https://www.thenerduncle.ai/ A daily magazine about artificial intelligence, in plain English. en Mon, 02 Nov 2026 14:05:56 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/apple-opens-in-china https://www.thenerduncle.ai/apple-opens-in-china Apple Intelligence arrives there in December. Part of it will be running a model Apple did not build, and the Siri everyone was waiting for is not in the box. Business Sun, 01 Nov 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/the-memory-squeeze https://www.thenerduncle.ai/the-memory-squeeze He told a podcast it is “quite terrible” that the world's limited supply of DRAM sits in personal computers. Two days later he was in Yongin, in front of fifty Samsung executives. Silicon Sun, 01 Nov 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/mistral-opens-the-weights https://www.thenerduncle.ai/mistral-opens-the-weights The French company published the weights for Large 4, nicknamed Le Chonk. Anyone can download it. That is not the same thing as open source, and the gap is where the interesting part lives. Models Sun, 01 Nov 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/the-bill-for-the-boom https://www.thenerduncle.ai/the-bill-for-the-boom Four companies have promised to spend more than seven hundred billion dollars this year on the machinery behind AI. Last week the market looked at the receipts and flinched. Business Sat, 31 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/openai-came-up-short https://www.thenerduncle.ai/openai-came-up-short The Wall Street Journal reports the company has raised about a third of its target, at a valuation below the one it wanted. Here is what that does and does not tell you. Business Sat, 31 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/anthropic-rated-junk https://www.thenerduncle.ai/anthropic-rated-junk A small agency graded the company in June. It only came to light when the Financial Times read the paperwork — and the word does less work than you would think. Business Sat, 31 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-an-llm-actually-does https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-an-llm-actually-does Three words get used as though they named the same thing. They are three different layers, and once you can tell them apart most AI news becomes readable. Models Sat, 31 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-neural-network-learns https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-neural-network-learns It is not a brain and nothing inside it understands anything. It is a very large pile of numbers that gets nudged, over and over, until it stops being wrong so often. Research Sat, 31 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/a-tpu-in-orbit https://www.thenerduncle.ai/a-tpu-in-orbit The first Tensor Processing Unit in space is up, running a model, and answering prompts from the ground. It can stay switched on for about twenty minutes at a time. Infrastructure Fri, 30 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/anthropic-goes-public https://www.thenerduncle.ai/anthropic-goes-public Anthropic has lodged the paperwork to sell shares on the stock market. Here is what that document actually is, what it does not yet say, and why the number everyone is quoting is not a price. Models Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-personal-agent-does https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-personal-agent-does Muse is Meta's personal agent, and the pitch is not a better chatbot. It is a thing you hand a job to and walk away from. That distinction is the whole product, and the whole problem. Agents Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/agents-on-an-island https://www.thenerduncle.ai/agents-on-an-island MIT researchers put thirteen AI agents on a virtual desert island and gave them no instructions whatsoever. The agents did not sit still. They made up games — and the ones who played came back better at working. Agents Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/stargate-by-the-numbers https://www.thenerduncle.ai/stargate-by-the-numbers The largest private computing project ever attempted is half-built in west Texas. Strip out the press releases and what is left is a power problem, a plumbing problem, and a landlord dispute. Infrastructure Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/grok-in-plain-english https://www.thenerduncle.ai/grok-in-plain-english The model built into X had a busy few weeks. Here is what actually changed, and what the numbers in the announcements mean if you do not build this for a living. Models Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/musk-and-the-model https://www.thenerduncle.ai/musk-and-the-model He co-founded the lab that became the industry leader, left it, spent years criticising it, and then built a competitor. The timeline explains more than the commentary does. Profile Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/who-built-claude https://www.thenerduncle.ai/who-built-claude Dario Amodei trained as a physicist, moved into biology, and ended up running the lab behind one of the most used AI models in the world. The through-line is a single uncomfortable idea. Profile Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-coding-agent-does https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-coding-agent-does A chatbot answers you. An agent keeps working after you have gone. The difference is one loop, and it is the whole trick. Agents Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-gpu-actually-does https://www.thenerduncle.ai/what-a-gpu-actually-does Why the chips built to draw video games ended up running artificial intelligence — explained without a single equation. Silicon Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 https://www.thenerduncle.ai/inside-the-data-centre https://www.thenerduncle.ai/inside-the-data-centre A data centre is a shed full of electricity bills. Four problems, stacked, and the building is really just the cooling. Infrastructure Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000