David Castro

dabbycastro.com is live. It’s where I put everything I’ve worked on in one place. - CramIt, an AI study platform I started on pre-ChatGPT completion models that now has 2,200+ users. - Ace Signal, a geospatial intelligence app that scores all 42,048 Philippine barangays for ISP deployment using NASA, NTC, and Copernicus data. - The Future Frontiers AI Ideathon I organized and chaired at 17, covered by BusinessWorld. - Code Wraith, a combat platformer I made in two weeks. - and more. If any of that sounds interesting, the full write-ups are on the site #buildinpublic

Judging by my tl there is a growing gap in understanding of AI capability. The first issue I think is around recency and tier of use. I think a lot of people tried the free tier of ChatGPT somewhere last year and allowed it to inform their views on AI a little too much. This is a group of reactions laughing at various quirks of the models, hallucinations, etc. Yes I also saw the viral videos of OpenAI's Advanced Voice mode fumbling simple queries like "should I drive or walk to the carwash". The thing is that these free and old/deprecated models don't reflect the capability in the latest round of state of the art agentic models of this year, especially OpenAI Codex and Claude Code. But that brings me to the second issue. Even if people paid $200/month to use the state of the art models, a lot of the capabilities are relatively "peaky" in highly technical areas. Typical queries around search, writing, advice, etc. are *not* the domain that has made the most noticeable and dramatic strides in capability. Partly, this is due to the technical details of reinforcement learning and its use of verifiable rewards. But partly, it's also because these use cases are not sufficiently prioritized by the companies in their hillclimbing because they don't lead to as much $$$ value. The goldmines are elsewhere, and the focus comes along. So that brings me to the second group of people, who *both* 1) pay for and use the state of the art frontier agentic models (OpenAI Codex / Claude Code) and 2) do so professionally in technical domains like programming, math and research. This group of people is subject to the highest amount of "AI Psychosis" because the recent improvements in these domains as of this year have been nothing short of staggering. When you hand a computer terminal to one of these models, you can now watch them melt programming problems that you'd normally expect to take days/weeks of work. It's this second group of people that assigns a much greater gravity to the capabilities, their slope, and various cyber-related repercussions. TLDR the people in these two groups are speaking past each other. It really is simultaneously the case that OpenAI's free and I think slightly orphaned (?) "Advanced Voice Mode" will fumble the dumbest questions in your Instagram's reels and *at the same time*, OpenAI's highest-tier and paid Codex model will go off for 1 hour to coherently restructure an entire code base, or find and exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems. This part really works and has made dramatic strides because 2 properties: 1) these domains offer explicit reward functions that are verifiable meaning they are easily amenable to reinforcement learning training (e.g. unit tests passed yes or no, in contrast to writing, which is much harder to explicitly judge), but also 2) they are a lot more valuable in b2b settings, meaning that the biggest fraction of the team is focused on improving them. So here we are.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve | New Details Dev Diary ▶️ youtube.com/watch?v=aGMFCf… ▪️Single-player campaign ▪️"Biggest" online mode in the series ▪️Play as the new leader of a squad on the carrier Endurance ▪️Move between daily life on the aircraft carrier and high-stakes aerial missions ▪️Federation of Central Usea is struggling to survive ▪️First-person story scenes ▪️Huge leap in visuals, photorealistic rendering, environments ▪️"Cloudly Engine": New Lumen lighting system to render "glorious, light-sensitive clouds and weather" ▪️Team has worked hard to make combat accessible to newcomers and battle-hardened veterans ▪️6x more polygons per aircraft, 4K textures ▪️Bigger variety of weapons across land, air and sea ▪️Added training mode to practice rules and moves #AceCombat8 #PS5 #Xbox #Steam #AceCombat

If a buddy of yours doesn't know... 🫵THEY. WANT. YOU. 🫵

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve goes first-person during story sequences. Bandai Namco details the new perspective in new dev diary: play.st/4t1R9z2

