Barry Brook

Much has been claimed about the extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine). These two images come from NW Tasmania, taken in 2007 and 2013 on an early type of wildlife camera. Consider carefully what they might be. They were, for many years, quite perplexing!

@AlexNunn Same with contrastive parallelism and the three-point rule.

There are also second-order effects caused by the liar's dividend. If you look at my papers from 2018-2024, I used em dashes constantly. But after the rise of AI, I intentionally avoid them given their association with LLMs. So AI has also changed syntax due to genuine recoil.

@rohanvarma No remote SSH on the app...

Some interesting data we pulled today showed that ~40% of Codex users use multiple surfaces, between the App, CLI, and IDE extensions. Everyone seems to have a primary preference, but a bigger-than-expected chunk of users launch codex agents outside of their primary interface. If you use multiple surfaces, I'm curious why? And what could we do to improve the experience?

@perrymetzger He ignores the fact (among many other humanitarian reasons) that we burned our one-time bequest of Carboniferous coal and Mesozoic oil and gas getting to this point. There no second chance to climb back out of a redux Neolithic.

Yud on how many of us he would sacrifice for his beliefs: “There should be enough survivors on Earth in close contact to form a viable reproductive population, with room to spare, and they should have a sustainable food supply. So long as that's true, there's still a chance of reaching the stars someday.”

@DaveShapi Star Trek Continues

Of the recent Star Trek stuff which one is your favorite?

.@dkundel Another Codex app for Windows niggle. In the config.toml, I can pre-set the default reasoning level for plan vs standard mode (e.g., xhigh vs high), and the CLI app respects this. But the Windows app doesn't seem to: at least it doesn't show the reasoning level changing

@deredleritt3r @zackbshapiro That describes almost all intellectual fields!

@zackbshapiro I'm in BigLaw, and I think it's most likely done for. The only remaining question (but a big one!) is when. Could take 2 years, or could take 10.

New article tomorrow morning. This one is about the AI-shaped asteroid that's headed toward the BigLaw business model.

@dkundel Oh, I once did get some sort of Javascript error reported just before it happened, but I neglected to screenshot it at the time and that's not appeared again. Might or might not be related.

@dkundel Seems to be provoked by switching between active threads. Not always (not mostly), just randomly. If I stay on one thread, it never happens. But of course, a huge advantage of the Codex app over the CLI is the seamless ability to do that multi-task switching!

.@dkundel A few times the Codex app on Windows gets into a weird state, where when you select a project thread, it almost immediately flips back to the project level (not thread). If I close Codex and restart it reports a failure and won't start. Only fix is to reboot Windows.

@nummanali And are you definitely still convinced that high should mostly be used over xhigh?

This is true I don’t look at benchmarks anymore I simply test the models insanely hard on my own use cases I’ll tell you now that GPT 5.4 on High reasoning is the most capable model in the world for any workload

@kr0der App for WSL, CLI for remote SSH to a headless server. @dkundel hint, hint!

do you prefer the Codex app or CLI? i like the CLI more since you can’t split view in the app but seeing that Peter swapped to the app despite being one of the biggest CLI power users, it might be over for the CLI

@CodeMonkey_frfr @rohanvarma This

@rohanvarma Remote ssh support. I don’t have code in my laptop. All on a remote Linux box. Please please please yall are shipping themes while most enterprise devs are unable to use your app because we are on remote boxes in company infrastructure

If you have tried the Codex App, but don't use it as a daily driver yet: What needs to improve to make it the primary place you work with coding agents?

@gknout @JeanSeb Another slightly weird one, but a goodie, that (a) you've likely missed and (b) is available on YouTube is "Crime Traveller".

@JeanSeb I lived through the Nineties but somehow never got sucked in in spite of watching every sci-fi movie that came along. In any event, I've been struggling to find new shows and movies to get into so I'm thrilled to have such an epic saga to enjoy. The show rules.

Thoroughly enjoyed season 1 of 'Babylon 5' and my understanding is that the best is yet to come. #NowWatching 'Babylon 5' Season 2: The Coming of Shadows (1994–1995).

@gknout I still remember what it felt like in the 90s, experiencing it for the first time and then swotting up on the Lurkers guide immediately afterwards!

@flowersslop Algorithmic capture. Happens on YouTube too.

Theres a new feedback loop on Twitter that eventually hits almost every account: performative antagonism toward OpenAI. It starts with valid criticism that performs slightly better, maybe 20% more engagement. I cant prove it, but it clearly gets pushed. These people then get conditioned to link OpenAI criticism with higher engagement. The posts slowly shift from thoughtful critique to cheap one liners and increasingly fucking unserious takes that might get 40% more engagement. Over time the association locks in, and in some of the worst cases, the account eventually turns into a full time blog about how cooked OpenAI is, since that content consistently outperforms everything else. None of this happens consciously. Its an extremely subtle, gradual process, which makes it very interesting to watch.

@dkundel Is it possible to resume a session previously established in WSL via Codex CLI, or do we need to start afresh within the app?

Alright the fix is finally rolling out in the Microsoft Store! Head over to the store and check for updates. After updating you should be on version 26.304.1143. If your app was bricked before it should automatically work after updating. To find the version inside the app press `Alt` and click File -> About Codex. Apologies for the hiccup and delay 🙏

@dkundel Confirmed, it's working now!

@perrymetzger @SenSanders He trained a single-layer FFN on the iris data set once for an hour or so. Does that count?

@SenSanders Eliezer Yudkowsky has never done any actual AI research in his life.

Will AI become smarter than humans? If so, is humanity in danger? I went to Silicon Valley to ask some of the leading AI experts that question. Here’s what they had to say:

@1337_jay @thsottiaux Edit .codex-global-state.json and set "runCodexInWindowsSubsystemForLinux": false for now.

@thsottiaux After switching to WSL mode it crashed and now it does not start anymore, crash on startup. Reinstall/cleaning app data does not work 😭

The Codex App is now generally available on Windows. Please give us feedback and hope you enjoy a new level of productivity!

@ajambrosino @timurkhakhalev Another niggle. Currently in the Windows app, I'm unable to select the model or reasoning level. I can choose the options okay, but the selection doesn't stick (it just reverts back to GPT-5.3-Codex and Medium).

@timurkhakhalev x.com/dkundel/status…

The Codex app is now live on Windows. The app runs both natively and in WSL, with integrated terminals for PowerShell, Command Prompt, Git Bash, or WSL. We also built the first Windows-native agent sandbox — using OS-level controls to block filesystem writes outside your working folder and prevent outbound network access unless you explicitly approve it. Plus: 7 new “Open in …” apps and 2 new Windows skills (WinUI + ASP.NET). Try it and tell us what you think.