An AI Manhattan Project, my vibe coding setup, and a useful Harbor Freight hack
Plus, history of hobby shops, the earliest American settlement is in Oregon, and what if the tech industry evolved differently?
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
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Welcome new readers!
We had another big surge in new subscribers this week. Welcome everybody! Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and make yourself comfortable. Lots of great stuff to read and watch in this week’s issue.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
How I set up Claude Code in iTerm2 to launch all my AI coding projects in one click: Managing multiple Claude Code projects doesn’t have to be chaotic. My iTerm2 setup dramatically reduces friction in my daily AI-assisted coding workflows - here’s how.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft join Anthropic’s Project Glasswing to defend world’s most critical software: Is this AI’s Manhattan Project? 12 tech rivals are banding together, and using Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model, to find thousands of vulnerabilities before adversaries do.
Two deep dives coming soon from me on ZDNET: “Building an agentic AI strategy that pays off,” and “The 5 myths of the agentic coding apocalypse.”
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
In-depth interview with my ZDNET colleague Steven Vaughan-Nichols. This guy’s a legend and his Linux perspective is unmatched.
Fun history of hobby shops. I remember Polk hobbies. My dad took me there when I was a little boy.
Excavations led by the University of Oregon have unearthed artifacts suggesting the oldest human settlement in America was here in Oregon as far back as 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Project of the week
Most of my writing time this week has been spent working on two exciting new special feature articles that will be coming out soon on ZDNET. In between keyboarding sessions, I built this helpful little wheeled structure for my workbench, shown above.
I’ve had two of these Harbor Freight workbenches for years. They’ve served me well, but the metal on their legs is super flimsy. Any attempt to weld casters on them would just blow through the metal. But I want to be able to move the workbenches so I can get behind them. Just about everything else in both the Fab Lab and workshop is on wheels.
This project was very easy. For each workbench, I took a 2x4 foot Melamine project board from Home Depot and attached six casters. I bought three sets of four, so that I could have one on each corner and two in the middle (just because the span is a bit long and melamine project panels aren’t as robust as plywood). The benches mostly stay in place due to their weight, but to prevent them from sliding off, I added a heavy duty steel L bracket on each corner.
It was a fairly simple and easy project, but it tackled a toleration I’ve had for years. A side benefit to the mobility is that I now have a new shelf for storage. It nicely holds two Sterilite bins.
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Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
Jason Perlow is back with a look at what an alternate history of the technology industry might look like. This brilliant piece is what happens when Jason can write whatever he wants to write.
How the 2025 Superman movie used 3D printers as a production tool.
According to ZDNET’s Ed Bott, Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program is no longer a confusing mess.
Send in your projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. Your project doesn’t have to be a big Kickstarter launch. If you’ve built something cool, it has some pretty pictures, and you’re proud of it, I might be able to share it here.
If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
Both my EPs are now streaming
Available on all your favorite streaming services.
More clicky
I’ve got a lot happening all over the web. Here are links to my various stuff:
House of the Head: home for my published music
ZATZ Labs: where I host my published software projects
Feel free to dig around, visit, and say hey!
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!