<p><strong>Tool:</strong> <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/csp-allow">CSP Allow-list Experiment</a></p> <p>An experiment that shows that you can load an app in a CSP-protected sandboxed iframe (see <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/3/test-csp-iframe-escape/">previous note</a>) and have a custom <code>fetch()</code> that intercepts CSP errors and passes them up to the parent window... which can then prompt the user to add that domain to an allow-list and then refresh the page.</p><p><img alt="Screenshot of a web tool titled &quot;CSP Allow-list Experiment&quot; with buttons Reset sample, Clear allow-list, Refresh preview. Left panel shows HTML source code starting with &lt;!doctype html&gt;. Right panel shows Preview with CSP header default-src 'none'; script-src 'unsafe-inline'; style-s... and heading &quot;Sandbox fetch test&quot;. A modal dialog from tools.simonwillison.net is overlaid reading: &quot;The sandbox tried to connect to: https://api.inaturalist.org Add

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette/releases/tag/1.0a29">datasette 1.0a29</a></p> <blockquote><ul><li>New <code>TokenRestrictions.abbreviated(datasette)</code> <a href="https://docs.datasette.io/en/latest/internals.html#tokenrestrictions">utility method</a> for creating <code>"_r"</code> dictionaries. <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/2695">#2695</a></li><li>Table headers and column options are now visible even if a table contains zero rows. <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/2701">#2701</a></li><li>Fixed bug with display of column actions dialog on Mobile Safari. <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/2708">#2708</a></li><li>Fixed bug where tests could crash with a segfault due to a race condition between <code>Datasette.close()</code> and <code>Datasette.close()</code>. <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette/issues/2709">#2709</a></li></ul></blockquote><p>That segfault bug was <em>gnarly</em>

<blockquote cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@atmoio/video/7638649825382190350"><p>Now, if your CEO has never heard the phrase Ralph Loop, oh man, you are less than 30 days away from your next promotion. I'm not even exaggerating. Walk into his office, close the door, and say, hey chief, been experimenting with something. It's called Ralph Loops. And I think it could change literally everything. And he's gonna say, what's a Ralph loop? And you will say, give me $18,000 worth of API credits and I'll show you. Now you won't actually do anything, because you can't do anything. Because nobody can, because nobody knows what they're doing. But by the time he figures that out, you'll have a new title, and equity bump. [...]</p><p>Talk about automation constantly. Nothing arouses the slumbering capitalists than the mention of automation. Drop names too, bro. Like talk about specific team members you can automate out of existence. Be like, yo, I automated Gary, bro. Tag Gary in the message. Tag hi

<blockquote cite="https://lobste.rs/s/oznirn/redis_cost_ambition#c_dzrja0"><p>The thing about 90% of TDMs [Technical Decision Makers] is that they're motivated primarily by NOT GETTING FIRED. These aren't people who browser Lobsters or push to GH on the weekend. These are people that work 9 to 5, get paid, go home, and NEVER THINK ABOUT WORK AGAIN. So to achieve all that, they follow secular trends supported by analysts and broad public sentiment. Oh, Gartner said that "AI strategy" is most important? McKinsey said "context" needs to be managed? Well, "Context Engine for AI Apps" is going to be defensible. Buy it.</p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://lobste.rs/s/oznirn/redis_cost_ambition#c_dzrja0">Mitchell Hashimoto</a>, in a conversation about the design of the <a href="https://redis.io/">Redis homepage</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/marketing">marketing</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/mitchell-hashimoto">mitchell-hashimoto<

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/llm/releases/tag/0.32a2">llm 0.32a2</a></p> <p>A bunch of useful stuff in this <a href="https://llm.datasette.io/">LLM</a> alpha, but the most important detail is this one:</p><blockquote><p>Most reasoning-capable OpenAI models now use the <a href="https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/responses"><code>/v1/responses</code></a> endpoint instead of <code>/v1/chat/completions</code>. This enables interleaved reasoning across tool calls for GPT-5 class models. <a href="https://github.com/simonw/llm/pull/1435">#1435</a></p></blockquote><p>This means you can now see the summarized reasoning tokens when you run prompts against an OpenAI model, displayed in a different color to standard error. Use the <code>-R</code> or <code>--hide-reasoning</code> flags if you don't want to see that.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm">llm</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/projects">projects</a>, <a hre

