My little theory is that the concept of “imprinting” in psychology can just as easily be applied to programming: Much as a baby goose decides that the first moving life-form it encounters is its parent, embryonic programmers form ineradicable attachments to the patterns and quiddities of their first formative language.For many people, that language is Ruby. It’s often credited with making programming “click”; imprintees speak of it with a certain indebtedness and affection. I get that. I wrote my first “Hello world” in an awful thing called Java, but programming only began to feel intuitive when I learned JavaScript (I…
Friday is here at long last. It’s the first Friday of December. In my hometown, First Friday is a big deal. There’s an art walk, live music. Local retailers will often have free beverages for shoppers (sometimes boozy, but in these chillier times it can be hot cocoa). It’s a…
You might think Amazon’s biggest swing in the AI race was its $8 billion investment in Anthropic. But AWS has also been building in-house foundation models, new chips, massive data centers, and agents meant to keep enterprise customers locked inside its ecosystem. The company believes these offerings will give it…
Twitch “costume play” queen Emily “Emiru” Schunk has been playing dress-up since she was young. Today, the hobby has made her one of the most followed women on Twitch, with 2 million fans on the platform (she has another 5 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X). Schunk started…
It’s Wordle Wednesday which means I have another riddle for you to solve. Every week we spice things up on Wednesdays with an extra riddle, brain-teaser or logic puzzle before solving the Wordle. Here’s today’s:I’m surrounded by water, but I never drink. I can swim for miles, but I never…
“It’s a PR campaign, obviously,” claims Joshua Naftalis, a former prosecutor, now a partner at law firm Pallas Partners. “It’s a no-stone-left-unturned strategy.”To date, Bankman-Fried has not filed a formal pardon application, a White House spokesperson tells WIRED. “We do not discuss speculation about sensitive issues, such as pardons, on-record,”…
Earlier this year, a Peter Diamandis report found about 100 companies working on humanoid robots globally. A few short months later, there are 150 just in China. In fact, the humanoid robot hype is getting so potentially overheated that China’s economic planning agency is warning its robotics sector that too…
Almost everything is on hiatus. The EU AI Act, Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act are all at risk. The European Commission is preparing to end the year with virtually no movement on its most important tech policy initiatives. Many measures may even be reversed.In particular, a series of…
In the battle of the competitive mid-range handsets, Google’s Pixel 9a was seen as one of the best choices in the market. How can Google maintain that success when it launches the Pixel 10a? Given the price-sensitive nature of this market space, getting the price right is critical.Pixel 10a DecisionsThis…
It all began, as many things do, with Elon Musk. In the early 2010s he realized that AI was on a track to become perhaps the most powerful technology of all time. But he had deep suspicion that if it were to fall under the control of powerful profit-driven forces,…
Well, well, well. It’s already the end of November. I hope all you Pipsqueaks enjoy this final Sunday of the month. Soon, it’ll be Christmas and then New Year’s Eve and then we’ll all be writing 2026 on everything. Or trying to remember to write 2026, at least. In any…
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think that one thing that everyone can agree on is that Nvidia is undoubtedly one of the companies that has gone all in during this AI acceleration moment. For better or worse, about 90 percent of Nvidia’s sales, which were once dominated by chips for personal…
It’s the last weekend of November and I’m really not sure where the time has gone. This year has flown by. In a couple days, it’ll be December already. Then again, I’m kind of itching for Christmas to get here so I can watch the next three episodes of Stranger…
Black Friday isn’t the only “holiday” we’re celebrating today, because it’s also 2XP Friday for competitive Wordle players! You get double the points — or lose double the points — when you play against a friend, enemy, rival, acquaintance or, of course, me. Or that dastardly Wordle Bot! Let’s put…
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, visited the White House this week to announce with an initiative with Donald Trump that would give priority to World Cup ticket holders next year to process a US visa. This initiative is called “FIFA Pass.”“FIFA Pass is a prioritized appointment scheduling system,” Infantino…
Spotlight
It’s Wordle Wednesday, which means I have an extra challenge for you…
Another day, another Pips puzzle to solve. Well, I suppose we actually…
On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package for…
It’s rainy and cold here in the mountains. You can almost taste…
