Hi, I'm Luis 👋

ARE YOU SERIOUS?! There's an entire collaboration album by Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana. How do gems like these just exist and as far as I know are not commonly known about?

In October, we announced Claude for Life Sciences, our latest step in making Claude a productive research partner for scientists and clinicians, and in helping Claude to support those in industry bringing new scientific advancements to the public.

Now, we’re expanding that feature set in two ways. First, we’re introducing Claude for Healthcare, a complementary set of tools and resources that allow healthcare providers, payers, and consumers to use Claude for medical purposes through HIPAA-ready products. Second, we’re adding new capabilities for life sciences: connecting Claude to more scientific platforms, and helping it provide greater support in areas ranging from clinical trial management to regulatory operations.

These features build on top of major recent improvements we’ve made to Claude’s general intelligence. These improvements are best captured by evaluations of Claude’s agentic performance on detailed simulations of medical and scientific tasks, since this correlates most closely to real-world usefulness.

When we released Claude Code, we expected developers to use it for coding. They did—and then quickly began using it for almost everything else. This prompted us to build Cowork: a simpler way for anyone—not just developers—to work with Claude in the very same way. Cowork is available today as a research preview...

I just vibe coded an entire TUI RSS reader in a morning. ... It’s hard to describe the awe I felt watching Claude Code write this in Rust. We are in uncharted territory.

Isaac Asimov on liberation from the machine

It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir.

His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.

There is no final curtain here, not really. Only the sense of someone setting off again.

May we honor him not only in sorrow, but in how bravely we continue with open hearts, steady steps, and the music leading us home. Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.

Rest in peace, Bob Weir

...we actually don’t know how to build the digital employees that we were told would start arriving in 2025.

So, this is how I’m thinking about AI in 2026. Enough of the predictions. I’m done reacting to hypotheticals propped up by vibes. The impacts of the technologies that already exist are already more than enough to concern us for now

On a long enough timeline, any surveillance tool you build will eventually be used by people you don’t like for reasons that you disagree with. A surveillance-industrial complex and a democratic society are fundamentally incompatible, regardless of your political party.

💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media.

🤮🤮🤮🤮

But it’s important for everyone to know that the Internet, and the tech industry, don’t run without the generosity and genius of regular people. It is not just billion-dollar checks and Silicon Valley boardrooms that enable creativity over years, decades, or generations — it’s often a guy with a day job who just gives a damn about doing something right, sweating the details and assuming that if he cares enough about what he makes then others will too. The majority of the technical infrastructure of the Internet was created in this way. For free, often by people in academia, or as part of their regular work, with no promise of some big payday or getting a ton of credit.
The people who make the real Internet and the real innovations also don’t look for ways to hurt the world around them, or the people around them. Sometimes, as in the case of Aaron, the world hurts them more than anyone should ever have to bear. I know not everybody cares that much about plain text files on the Internet; I will readily admit I am a huge nerd about this stuff in a way that maybe most normal people are not. But I do think everybody cares about some part of the wonderful stuff on the Internet in this way, and I want to fight to make sure that everybody can understand that it’s not just five terrible tycoons who built this shit. Real people did. Good people.

Discord, the social chat app with over 200 million monthly users, has reportedly filed paperwork for an initial public offering, enlisting Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) as underwriters.

Are we cooked, chat?

The new Zenbook A16 is among the very first laptops equipped with the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC, an 18-core monster with a 5.0GHz boost, Qualcomm's most powerful GPU yet, and massively increased memory bandwidth compared to other Snapdragon X2 chips.

The specs on the A16 sound amazing. Especially the 48GB of RAM configuration. I'd love to get my hands on one but I imagine it won't be cheap.

I believe that the platforms and apps we use send an important message about our values. Never in a million years would I ever use Substack or anything by Meta. It’s too easy to say “I need to stay because this platform is free and it gives me reach

I have a modest little blog where I write about the Fediverse and my adventures in self-hosting. It’s about time I disclose what my tech stack is - so you can judge for yourself if I’m “walking the talk” – aligning my actions with my words.

The Eye of the Sahara, or Guelb er Richat, is a massive eroded geological dome in the Sahara Desert. Once misinterpreted as an impact crater, modern geology reveals its formation through uplift and erosion over millions of years, exposing concentric rings of sedimentary and igneous rock.

Amazing photographs.

... Wirecutter picks the 3 best journaling apps of 2026. (It’s Day One.)

I love Day One. I've found myself using it more and more lately mostly as a pastebin and a way to share things between my phone and laptop. Most recently though I've also been using it to capture ideas and draft blog posts. Day One is a good place to iterate on a piece over time without the pressure to write and publish in one shot.

ChatGPT Health is a sandboxed tab within ChatGPT that’s designed for users to ask their health-related questions in what it describes as a more secure and personalized environment, with a separate chat history and memory feature than the rest of ChatGPT. The company is encouraging users to connect their personal medical records and wellness apps, such as Apple Health, Peloton, MyFitnessPal,Weight Watchers, and Function, “to get more personalized, grounded responses to their questions.” It suggests connecting medical records so that ChatGPT can analyze lab results, visit summaries, and clinical history

At a high level, more personalized plans and suggestions beyond, "eat more veggies and exercise more", are something to aim toward. However, privacy and security need to be proritized. Even if you were to trust OpenAI is doing the right thing here, can you say the same if someone else were to buy the company? 23andMe can serve as an example here.

Congrats!

