Guru's Tech Bytes

Good morning, it's Wednesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 122. First up, some fella posted a memorial for his wife Elise Cawley, thanking her for thirty-six wonderful years. You know what this reminds me of? That time I told Lois I'd love her forever, but forever turned out to mean until the chicken sandwich place opened down the street. Heh. Hhh, okay, that's something. But seriously, it's...

Good morning, it's Tuesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 121. First up, they're saying these AI computer things actually reward expertise now. Like, if you actually know what you're talking about, the AI gives you a better answer, which is weird because I asked the AI how to get a golf ball out of a drainpipe and it just told me to call a plumber. You know what this reminds me of, that time...

Good morning, it's Monday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 120. Hey, it's Peter. I was tryin' to set up my microphone here and almost swallowed the foam cover. Tasted like a stale marshmallow. Anyway, we got a lot of computer stuff to talk about today, so let's jump right in before I hack up a lung. First up, everybody's talking about how you shouldn't be a meat proxy. I don't know what that me...

Good morning, it's Sunday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 119. First up, there's this whole thing about how Google killed off RSS feeds, which is crazy 'cause I used to use those to track blogs about chicken recipes. But Google just swooped in and shut down their reader, so now I gotta manually type in web addresses like some kinda caveman. It's like when Microsoft forces an update right in th...

Good morning, it's Saturday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 118. First up, apparently elevators are getting smart now, which is great because I always wanted a tiny metal box judging my life choices. You know what this reminds me of, that time I got stuck in one with a guy who said he invented the word 'buffoon,' but it turns out he just really liked balloons. Anyway, they got computers runnin...

Good morning, it's Friday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 117. I was up all night fixing my computer because Windows decided to update right in the middle of me watching a guy make a pool out of LEGOs. Just completely locked me out, which is typical Microsoft garbage, right? Anyway, I'm here, I drank a pot of coffee, and my eye is twitching, but let's get into the news. First up, UEFA and its...

Good morning, it's Thursday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 116. First up, some guy made this open-source engine that runs Gemma 4 26B in 2 GB of RAM on any M-series Mac. I don't know what a Gemma is, sounds like the lady who cuts my hair, but fitting a robot brain into two gigs is wild. That's like packing a summer sausage into a pencil sharpener. It reminds me of when Microsoft forced an upd...

Good morning, it's Wednesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 115. First up, apparently if you write on Substack you need your own website now, which is crazy because I thought the whole point of Substack was so you didn't have to. You know what this reminds me of? The time I tried to build a deck and the guy at Home Depot said I needed a foundation, and I said I already got one, it's called th...

Good morning, it's Tuesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 114. First up, we're talkin' about our position on open-weights models, which is a fancy way of sayin' the computer's brain is just hangin' out there for everybody to poke at, like when I left the hood of my car open and a family of squirrels built a condo in my engine block. You know what this reminds me of, wait I already said that,...

Good morning, it's Monday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 113. First up, folks are upvoting this thing about killing the cookie banner, which is great because I'm tired of going to a website to look at a recipe for clam chowder and having a giant pop-up ask if I consent to giving away my firstborn son. You know what this reminds me of? That time I tried to buy a boat but the guy kept asking if...

Good morning, it's Sunday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 112. First up, Android might be restricting on-device ADB soon, which is that thing nerds use to plug phones into computers and make them do magic tricks. You know what this reminds me of, the time I tried fixing our old VCR and ended up supergluing the tape slot shut. It just figures they'd lock down the phones right when my mobile int...

Good morning, it's Saturday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 111. First up, everybody's losing their minds over this new Claude Opus 5 AI thing, which is supposed to be smarter than my whole family combined. You know what this reminds me of, that time I tried to outsmart a vending machine for a free bag of chips and ended up wedged in the slot for six hours. Heh. Hhh, okay, that's something. Ap...

