Monthly Archives: July 2025

AI #127: Continued Claude Code Complications

Posted on July 31, 2025 by TheZvi

Due to Continued Claude Code Complications, we can report Unlimited Usage Ultimately Unsustainable. May I suggest using the API, where Anthropic’s yearly revenue is now projected to rise to $9 billion? The biggest news items this week were in the … Continue reading →

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Childhood and Education: College Admissions

Posted on July 30, 2025 by TheZvi

Table of Contents College Applications. The College Application Essay (Is) From Hell. Don’t Guess The Teacher’s Password, Ask For It Explicitly. A Dime a Dozen. Treat Admissions Essays Like Games of Balderdash. It’s About To Get Worse. Alternative Systems Need … Continue reading →

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Spilling the Tea

Posted on July 29, 2025 by TheZvi

The Tea app is or at least was on fire, rapidly gaining lots of users. This opens up two discussions, one on the game theory and dynamics of Tea, one on its abysmal security. It’s a little too on the … Continue reading →

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AI Companion Piece

Posted on July 28, 2025 by TheZvi

AI companions, other forms of personalized AI content and persuasion and related issues continue to be a hot topic. What do people use companions for? Are we headed for a goonpocalypse? Mostly no, companions are used mostly not used for … Continue reading →

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America’s AI Action Plan Is Pretty Good

Posted on July 25, 2025 by TheZvi

No, seriously. If you look at the substance, it’s pretty good. I’ll go over the whole thing in detail, including the three executive actions implementing some of the provisions. Then as a postscript I’ll cover other reactions. The White House … Continue reading →

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AI #126: Go Fund Yourself

Posted on July 24, 2025 by TheZvi

The big AI news this week came on many fronts. Google and OpenAI unexpectedly got 2025 IMO Gold using LLMs under test conditions, rather than a tool like AlphaProof. How they achieved this was a big deal in terms of … Continue reading →

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GPT Agent Is Standing By

Posted on July 23, 2025 by TheZvi

OpenAI now offers 400 shots of ‘agent mode’ per month to Pro subscribers. This incorporates and builds upon OpenAI’s Operator. Does that give us much progress? Can it do the thing on a level that makes it useful? So far, … Continue reading →

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Google and OpenAI Get 2025 IMO Gold

Posted on July 22, 2025 by TheZvi

Congratulations, as always, to everyone who got to participate in the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad, and especially to the gold and other medalists. Gautham Kamath highlights 11th grader Warren Bei, who in his 5th (!) IMO was one of five … Continue reading →

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Monthly Roundup #32: July 2025

Posted on July 21, 2025 by TheZvi

Welcome to the monthly roundup of things that don’t fit into other categories and don’t rise to the level of their own posts. Bad News When people tell you who they are, believe them (with obvious exceptions). In particular, if … Continue reading →

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On METR’s AI Coding RCT

Posted on July 18, 2025 by TheZvi

METR ran a proper RCT experiment seeing how much access to Cursor (using Sonnet 3.7) would accelerate coders working on their own open source repos. Everyone surveyed expected a substantial speedup. The developers thought they were being substantially sped up. … Continue reading →

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