A blog is an easy way to get started writing on the web. Your voice is important: it deserves its own site. The more people add their unique perspectives to the web, the more valuable it becomes.

...RSS is awesome. So go get an RSS reader app, stop being spoon-fed slop by algorithmic platforms, and start consuming content at your own pace

A course by Andrej Karpathy on building neural networks, from scratch, in code. We start with the basics of backpropagation and build up to modern deep neural networks, like GPT. In my opinion language models are an excellent place to learn deep learning, even if your intention is to eventually go to other areas like computer vision because most of what you learn will be immediately transferable. This is why we dive into and focus on language models

100 ready-to-use Claude Code recipes for knowledge workers. Transform meetings into action items, draft executive communications, analyze data, write reports, and automate documentation. Step-by-step prompts with examples for managers, analysts, HR, sales, and operations. From zero to productive in minutes. Built for busy professionals.

We are at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive. It does not matter how you calculate it, our time here is unearned. Maybe you figure your existence is the result of a billion unlikely accidents, and nothing more; then certainly your life is an unexpected lucky and undeserved surprise. That’s the definition of a gift. Or maybe you figure there’s something bigger behind this small human reality; your life is then a gift from the greater to the lesser. As far as I can tell none of us have brought about our own existence, nor done much to earn such a remarkable experience. The pleasures of colors, cinnamon rolls, bubbles, touchdowns, whispers, long conversations, sand on your bare feet – these are all undeserved rewards.

All of us begin in the same place. Whether sinner or saint, we are not owed our life. Our existence is an unnecessary extravagance, a wild gesture, an unearned gift. Not just at birth. The eternal surprise is being funneled to us daily, hourly, minute by minute, every second. As you read these words, you are rinsed with the gift of time. Yet, we are terrible recipients. We are no good at being helpless, humble, or indebted.

...after many years of examining the lives of the people’s whose spiritual character I most respect, I’ve come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. The beings I admire exude a sense of knowing they are indebted, of resting upon a state thankfulness. They recognize they are at the receiving end of an ongoing lucky ticket called being alive. When the truly faithful worry, it’s not about doubt (which they have); it’s about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful by squandering their ride. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. This is the meta-miracle: that the miracle of gifts is so dependable. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.

My new age friends call that state of being pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, you believe everyone is out to help you. Strangers are working behind your back to keep you going, prop you up, and get you on your path. The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up. But to be helped you have to join the conspiracy yourself; you have to accept the gifts.

Although we don’t deserve it, and have done nothing to merit it, we have been offered a glorious ride on this planet, if only we accept it. To receive the gift requires the same humble position a hitchhiker gets into when he stands shivering on the side of the empty highway, cardboard sign flapping in the cold wind, and says, “How will the miracle happen today?”

I love the design. I'll sleep on it before impulse ordering.

Fascinating and detailed account from Sacha of what went into organizing this year's Emacs conference.

Indiana meant business. That rematch against Oregon should be fun. Although if they're as undisciplined as they were today against Texas Tech, they have no chance.

Fascinating conversation. I need to check out the book and related literature mentioned.

Starting off the new year with this gem.

Miami made Ohio State look like they didn't belong that first half. It's still not 2026 around these parts so ending the year with an Ohio State loss feels right. I'll try and be less salty next year.

Closing out the year listening to Khruangbin's latest album The Universe Smiles Upon You ii. The album was alright but the closing track is perfect. I love when the drums and bass kick in.

What an ugly game with all the penalties and turnovers but that made it even more entertaining. Good job to the Louisiana Tech defense and special teams for keeping them in the game and allowing the offense to claw their way back.

Great game by Illinois especially playing in a hostile environment. It was basically a home game for Tennessee.

Markdown is a format that bridges plain text and the open web.

Markdown starts simply, to make blogging approachable to all users, and then it expands to everything the web can do. Markdown can also use any HTML tag. There doesn’t need to be special markup for less common formatting and layout because you can just use HTML for that.

We are excited to announce that Manus is joining Meta to bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products.

Manus has built one of the leading autonomous general-purpose agents that can independently execute complex tasks like market research, coding, and data analysis. We will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products

At Netflix, we are always exploring ways to make our content look and sound even better. To provide a common reference for prototyping bleeding-edge technologies within entertainment, technology and academic circles without compromising the security of our original and licensed programming, we've developed test titles oriented around documentary, live action, and animation.

Many open source assets are available from each project listed below. Our hope is this will encourage more experimentation, learning, and discovery that will benefit the whole industry.

Andromeda OS was Microsoft's dual-screen version of Windows designed for the Surface Duo that was scrapped in 2018, and for the first time ever you can now try it on a real device.

If I get locked out of my account, or Substack goes away, five years of writing goes away with it, and I don’t want that to happen.

Each Substack post is getting moved, and in its place I write “this post has moved…” along with a link to its new home on WordPress. This removes any duplicate work which might affect my SEO or domain health… but that’s secondary to me owning my work, my writing, my ideas.

Congrats on the move. This is great for longevity and owning your content.

This game had it all. Trick plays, turnovers, huge momentum shifts. So good.

What a comeback by Hawaii!

Way to dig themselves out of a hole and dominate the rest of the game. Great job UTSA.

What a game by East Carolina!

After a rough season, they ended on a high note. Most of the game looked like a snooze fest but you saw sparks of a run game. Kicking was on point and the newer class looked promising. Congrats to Terry and the rest of the team on this win.