I test Claude's honesty, using AI to hack PDF pages, Microsoft's Work IQ
Plus, Stargate dead again, a giant insect, re-engineering logs, a giant robot-controlled ware house, and Ed Bott is not impressed
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
Advanced Geekery is published weekly on Substack and LinkedIn. Same content. Choose your favorite delivery method. Back Issues.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
I set 10 honesty traps for Claude Opus 4.8 - and a legal test broke it: The latest models were pitted against coding, medical, finance, and legal traps, then I cross-checked the results with multiple AIs.
Work IQ is Microsoft’s big bet on agent-first enterprise IT, and I have questions: Microsoft’s Work IQ could make enterprise AI agents dramatically smarter, but the shift to agent-first IT brings serious questions about cost, governance, data exposure, and operational risk.
I had ChatGPT build me a free PDF editor because I didn’t trust it to change my files - it worked! The smartest way to use AI may not be letting it touch your files, but asking it to write software that handles them safely - in the time it takes to make dinner.
Build 2026: Microsoft’s MDASH exits preview with 100+ specialized threat-hunting AI agents: Microsoft’s Build 2026 security news centers on an agentic AI vulnerability system designed to find real exploitable flaws, connect them to Defender and GitHub, and help developers fix them faster.
Project of the Week
Back when we moved into our new home, one of the features that excited me most was an upstairs room I could turn into my office and studio for talking head-style interviews. Unfortunately, even with the air conditioner blowing on full blast, that room often hit 90+ degrees from May through September.
But last year, we had a roof leak and wound up replacing the entire roof. That room now stays within a degree or two of the downstairs temperature, all summer long. Who knew a roof could do such a wonder for insulation quality?
In any case, I’ve been revamping my talking head studio, updating the tech, and rearranging the room. This is a quick photo of the back of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K I use for filming. Stay tuned. Once I get everything tuned and operating smoothly, I’ll take you on a tour of what’s changed.
It’s super-exciting to be able regain year-round usage of my office.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
This video showcases a warehouse heavily structured around robotic inventory movement for e-commerce fulfillment. It’s a bit hype-y, but it’s still worth a watch just for the tech involved.
Really fascinating overview of a mill that “re-engineers logs” by producing veneer sheets and repurposing all the aspects of small log Douglas Fir wood harvesting for engineered wood, paper, hog feed, and more.
Last November, I reported that my all-time favorite TV show, Stargate, was back in production. It seemed like such good news. The original producers were back. Canon was going to be preserved. But then, this week, we found out that Amazon killed the project. Given the depth of the franchise and its enormous staying power and popularity, it seems like a genuinely stupid move. This sucks.
Tool of the week
I just picked up this inexpensive pin-punch set to help me set magnets into 3D prints. The prints have a really tight tolerance, and these flat-ended punches do the trick to pop them into place.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases (but not this week).
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
Grades are plummeting in UC Berkeley CS classes. Professors attribute the crash to AI usage.
Can you imagine dragonflies with a 2-foot wingspan? They existed…about 285 million years ago.
ZDNET’s Ed Bott says he paid Microsoft’s premium Copilot agents to do his work. Apparently, they were confidently bad at it.
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!