【🐥ナゲッツの極秘資料公開②】 ナゲッツです！ 『#ACE8』の開発現場に潜入してまたまた極秘映像を入手しました！今回は雲に関する情報です！今作では「Cloudly（クラウドリー）」という独自のミドルウェアエンジンを開発したとのことで、このエンジンを使うことで「ACE7」と比較してより多層で多彩、かつダイナミックな雲の情景を描き出すことが可能になり、どこまでも広がる雲海へ突入する飛行体験が味わえるそうです！早くこの空を飛んでみたいです！ピヨッ！ ＃ACECOMBAT

We’re getting a game set in the Project Hail Mary universe, with direct involvement from Andy Weir himself! Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars is a mixed reality and VR experience where we step into the role of Ryland Grace, diagnose failing systems, and work alongside Rocky to keep humanity’s last hope alive. It’s a completely new story that we’ll be able to experience on platforms like Meta Quest 3 and Pico 4. Amazing to see the Project Hail Mary universe expanding beyond the book and the movie.

>[ e a g l e ]

Whether you are an Ace or a Nugget, you cannot deny the magic of Ace Combat's soundtrack. This account is dedicated to celebrating the soundtrack of every game with daily posts leading up to the eventual release of the new title, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.

Earthset. The Artemis II crew captured this view of an Earthset on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the Moon. The image is reminiscent of the iconic Earthrise image taken by astronaut Bill Anders 58 years earlier as the Apollo 8 crew flew around the Moon.

Make new friends, but keep the old. A new photo captures the Moon's near side on the right (the side we see from Earth, identifiable by its dark splotches) and its far side on the left. The Artemis II crew are the first to see the far side with human eyes.

A small spoiler, so consider this your heads-up. In one of the final scenes, Eva Stratt has a subtle tattoo on her neck: a crossed-out "V". It’s easy to miss, but it carries a lot of meaning. The "V" comes from the French word 'via' ("life"), and the strike through it points to a life that was taken or lost. The detail comes from Andy Weir's idea of where Stratt's story goes after the Hail Mary mission launches. In the book, she predicts her own fate with unsettling clarity: once her role is fulfilled, governments turn on her, stripping of power and ultimately imprisoning in a French prison for the very ruthlessness that made the mission possible. The film quietly extends that arc. The last scene suggests she made it out, and somehow found her way back to the work of saving humanity. All of this was confirmed by the directors in an interview.

There are no words.

me listening to the project hail mary soundtrack:

NASA Tactical Astronaut By @JaroldSng

@Skwerl_Art Beautiful! You should make a VR video version of this

#これでフォロワーさんが増えました Now with the translate feature, I hope my work can reach more people who like Ace Combat and plane models!

@HailMaryLogs RIP the traffic behind the first Astrophage-powered SUV

A fan created a visualization of how the spin drive works in Project Hail Mary. It’s a beautifully simple cycle. First, a small light tuned to the Petrova frequency attracts Astrophage from the fuel line, coating one side of a transparent triangular mechanism. Then the triangle rotates, exposing that surface to space. The light intensifies and the Astrophage releases its energy, pushing against the surface and generating thrust. Finally, the triangle rotates back inside, the spent Astrophage is scraped off, and the cycle begins again. In the book, the Hail Mary runs 1009 of these in parallel.

Lock in, we’re Moonbound. Artemis II astronauts are more than halfway to their destination, and preparations for lunar flyby are underway. During their trip around the far side of the Moon, they will capture imagery to share with scientists (and you, too!).

NASA pilot Victor Glover CLAPS back after being asked what it means to be the first black man to visit the moon: “It’s the story of humanity, not black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.” “I also HOPE we are pushing the other direction that one day we don’t have to talk about these first. That one day, this is just—and listen to this—that this is the human history.”

Good team. Even better friends. #ProjectHailMary