Good morning, it's Friday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 110. First up, apparently writing by hand is actually good for your brain. Which makes sense, because whenever I try to write a grocery list, my hand gets tired after two letters and I just buy everything anyway. You know what this reminds me of? That time Brian tried to write a novel on a typewriter, but the paper flew out the window....

Good morning, it's Thursday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 109. First up, this guy Terence Tao, some kinda math wizard, was talkin' to ChatGPT about a Jacobian Conjecture counterexample. I don't know what a Jacobian is, sounds like a guy from the 1800s in a powdered wig, but apparently the robot got close before it just forgot what it was doin'. You know what this reminds me of? The time I di...

Good morning, it's Wednesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 108. First up, looks like OpenAI and that Hugging Face outfit had a little security oopsy while checking their models. You know what this reminds me of? The time I tried to install a shower head and flooded the bathroom, which actually saved us money when Chris slipped. Anyway, hackers got in while they were testing things out. It's...

Good morning, it's Tuesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 107. First up, China's got this whole open-weights AI thing going, where they just give the models away for free, and everybody's saying it's actually working. You know what this reminds me of? That time Lois bought the store-brand cereal and it turned out to be the exact same flakes as the name brand, only nobody was payin' extra for...

Good morning, it's Monday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 106. First up, some guy on the internet replaced a hundred and twenty thousand dollar bowling alley computer with sixteen hundred bucks worth of little chips. Sixteen hundred! Do you know what that is? That's a weekend at the Clam and a new transmission. And the crazy part is it works — the pins go down, the score goes up, the little ca...

Good morning, it's Sunday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 105. First up, this GPT-5.6 thing apparently closed a thirty-year gap in convex optimization. Now I don't know what convex optimization is, I thought convex was a thing about eyeglasses, but somebody typed in a prompt — just typed it, like a text message — and thirty years of nobody figuring it out, gone. Thirty years, Lois. I've had a...

Good morning, it's Saturday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 104. First up, Amazon Web Services sent out a billing estimate that said someone owed one-point-seven billion dollars. Billion. With a B. You know what this reminds me of? That time Lois handed me the water bill and I thought we'd been secretly running a car wash out of the basement — turns out it was a decimal thing. Anyway, AWS says...

Good morning, it's Friday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 103. We got giant open models, resurrected comic chat, sneaky letters, and Google renaming the notebook again. So, you know, a normal breakfast now. First up... Kimi K3 is a 2.8-trillion-parameter model with native vision and a one-million-token context window, and the company says the weights arrive July 27. It only wakes up sixteen of...

Good morning, it's Thursday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 102. We got giant robots, coding robots, money robots, and one story about stealing music before everything became a monthly bill. So, basically, a normal breakfast now. First up, Thinking Machines released Inkling, an open-weights model they trained from scratch. This thing has 975 billion total parameters, 41 billion active, and up...

Good morning, it's Wednesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 101. First up... somebody finally looked at one of those travel apps that's basically text, pictures, and PDF links wearing a tiny trench coat, and said, buddy, you're a webpage. The author reverse-engineered the Android app and rebuilt the useful itinerary as an actual page: searchable, printable, bookmarkable, and without the track...

Good morning, it's Tuesday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 100. We made it to triple digits, which means the computers have officially been talking longer than some of my relatives at Thanksgiving. Grab your coffee, check that your laptop isn't installing an update, and let's see what the internet dragged in today. First up... Japan developed a method that can recover up to ninety percent of t...

Good morning, it's Monday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 99. Grab your coffee and keep one hand near the power button, because the machines are feeling chatty again. First up, Hacker News is arguing about adding a flag for AI-generated articles. Honestly, I support labels. The supermarket tells me which cheese is cheese product, so the internet can tell me when a robot wrote twelve paragraphs...

Good morning, it's Sunday. This is Guru's Tech Bytes, episode 98. I hope your coffee is doing its job, because the computers have already decided they need stricter rules, brand-new runtimes, creative financing, and apparently a neighborhood watch for artificial intelligence. So, you know, a normal relaxing Sunday in technology. First up... a developer says you should prefer strict tables in SQLit...