<p><strong><a href="https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-act-2/">GitLab Act 2</a></strong></p>There's a lot going on in this announcement from GitLab about the "workforce reduction" and "structural and strategic decisions" they are making with respect to the agentic era.</p><ul><li>They're "planning to reduce the number of countries by up to 30% where we have small teams". One of the most interesting things about GitLab is that they have employees spread across a large number of countries - 18 are listed <a href="https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/blob/7ce61c4be88b04061f9ad9ab5eb64db91ce89d2a/content/handbook/people-group/employment-solutions.md">in their public employee handbook</a> but this post says they are "operating in nearly 60 countries". That handbook used to document their payroll workflows for those countries too - they stopped publishing that in 2023 but <a href="https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/content-sites/handbook/-/blob/82ad50d380b11751645eedc733f7d66

<blockquote cite="https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/blog/2026/you-need-ai-that-reduces-your-maintenance-costs"><p>Your AI coding agent, the one you use to write code, needs to reduce your maintenance costs. Not by a little bit, either. You write code twice as quick now? Better hope you’ve halved your maintenance costs. Three times as productive? One third the maintenance costs. Otherwise, you’re screwed. You’re trading a temporary speed boost for permanent indenture. [...]</p><p>The math only works if the LLM <em>decreases</em> your maintenance costs, and by exactly the inverse of the rate it adds code. If you double your output and your cost of maintaining that output, two times two means you’ve quadrupled your maintenance costs. If you double your output and hold your maintenance costs steady, two times one means you’ve <em>still</em> doubled your maintenance costs.</p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/blog/2026/you-need-ai-that-reduces-your-mai

<p><strong><a href="https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/">Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain</a></strong></p>Excellent, angry piece by Jason Koebler on how AI writing online is becoming impossible to avoid, filtering it is mentally exhausting and it's even starting to distort regular human writing styles.</p><p>I particularly liked his use of the term "Zombie Internet" to define a different, more insidious alternative to the "Dead Internet" (which is just bots talking to each other):</p><blockquote><p>I called it the Zombie Internet because the truth is that large parts of the internet are not just bots talking to bots or bots talking to people. It’s people talking to bots, people talking to people, people creating “AI agents” and then instructing them to interact with people. It’s people using AI talking to people who are not using AI, and it’s people using AI talking to other people who are using AI. It’s influencer hustlebros who are teaching each other how to ma

<p><strong>TIL:</strong> <a href="https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/llm-shebang">Using LLM in the shebang line of a script</a></p> <p>Kim_Bruning <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48073246#48090590">on Hacker News</a>:</p><blockquote><p>But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave) [...]</p></blockquote><p>This inspired me to look at patterns for doing exactly that with <a href="https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/">LLM</a>. Here's the simplest, which takes advantage of <a href="https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/fragments.html">LLM fragments</a>:</p><pre><code>#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -fGenerate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle</code></pre><p>But you can also incorporate <a href="https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/tools.html">tool calls</a> using the <code>-T name_of_tool</code> option:</p><pre><code>#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -T llm_time -fWrite a haiku that mentions the exact current time</code></pre><p>Or even execute YAML

<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/tobi/status/2053121182044451016">Learning on the Shop floor</a></strong></p>Tobias Lütke describes Shopify's internal coding agent tool, River, which operates entirely in public on their Slack:</p><blockquote><p>River does not respond to direct messages. She politely declines and suggests to create a public channel for you and her to start working in. I myself work with river in <code>#tobi_river</code> channel and many followed this pattern. Every conversation is therefore searchable. Anyone at Shopify can jump in. In my own channel, there are over 100 people who, react to threads, add color and add context, pick up the torch, help with the reviews, remind me how rusty I am, and importantly, learn from watching. [...]</p><p>As so often with German, there is a word for the kind of environment: <em>Lehrwerkstatt</em>. Literally: <strong>A teaching workshop</strong>. The whole shop floor is the classroom. You learn by being near the work. Being a

<blockquote cite="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/world/canada/election-carney-liberal-party.html"><p><em>This article was updated after The Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation. The reporter should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned. The article now accurately quotes from a speech delivered by Mr. Poilievre in April. [...] He did not refer to politicians who changed allegiances as turncoats in that speech.</em></p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/world/canada/election-carney-liberal-party.html">New York Times Editors’ Note</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics">ai-ethics</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/hallucinations">hallucinations</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a hre

<blockquote cite="https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/replacing-a-3-gb-sqlite-database-with-a-7-mb-fst-finite-state-trandsucer-binary/#fn:5"><p>One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the tool I am building right now isn’t already superceded by some much better implementation someone else has already written 30 or 40 years ago; I could write a TSV-aware search and replace, or I could find out about <code>awk</code> and solve that entire class of problems in one fell swoop, for example. My central conceit is that <em>this is a trap</em>. You <em>need</em> to reinvent a couple of wheels to get to the edge of what we know about wheel-making, not a thousand wheels, and not zero; probably four or five is sufficient in most domains, maybe closer to twenty or thirty in the most epistemically rigorous and developed fields like mathematics or computer science. Each whe

