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  Sometimes there are problems that seem so "basic" that they should be essentially solved And then someone finds a way to dramatically improve the performance In this case, conversion from Unix epoch to year-month-day: https://www.benjoffe.com/fast-date (on 64-bit, 30-40% faster than the previous algorithm, which was from 2021)

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  > Describing them as “superintelligence” or “rogue models” ascribes agency to products rather than to the companies building them. This framing markets these companies’ products as “superhuman” and, at the same time, helps the companies evade accountability for their actions. > Instead of OpenAI being prosecuted for creating malware that hacked another company, press releases, news outlets, media personalities, and lawmakers refer to “rogue models” as if they acted on their own. I...

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  📄 Large AI models are cultural and social technologies https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-2495/full I found this article very interesting, as a counter-narrative to the common description of LLMs as abstract entities with vague definitions ("agents", "AGI", etc). - The authors interpret LLMs as a socio-cultural technology, like the printing press, markets, or representative democracy. All technological innovations (like electricity or the Intern...

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  Very well-written essay: "Applied mathematics has met the machine before" https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/28/applied-mathematics-has-met-the-machine-before/

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  Google has released WeatherNext 3, their new weather model: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/introducing-weathernext-3/ It is interesting because the AI model does not rely solely on numerical simulations: it incorporates live data from satellites for several key variables, which apparently increases the accuracy for fast-changing meteorological events

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  A study showed that nuclear power plants were associated with higher incidence of cancer. But there was no control group, and no physical model to explain it. By reproducing the study, researchers showed that the statistical methods used led to higher cancer incidence around any landmark, including supermarkets and sports fields: https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/things-that-apparently-cause-cancer The importance of having a proper hypothesis, causal model, and controls...

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  This article by Brian Potter on SpaceX's new version of their Raptor engine is also a great primer on rocket engine design: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-spacex-streamlined-the-raptor It's also very interesting to read about the engineering work in optimizing and simplifying these engines. And the incentives behind them: wanting to reuse rocket engines make them think very differently about reliability for instance

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  RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@OEISbot/117383470380329546 I was surprised at the size of the index of related entries 😅 https://oeis.org/index/Res#RAA

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  The official "popular information" article from the Nobel Prize committee is a very good exposition for non-specialists: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/popular-information/

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  Impressive result: new algorithms for 3SUM and APSP significantly reducing the best known complexity: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06783v1 I really like the statement about LLM usage as well, and the clear emphasis on the value added by the author and their taking full responsibility

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  Seems like a good day to repost this explainer by Randall Munroe: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

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  The engineering between articulated buses: https://www.theautopian.com/you-wont-believe-the-incredible-engineering-that-allows-articulated-buses-to-bend/ In particular, I didn't know that some articulated buses had their engine in the rear!

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  Tilings and tessellations are such an interesting area of mathematics. They seem so simple that everything should have been discovered already, and yet new fundamental questions are raised every year! In this case, researchers wondered about "soft" tilings, i.e. tilings with as few corners as possible and are entirely "rounded" elsewhere. It turns out they are everywhere in nature, both in 2D and 3D. And you can have tilings of three-dimensional spaces that h...