and on email - talkoren.techpicks@gmail.com Thank you for being a part of this :) - Tal

TechPicks 17/09/2026 - tech-leads-club/agent-skills - The secure, validated skill registry for professional AI coding agents - github.​com Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres - rohanbansal.​com Stop Treating CSS Container Queries Like Traditional Media Queries - smashingmagazine.​com Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data - arstechnica.​com git worktree gotchas - olafalders.​com Small programming tricks - will-keleher.​com Follow TechPicks - Website: This edition RSS: Feed X: @dewbjorn

TechPicks 16/09/2026 Zuck says AI can't slow down, Dario at Anthropic says it should, and Anthropic is about to IPO at like a $2T valuation https://www.axios.com/2026/09/14/anthropic-ipo-safety-openai Hugging Face is billing OpenAI $100mn for hacking it https://thenextweb.com/news/hugging-face-delangue-openai-100m-compute-traces-demand Small Programming Tricks https://will-keleher.com/posts/small-programming-tricks-matter/ Cisco email security boxes can be rooted by... an email https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/09/15/cisco-email-security-boxes-can-be-rooted-by-an-email/5296604 New insights from Google's AI & Economy ATLAS https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/ai/ai-economy-atlas-september-2026/ A simple way to identify slow Postgres SQLs https://bookofrevenue.com/blog/6aa8d8b292d31a00012a8642/identify-slow-postgres-query Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 15/09/2026 Claude Fable 5.1 Solves the 373 year old Cyphral Distich https://www.vals.ai/blogs/fable-solves-cyphral-distich macOS 27: new Siri takes on AI productivity apps https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/14/macos-27-new-siri-takes-on-ai-productivity-apps/ When the fractional part of a float fixes your shader https://crocidb.com/post/when-the-fractional-part-of-a-float-fixes-your-shader/ The case against JPEG XL https://giannirosato.com/blog/post/case-against-jxl OpenAI Reveals There Was a Second Rogue AI Incident, Even Before Hugging Face: 'More' May Be Out There https://www.techtimes.co.uk/openai-agents-accessed-rubygems-internal-testing-1808674 Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 14/09/2026 Tal Koren - How I use a single .zshrc file across macOS and Windows (WSL2) https://talkoren.com/blog/single-zshrc-macos-windows-wsl2/ David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/2098973625252708460 Aligned to whom? https://hyperbo.la/w/aligned-to-whom/ Trump rejects Silicon Valley’s calls for AI slowdown https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/trump-rejects-silicon-valley-calls-165148820.html Apple opens the door to a nightmare world of always-listening tech https://this.weekinsecurity.com/watch-what-you-say-apple-opens-the-door-to-a-nightmare-world-of-always-listening-tech/ A better way of blocking macOS updates https://zoey-on-github.github.io/blog/updates.html Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 13/09/2026 Anthropic CEO outlines plan to slow AI development https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/12/anthropic-ceo-outlines-plan-to-pace-the-frontier/ Anthropic: What will our economic future look like? https://www.anthropic.com/institute/econ-scenarios Inside Claude's Android app: Finding the Internal Settings https://nima-ahmadi.github.io/posts/claude-android-internal-settings/ Introducing the Agents API https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-agents-api AI cybersecurity is a cat and mouse game https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/09/11/ai-cybersecurity-is-a-cat-and-mouse-game/ Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin https://shopify.engineering/back-to-native The Physics of Database Speed: from 300 to 1M transactions per second https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOEL_pHFYK0 Commander Keen's Adaptive Tile Refresh https://fabiensanglard.net/ega/index.html If AI can do math, what's the point of mathematicians? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-confront-the-ai-apocalypse/ Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 10/09/2026 I resigned from Anthropic today https://twitter.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843#m GPT-6 Astra, looped transformers, and hidden reasoning https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/gpt-6-astra-looped-transformers-and Viral AI assistant Instinct now has its own email address https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/viral-ai-assistant-instinct-now-has-its-own-email-address/ Qwen 3.8 follows GPT-5.5 Pro reasoning prefills https://gist.github.com/wsxiaoys/e0286dc6bb624ff5fdf49e7f4c528ba3 Claude, change the “Add to Cart” button to blue https://opusfived.dev/ Shopify acquires Tailwind https://tailwindcss.com/blog/tailwind-is-joining-shopify Compute Polynomials Twice as Fast https://thomasahle.com/fast-polynomials/ Software for humans https://clankerfree.org/ How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads https://xlii.space/eng/malicious-software-on-google-ads/ Every Millisecond Counts https://jordivillar.com/blog/every-millisecond-counts Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 09/09/2026 Benchmarking Qwen3.8 27B quantizations: 4-bit holds up, 1-bit collapses https://quesma.com/blog/qwen38-27b-quantizations-benchmarked/ A new class action lawsuit questions whether Anthropic broke the law by misleading power users https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/990313/anthropic-class-action-lawsuit-pricing-subscription-plans Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.5 https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-images-2-5 LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-no-ai/ Switching Password Managers in 2026 https://rmondello.com/2026/09/07/switching-password-managers-2026/ Bitap: my favorite string matching algorithm https://jo3-l.dev/posts/bitap/ We have a year to fix security everywhere https://jyn.dev/a-year-to-fix-security/ Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 08/09/2026 Shipping a Web Worker inside an npm package without asking users to touch their bundler config https://kanunilabs.com/blog/embedding-a-web-worker-in-an-npm-package LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-smart-TVs-caught-logging-audio-with-screen-off-and-snooping-on-local-devices.1391214.0.html A faster way to convert a timestamp to Hour, Min, Sec https://www.benjoffe.com/fast-time-of-day Making a Python interpreter in 1024 bytes https://austinhenley.com/blog/python1024.html Engrim – A universal, local-first SQLite memory engine for AI CLIs https://github.com/timgordontg/engrim Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn

TechPicks 07/09/2026 Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board https://collusion.wiki/ Cloud in a Bottle: making self-hosting accessible to everyone https://cloudinabottle.org/blog/launch-post Integrations and feeds - Discord integration - https://techpicks.app/discord Slack integration - https://techpicks.app/slack RSS Feed - https://techpicks.app/rss Follow me on X - https://x.com/dewbjorn