<blockquote cite="https://moq.dev/blog/webrtc-is-the-problem/"><p>WebRTC is designed to <strong>degrade and drop my prompt</strong> during poor network conditions.</p><p>wtf my dude</p><p>WebRTC aggressively drops audio packets to keep latency low. If you’ve ever heard distorted audio on a conference call, that’s WebRTC baybee. The idea is that conference calls depend on rapid back-and-forth, so pausing to wait for audio is unacceptable.</p><p>…but as a user, I would much rather wait an extra 200ms for my slow/expensive prompt to be accurate. After all, I’m paying good money to boil the ocean, and a garbage prompt means a garbage response. It’s not like LLMs are particularly responsive anyway.</p><p><strong>But I’m not allowed to wait</strong>. It’s <em>impossible</em> to even retransmit a WebRTC audio packet within a browser; we tried at Discord. The <em>implementation</em> is hard-coded for real-time latency <strong>or else</strong>.</p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="

<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/trq212/status/2052809885763747935">Using Claude Code: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML</a></strong></p>Thought-provoking piece by Thariq Shihipar (on the Claude Code team at Anthropic) advocating for HTML over Markdown as an output format to request from Claude.</p><p>The article is crammed with interesting examples (collected on <a href="https://thariqs.github.io/html-effectiveness/">this site</a>) and prompt suggestions like this one:</p><blockquote><p><code>Help me review this PR by creating an HTML artifact that describes it. I'm not very familiar with the streaming/backpressure logic so focus on that. Render the actual diff with inline margin annotations, color-code findings by severity and whatever else might be needed to convey the concept well.</code></p></blockquote><p>I've been defaulting to asking for most things in Markdown since the GPT-4 days, when the 8,192 token limit meant that Markdown's token-efficiency over HTML was ext

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/llm-gemini/releases/tag/0.31">llm-gemini 0.31</a></p> <blockquote><ul><li><code>gemini-3.1-flash-lite</code> is <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-is-now-generally-available">no longer a preview</a>. </li></ul></blockquote><p>Here's my write-up of the <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/3/gemini-31-flash-lite/">Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview model</a> back in March. I don't believe this new non-preview model has changed since then.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-release">llm-release</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/gemini">gemini</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm">llm</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/google">google</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>

<p><strong>Tool:</strong> <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/big-words">Big Words</a></p> <p>I'm using my <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/25/present/">vibe coded macOS presentations tool</a> to put together a talk, and I wanted to add a slide with some text on it. The tool only accepts URLs, so I <a href="https://github.com/simonw/tools/pull/279">put together</a> a quick page that accepts query string arguments and turns them into a simple slide.</p><p>Here's an example: <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/big-words?text=simonwillison.net&amp;gradient=1&amp;size=9.5">https://tools.simonwillison.net/big-words?text=simonwillison.net&amp;gradient=1&amp;size=9.5</a></p><p>Double click or double tap the page to access a form for modifying the different options.</p><p><img alt="Screenshot of a slide editing tool showing a slide on the left with &quot;simonwillison.net&quot; in heavy white sans-serif text on a black-to-blue gradient background, and a &quot;Slide settin

<p><strong><a href="https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/behind-the-scenes-hardening-firefox/">Behind the Scenes Hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview</a></strong></p>Fascinating, in-depth details on how Mozilla used their access to the Claude Mythos preview to locate and then fix hundreds of vulnerabilities in Firefox:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Suddenly, the bugs are very good</strong></p><p>Just a few months ago, AI-generated security bug reports to open source projects were mostly known for being unwanted slop. Dealing with reports that look plausibly correct but are wrong imposes an asymmetric cost on project maintainers: it’s cheap and easy to prompt an LLM to find a “problem” in code, but slow and expensive to respond to it.</p><p>It is difficult to overstate how much this dynamic changed for us over a few short months. This was due to a combination of two main factors. First, the models got a lot more capable. Second, we dramatically improved our techniques for <em>harnessi

