May 06, 2026
The Teleport Contest
(and Dealing With LLM Religion)
I am opening an LLM coding contest, and I want you to enter it.
Four days ago NetHack 5.0 was released, the newest major version of a 46-year-old open-source roguelike game, 442,901 lines of C and Lua that have accumulated layers of intricate and ingenious gameplay rules.
The contest is to port it to simple, readable JavaScript so that the game can run in the browser while playing bit-exactly like the original. Same screen at every keystroke....
May 16, 2026
The Fifty Dollar Gap
My rideshare driver today asked me for advice.
First-generation immigrant who used to work for the US Army in Afghanistan. Told me about his old job team-driving trucks crossing the continent and back in six-day 24-hour hauls. Stopped when trucking stopped paying well. Now he drives 100 miles into SF to get good Uber and Lyft fares, but they are not paying very well any more either. Obviously works hard, looking for better work, but here nobody recognizes his degrees and certifications from his home country. Should he get a degree? Should he learn to program computers? Should he be a plumber? A carpenter? What to do?
I puzzled it over as we drove by all the silicon valley software companies who have been laying off thousands of people in recent months. I told him: he should do what successful immigrants do. Skip the game of working for the boss and just make customers happy directly. He should work for his own business.
He made $18 driving me to the airport. The app charged me $72. If he owned his business, that revenue would be his.
"Good example," he said.