Inside the wacky Claude Fable saga, ChatGPT's problematic memory, and my food planner
Plus, the cloud vs clouded leopard, a COBOL FPS, spy turtles, dark Gilligan, and I get a rivet gun.
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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My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
NEWS ALERT - ANTHROPIC CLAUDE FABLE
So, there’s some bonkers stuff happening out there. Since I wrote the following two articles earlier in the week, the US government has banned foreign access to Fable, including for foreign nationals living in the US. Anthropic responded by turning off Fable for everyone. Stay tuned later today on ZDNET for my in-depth analysis of the situation.
Anthropic’s new Claude Fable 5 is a nerfed Mythos with guardrails attached: Claude Fable 5 brings Mythos-class AI coding power to general users, but with cybersecurity guardrails, fallback models, and pricing that could make developers think twice.
Claude Fable 5 secretly throttled AI researchers, and the internet went wild: Claude Fable 5 gave users access to Mythos-class power, but its hidden safeguards turned a safety feature into a trust problem for Anthropic.
OTHER ARTICLES LAST WEEK
ChatGPT’s new memory upgrade is powerful - and could poison every answer it gives you: OpenAI says ChatGPT’s memory is getting better. But my tests show outdated assumptions, personal profiling, and wrong details that could quietly distort future answers.
How I used Airtable to swap my daily fast-food habit with 5-minute meal planning: I used Airtable to turn daily meal planning into a simple database system, reducing food stress, grocery confusion, and last-minute takeout temptations without counting calories, macros, or points.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
Some crazy person made a first person shooter using COBOL. I was a teenage COBOL programmer, and that was the last time I touched that frak’d up language.
Ever wanted to use aluminum extrusions in a project? This guy tells you all about how to do it and what to look for.
This dude reinterprets the Gilligan’s Island theme for dark metal (give it about 90 seconds to really ramp up). Come to think about it, the Gilligan’s Island premise could benefit from an intense reinterpretation like they did with the new Battlestar Galactica. It would be like Lost meets Gilligan.
Project and Tool of the Week
We’re all familiar with the robust classic, wire shelving units. I’ve used these for years. They’re versatile, but they tend to be space wasters. With only five shelves, there’s often a ton of space between one shelf and the next.
What I really need is drawers. I need pull-out drawers to organize my filming gear, test equipment, and more. Unfortunately, wire shelves don’t typically come with drawers. I searched all over the Internet and found only one source, which was out of stock for months (and is again).
Finally, I got a note indicating the drawers were back in stock. The reviews were terrible. Almost all said the drawers arrived broken. But since I couldn’t find an alternate solution, I took the chance and placed my order. And, ya know what? They arrived broken. Almost all of them
The drawers are attached to the drawer slides with pop rivets. All of them came either missing or sheared off. So, I bought the pop-rivet gun shown below.
Mine cost me five bucks more than the exact same kit available from Amazon. I wanted it right then, when my buddy was over to help me set things up. So I got it in ten minutes rather than two days, purchased from our little town’s local hardware store. I honestly don’t mind the extra Lincoln, because those folks are incredibly helpful. Plus they have a model railroad running inside the store. That alone is worth the price of admission.
I’ve never used a rivet gun before. It definitely takes some hand strength. But it’s a very cool joining technique. Now that I have one, I’ll probably use it for other projects. Have you used a rivet gun? Have any advice? Let us know in the comments.
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.
These guys show how to build a lightsaber from common hardware store fasteners and such.
Headline of the week: ‘Spy turtles’ and ‘spy fish’ being used to monitor Chinese waters, Beijing claims.
ZDNET’s Erin Carson wrote a great piece on the battle between a data center and the Nashville Zoo.
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!