<p>There weren't a lot of big new announcements from Anthropic at yesterday's Code w/ Claude event, but the biggest by far was the deal they've struck with SpaceX/xAI to use "all of the capacity of their Colossus data center".</p><p>As I mentioned in my <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/6/code-w-claude-2026/">live blog of the keynote</a>, that's the one with the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582">particularly bad environmental record</a>. The gas turbines installed to power the facility initially ran without Clean Air Act permits or pollution control devices, which they got away with by classifying them as "temporary". Credible reports link it to increases in hospital admissions relating to low air quality.</p><p>Andy Masley, one of the most prolific voices pushing back against misleading rhetoric about data centers (see <a href="https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake">The AI

<p><strong>Tool:</strong> <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/github-repo-stats">GitHub Repo Stats</a></p> <p>One of the things I always look for when evaluating a new GitHub repository is the number of commits it has... but that number isn't visible on GitHub's mobile site layout. I built this tool to fix that, using this prompt:</p><blockquote><p><code>Given a GitHub repo URL or foo/bar repo ID show information about that repo absorbed via wither REST or graphql CORS fetch() including the number of commits in the repo and other useful stats</code></p></blockquote><p>Example output for <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/github-repo-stats?repo=simonw%2Fdatasette">simonw/datasette</a> and <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/github-repo-stats?repo=simonw%2Fllm">simonw/llm</a>.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/github">github</a></p>

<p>I'm at Anthropic's Code w/ Claude event today. Here's my live blog of the morning keynote sessions.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/anthropic">anthropic</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude">claude</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-code">claude-code</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/live-blog">live-blog</a></p>

<p>I recently talked with Joseph Ruscio about AI coding tools for Heavybit's High Leverage podcast: <a href="https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/high-leverage/ep-9-the-ai-coding-paradigm-shift-with-simon-willison">Ep. #9, The AI Coding Paradigm Shift with Simon Willison</a>. Here are some of my highlights, including my disturbing realization that vibe coding and agentic engineering have started to converge in my own work.</p><p>One thing I really enjoy about podcasts is that they sometimes push me to think out loud in a way that exposes an idea I've not previously been able to put into words.</p><h4 id="vibe-coding-and-agentic-engineering-are-starting-to-overlap">Vibe coding and agentic engineering are starting to overlap</h4><p>A few weeks after vibe coding was first coined I published <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/">Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding (but vibe coding rocks)</a>, where I firmly staked out my belief that "vibe coding" is

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-referrer-policy/releases/tag/0.1">datasette-referrer-policy 0.1</a></p> <p>The OpenStreetMap tiles on the Datasette <a href="https://datasette.io/global-power-plants/global-power-plants">global-power-plants demo</a> weren't displaying correctly. This turned out to be caused by two bugs.</p><p>The first is that the CAPTCHA <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette-turnstile">I added</a> to that site a few weeks ago was triggering for the <code>.json</code> fetch requests used by the map plugin, and since those weren't HTML the user was not being asked to solve them. Here's <a href="https://github.com/simonw/datasette.io/commit/23a1c8596b75b2094db46035a3b4280109fb3df3">the fix</a>.</p><p>The second was that OpenStreetMap quite reasonably <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Referer">block tile requests</a> from sites that use a <code>Referrer-Policy: no-referrer</code> header.</p><p>Datasette does th

<p><strong><a href="https://andonlabs.com/blog/ai-cafe-stockholm">Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm</a></strong></p>Andon Labs previously <a href="https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-market-launch">started an AI-run retail store</a> in San Francisco. Now they're running a similar experiment in Stockholm, Sweden, only this time it's a cafe.</p><p>These experiments are interesting, and often throw out amusing anecdotes:</p><blockquote><p>During the first week of inventory, Mona ordered 120 eggs even though the café has no stove. When the staff told her they couldn’t cook them, she suggested using the high-speed oven, until they pointed out the eggs would likely explode. She also tried to solve the problem of fresh tomatoes being spoiled too fast by ordering 22.5 kg of canned tomatoes for the fresh sandwiches. The baristas eventually started a “Hall of Shame”, a shelf visible to customers with all the weird things Mona ordered, including 6,000 napkins, 3,000 nitrile gloves, 9L coconut milk

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-llm/releases/tag/0.1a7">datasette-llm 0.1a7</a></p> <blockquote><ul><li>Mechanism for <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-llm/blob/main/README.md#configuration">configuring default options</a> for specific models.</li></ul></blockquote><p>Part of Datasette's evolving support mechanism for plugins that use LLMs. It's now possible to configure a model with default options, e.g. to say all <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-enrichments-llm">enrichment</a> operations should use a specific model with temperature set to 0.5.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm">llm</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/datasette">datasette</a></p>

