I just got The Welch Labs Illustrated Guide to AI. Some thoughts on the book:
If you already work in the field, you will be familiar with concepts in the book. But you can still have new "aha moments" on things you've used for years.
For people who are new to AI and ML, that's one of the best places to start. It explains ML concepts one by one: building from Rosenblattโs neurons to LLMs and diffusion models in later chapters. If how AI works is a mystery to you, after this book it won't be.
Also, this is the most well-printed and beautiful tech book I've ever had. Great kudos to the @welchlabs team.
@scaling01 That is something that can be solved with continuous memory. When a user asks the same question, the model needs memory to notice that this was asked before and stay more consistent
@tickerplus@sama@OpenAIDevs The $20 plan with big limits is the reason. Claude Code is great, but the only way to use it for real tasks is either through the API or with a $200 plan
Spotting failed AI coding tasks got much harder.
A year ago, when AI couldn't do something, it meant failed tests, obvious bugs, or complete garbage.
Now, if you reach the limits of the frontier, everything will be green, but with subtle bugs.
@scaling01 Benchmarks clearly miss the full picture. People keep saying that Chinese models are now close, but honestly, will anybody prefer Kimi K2.6 over Opus 4.5 or GPT 5.2 for real work tasks?
@kimmonismus That makes sense. Thereโs good hardware, but still no ChatGPT moment for a general VLA model. I believe it will happen soon enough with enough investment from top labs.
/btw command in Claude Code was so good, so Codex has just copied it and called it /side.
The idea is simple but powerful: you can ask something and discard the answer without putting it into the context. Less context means more time until the next compaction.
As a bonus, if the agent runs the terminal command it won't be interrupted.
The typical btw questions include explaining how a part of the code works, why the agent did something, or what the plan is.
The best command to kill curiosity without derailing the agent.
Today I wrote detailed requirements for Claude Code, switched it to Act mode.
I returned with my coffee after 15 minutes and found that it did not progress because it had stopped almost immediately to ask me for clarification.
The fix is simple: just tell your agent that you will be absent for some time, ask it to work until the task is completed and list all decisions made along the way.