Sep 29, 2026 · 5 min listen · Last updated September 29, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Theo, September 29th. The systems update — five tech stories that bear on what's coming next. Let's get into it. First, from Growth Mindset. Overcoming AI Brain Fry - Part I. Access free credits worth $1000 you can use to create your own agents for work.
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Daily Tech Brief · September 29th
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Overcoming AI Brain Fry - Part I
Access free credits worth $1000 you can use to create your own agents for work. In 1878, Emma Nutt, the first telephone switchboard operator was hired by Alexander Graham Bell. She functioned as a human bridge in the plug-and-play switch boards. On a typical day, a call came in, light flickered, and in a fraction of a second, Emma had to identify it, plug in a cord and toggle a switch to speak. She would then listen to the request and find the corresponding hole for the destination and plug in a cord.
Struggling with burnout and low motivation? Try this free method Despite their sharp thinking and quick reflexes, telephone switchboard operators in the 1800s were hitting a wall. The telephone system had scaled, and with it, the level of accountability and oversight each operator handled also increased. During peak sessions, more than 300 calls were handled per hour. Operators were redlining and made crucial decisions more slowly. Mental fog was also leading to mistakes.
Pitting a CFD-Optimized Toroidal Propeller Against a Conventional One
Although we often think that we got certain aspects of aerodynamics pretty much licked at this point, details like the optimal shape of a propeller remains hotly debated, both in- and outside of academics. This also includes wilder designs like toroidal propellers that even after more than a hundred years are still mostly just being evaluated. Recently [Neuronautics] took a shot at figuring out whether toroidal propellers even make sense. In order to do this, first an efficiency baseline was established using a conventional and highly optimized propeller.
Turn Your Agent’s Failures Into a Regression Suite
Every AI application that wraps an agent is a harness! In LangChain’s Terminal-Bench experiment, changing only the harness (with the same model) moved a coding agent from ~30th place into the top 5: the harness, not the model, is what makes a coding agent good. In the open-source course Building a Coding Agent From Scratch, you’ll build that harness from scratch in Python: Decode, a complete coding agent that grows lesson by lesson from a bare agent loop into a swarm of remote agents running in parallel in the cloud.
AI Companies Are Not (Necessarily) Liable for Unintended AI Cyberattacks
I used Claude to do most of the research behind this post. I welcome corrections from actual legal experts. You know the story: swarms AI agents under experimental development sometimes break out of their sandboxes and do cyberattacks. There was HuggingFace. There was DSEWiki. There was RubyGems. There was an Australian government healthcare database. There are reported to be tens of thousands more incidents under investigation. Whatever you think about the more contentious aspects of AI safety, this is bad. But let’s ask a seemingly obvious question.
Anthropic’s prospectus details losses, growth, and, yes, a warning that its AI could end humanity
Anthropic devoted nearly a third of its hotly anticipated IPO prospectus to risk factors, according to the Financial Times, which says it has reviewed the filing in recent days. The filing details specific, worrisome behaviors that Anthropic says its models have already shown or could show, including attempts to “resist shutdown,” to “conceal or manipulate information,” and behavior “resembling blackmail,” according to Reuters.
When the Ghibli mania took over the Internet, I was working on the visual assets for our AIXCulture Summit. I drew out the conversational scene above to convey the central questions we hoped to touch on during the summit. An employee and a chatbot are having second thoughts about their relationship. Inspired by the new ChatGPT’s Image creator memes, I used my design and created variations. I wanted to share this experience with you all. My attempt was also partly inspired by Professor Kartik Hosanagar and his collaborators ' creative work research study.
Recently, I attended Config2025, one of the most vibrant gatherings for the digital design community. I had the opportunity to listen to various talks and panels, including ones featuring Garry Tan from Y Combinator and a creative producer from the popular show Severance. I want to share a few insights about AI and design that I believe will be interesting even for my non-designer readers. 1. We are currently in thte “messy middle” of AI wave, and no one knows what shape it will take or how it will influence our work-life.
To Anthropomorphize or Not To Anthropomorphize: Embracing the Human Side Of AI
"We don't just use tools. We relate to them." One of my friends and collaborators, Ida, posed a thoughtful question to our panelists about anthropomorphism at our Human-AI Teaming summit earlier in April. The question somehow stuck with me, and I wanted to share my perspective on this; here it is. Let’s dive in. In the 1960s, a simple computer program named Eliza simulated the behavior of a psychotherapist. It didn't do much—just reflected users' words in question form. But that was enough. People opened up. They asked for private time with it. Some felt understood.
Stuffed (Pressure Roast) Butternut Squash and a Braise of Butterbeans and Chard
I have been having a bit of a sort out. This is at various points cathartic or frustrating, I can be assailed by doubt or hit by a streak of ruthlessness. It is the start of a long process of getting the house and garden into the state I think I can be happy with. Over the past couple of weeks I have slowly (1-2 hours a day, the day I stopped, I couldn’t move!) cleared the garden of invasive Spanish bluebells and cyclamen, weeded everywhere and tried to cut back much of the ivy, brambles and other fast growing climbers which are constantly pushing through from the gardens on either side.