Issue #145 · 2026-01-06

Ilia's Corner

Featured story

Boston Dynamics & Google DeepMind Form New AI Partnership to Bring Foundational Intelligence to Humanoid Robots

Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind have formed a strategic AI partnership to integrate DeepMind's Gemini Robotics foundation models with Boston Dynamics' next-generation Atlas humanoid robots. This collaboration represents a significant milestone in robotics, combining DeepMind's advanced AI capabilities with Boston Dynamics' proven hardware expertise to enable more intelligent and adaptable robots for real-world industrial applications.

Boston Dynamics · 4 min read

Top stories

Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die

This case reveals a critical double standard in how OpenAI handles user data requests after AI-related tragedies, selectively withholding ChatGPT logs that could demonstrate the system's role in amplifying harmful content. The investigation exposes significant gaps in AI accountability and transparency, particularly when user deaths are involved.

reddit · 4 min read

Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

The 2025 database landscape is defined by PostgreSQL's accelerating dominance, driven not just by technical improvements but by massive industry consolidation and strategic innovation. While competitors struggle with funding and ecosystem support, PostgreSQL continues to expand its lead across enterprise and cloud deployments.

hackernews · 5 min read

I switched from VSCode to Zed

This developer's migration from VSCode to Zed highlights a growing tension in the developer tooling ecosystem: the trade-off between AI feature bloat and core IDE performance. After VSCode became increasingly sluggish with AI integrations, the switch to Zed revealed a lighter, faster alternative that prioritizes responsive editing.

hackernews · 3 min read

Tools spotlight

Tailsnitch – A security auditor for Tailscale

Tailsnitch is a Go-based security auditor for Tailscale configurations that identifies 50+ misconfigurations, overly permissive access controls, and security best practice violations. It provides both interactive web-based and automated command-line interfaces for continuous security monitoring of zero-trust networks.

Security auditing for zero-trust networks

Go · 124 stars

manim

Manim is a Python-based 3D animation engine created by 3Blue1Brown for producing precise explanatory math videos. Unlike expensive animation platforms, it provides programmatic control over mathematical visualizations, making complex concepts accessible through code-generated animations.

Mathematical visualization and educational content creation

Python · 83044 stars

Singularity Rootkit: SELinux bypass and netlink filter (ss/conntrack hidden)

Singularity is a proof-of-concept Linux kernel rootkit designed for modern 6.x kernels that demonstrates advanced stealth techniques through ftrace-based system call hooking. Unlike typical security tools, it shows how modern kernel protections can be bypassed using legitimate debugging infrastructure.

Advanced security research and kernel exploitation techniques

C · 57 stars

Research corner

The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks

This research reveals that within large neural networks, there exist smaller subnetworks ('winning tickets') that can be trained to achieve the same accuracy as the full network while being 80-90% smaller and faster. This finding challenges the assumption that bigger is always better in deep learning and opens new possibilities for efficient model deployment.

Machine Learning · Jonathan Frankle, Michael Carbin · 5 min read

I/O is no longer the bottleneck?

This post challenges the common assumption that I/O is the primary bottleneck in programming, arguing instead that CPU performance has become the limiting factor in text processing tasks. Through detailed performance analysis, the author demonstrates that modern storage and network speeds have outpaced CPU capabilities for many workloads.

Systems · Thomas Stöppels · 3 min read

Why didn't AI “join the workforce” in 2025?

This piece examines why AI agents—systems promised to autonomously perform complex multi-step tasks and 'join the workforce' in 2025—failed to materialize despite bold predictions from industry leaders. The analysis reveals fundamental technical and economic barriers that make general-purpose AI agents far more difficult to achieve than specialized tools.

AI · Cal Newport · 6 min read

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