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/llm-echo/releases/tag/0.5a0">llm-echo 0.5a0</a></p> <blockquote><ul><li>New <code>-o thinking 1</code> option to help test against <a href="https://llm.datasette.io/en/latest/changelog.html#a0-2026-04-28">LLM 0.32a0</a> and higher.</li></ul></blockquote><p>This plugin provides a fake model called "echo" for LLM which doesn't run an LLM at all - it's useful for writing automated tests. You can now do this:</p><pre><code>uvx --with llm==0.32a1 --with llm-echo==0.5a0 llm -m echo hi -o thinking 1</code></pre><p>This will fake a reasoning block to standard error before returning JSON echoing the prompt.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm">llm</a></p>

<blockquote cite="https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/y_combinators_stake_in_openai"><p>So it’s well known that Y Combinator owns <em>some</em> stake in OpenAI. But how big is that stake? This seems like devilishly difficult information to obtain. I asked around and a little birdie who knows several OpenAI investors came back with an answer: Y Combinator owns about 0.6 percent of OpenAI. At OpenAI’s current <a href="https://openai.com/index/accelerating-the-next-phase-ai/">$852 billion valuation</a>, that’s worth over $5 billion.</p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/y_combinators_stake_in_openai">John Gruber</a>, Y Combinator’s Stake in OpenAI</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/openai">openai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/y-combinator">y-combinator</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/john-gruber">john-gruber</a></p>

<p><strong><a href="https://simonw.github.io/granite-4.1-3b-gguf-pelicans/">Granite 4.1 3B SVG Pelican Gallery</a></strong></p>IBM released their <a href="https://research.ibm.com/blog/granite-4-1-ai-foundation-models">Granite 4.1 family</a> of LLMs a few days ago. They're Apache 2.0 licensed and come in 3B, 8B and 30B sizes.</p><p><a href="https://huggingface.co/blog/ibm-granite/granite-4-1">Granite 4.1 LLMs: How They’re Built</a> by Granite team member Yousaf Shah describes the training process in detail.</p><p>Unsloth released the <a href="https://huggingface.co/unsloth/granite-4.1-3b-GGUF">unsloth/granite-4.1-3b-GGUF</a> collection of GGUF encoded quantized variants of the 3B model - 21 different model files ranging in size from 1.2GB to 6.34GB.</p><p>All 21 of those Unsloth files add up to 51.3GB, which inspired me to finally try an experiment I've been wanting to run for ages: prompting "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle" against different sized quantized variants of

<blockquote cite="https://blog.andymasley.com/p/data-center-land-use-issues-are-fake"><p>[...] Between 2000 and 2024, farmers sold in total a Colorado-sized chunk of land all on their own, 77 times all land on data center property in 2028, and grew more food than ever on what was left. None of this caused any problems for US food access.</p><p>And then, in the middle of all this, a farmer in Loudoun County sells a few acres of mediocre hay field to a hyperscaler for ten times its agricultural value, and the response is that we’re running out of farmland.</p></blockquote><p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://blog.andymasley.com/p/data-center-land-use-issues-are-fake">Andy Masley</a>, pushing back against the "land use" argument against data center construction</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics">ai-ethics</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simo

<p>I just sent out the April edition of my <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/simonw/">sponsors-only monthly newsletter</a>. If you are a sponsor (or if you start a sponsorship now) you can <a href="https://github.com/simonw-private/monthly/blob/main/2026-04-april.md">access it here</a>.</p><p>In this month's newsletter:</p><ul><li>Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5, both with price increases</li><li>Claude Mythos and LLM security research</li><li>ChatGPT Images 2.0</li><li>More model releases</li><li>Other highlights from my blog</li><li>What I'm using, April 2026 edition</li></ul><p>Here's <a href="https://github.com/simonw/monthly-newsletter-archive/blob/main/2026-03-march.md">a copy of the March newsletter</a> as a preview of what you'll get. Pay $10/month to stay a month ahead of the free copy!</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/newsletter">newsletter</a></p>

<p><strong>Research:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/research/tree/main/tre-python-binding#readme">TRE Python binding — ReDoS robustness demo</a></p> <p>If it's <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/4/redis-array/">good enough for antirez</a> to add to Redis I figured Ville Laurikari's <a href="https://github.com/laurikari/tre/">TRE</a> regular expression engine was worth exploring in a little more detail.</p><p>I had Claude Code build an experimental Python binding (it used <code>ctypes</code>) and try some malicious regular expression attacks against the library. TRE handles those much better than Python's standard library implementation, thanks mainly to the lack of support for backtracking.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/security">security</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/python">python</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/regular-expressions">regular-expressions</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/c">c</a>, <a h