BlogDB

The Great Escape — Stalag Luft III

Germany · 1944 · Escape — Allied prisoners of war built a 102-meter tunnel under Stalag Luft III, enabling 76 airmen to escape into Germany before a massive manhunt captured almost all of them.

46

It feels like a major life turn after 35, even though I thought 35 was like half-life. I haven’t crossed the second half-life yet. I think there are a couple more years until the second half-life, ...

Training a Chess Reasoning Agent

TLDR: I trained an LLM reasoning agent to play chess, with model sizes 0.8B, 3B and 9B. The agent calls tools which help it keep track of the board state, which enables good performance with a rela...

Rejected Space Mission Profiles

A thank-you for the volunteers at your weekly community run: a finish-line photo as a jigsaw, with your note at the end

Written by the team behind Puzzlify. Puzzlify is our product, so weigh what follows with that in mind. We've tried to make this useful even if you never use it. We're not affiliated with parkrun or...

Can Chegg finance its own reinvention?

A financial case study of Chegg’s transition from academic subscriptions to skilling: what the cash-flow improvement buys, and what a durable recovery still requires.

Madness Reaching Topping Tipping Point

Read Madness Reaching Topping Tipping Point We currently have a carryout deal for a large one-topping pizza for $6 at the pizza place where I work. A middle-aged couple enters the store and walks u...

Hackaday Links: October 11, 2026

It probably goes without saying that if you send four humans to observe the Moon up close, they’ll see things that those of us stuck here on Earth have never …read more

Weekly Robotics #380

Today in the Weekly Robotics newsletter: Easily create 3D simulation assets, an open-source crab, an easy way to run the NVIDIA stack, a hexa-bouncer robot, and more!

Listening to music as an active process

Although I’m a semi-professional musician, most days, I listen to far less music than my friends. I generally work in silence, cook in silence, run in silence. When I do listen to music, usually in...

Into the Breach

As I have mentioned here a few times, I don’t play a lot of games these days. The last game I completed was Skyrim. I didn’t write a post about that, but at least I mentioned here I was playing it....

Fusionism in the Twenty-First Century

A Civitas Symposium on Stephanie Slade's new book.

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 10-11-26

After a nine-day work/NLJ/newsletter-induced lull in the Pook-Emu Bee, I return with my sometimes-regularly-scheduled daily links. Speech 1 | Foul Call: New York Times Calls for Canceling Sophie Cu...

Researchers Solve the Mystery of Enigmatic 18,000-Year-Old Venus Figurines: Artists Followed the Hidden Pattern Inside a Mammoth Tusk

Cut a mammoth tusk across and a pattern appears that nobody drew. Rings like those of a tree trunk mark how the ivory grew, and are known as Owen’s lines. Crossing them runs a web of curved lines t...

Daily News Stuff 11 October 2026

Box That Goes Ping Edition Top Story AI models and agents are security risks and should be banned from your corporate network, or at a minimum, air gapped and restricted to a lead lined Faraday cag...

Campaign Against ‘New Qing History’ Reinforces Ethnic Unity

John Dotson

Gordiya

The woman whose name keeps showing up in the last few posts was the wife of three powerful men in 6th-century Iran, one of whom was her brother.Born to one of the Seven Great Houses of Iran, Gordiy...

Satire ist tot

April 2026: Satire-Artikel in The Onion, dass das US-DOJ Hinrichtungen live-streamen will. Oktober 2026: Pete Hegseth kündigt an, eine Hinrichtung zu live-streamen.

AI Companion Keeps Bringing Up Old Memories? Set a Topic Boundary

An accurate memory can still be an unwanted topic. Choose what you want to discuss now, state a clear boundary, and check what your app's memory controls actually do.

Free-flowing cocktails, natural onsen water, and custom pillows make this Osaka hotel a steal

Room-only stays usually mean no perks, but this hotel throws them at you, all in the name of having a good sleep. There is a type of accommodation for all kinds of traveler, be it a gorgeous mounta...