Ahas, Breadcrumbs, Coding Epiphanies https://ndurner.github.io Nils Durner Researchers at IMDEA Networks, a Madrid-based research institute specializing in data and communication networks, have published a disclosure suggesting that major AI assistants may expose chatbot conversations. Their report is, however, framed more dramatically than its strongest evidence supports, and it concedes: While we do not yet have evidence that conversations are read by trackers… While w [More...] Wed, 06 May 2026 19:22:19 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/leakylm-your-ai-assistant-is-not https://ndurner.substack.com/p/leakylm-your-ai-assistant-is-not Nils Durner US policy think tank RAND published an estimate on operating a quantum computer for breaking traditional cryptographic schemes including ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography). They call such quantum computers “CRQC”, a “Cryptanalytically Relevant Quantum Computer”. First, they establish that today’s quantum quantum computers are not It: The use of a quantum algorithm known as Shor’s algorithm to effic [More...] Sun, 19 Apr 2026 11:54:47 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/energy-costs-of-a-cryptanalytically https://ndurner.substack.com/p/energy-costs-of-a-cryptanalytically Nils Durner Google DeepMind have published a new release of their open weights model: Gemma 4. It’s available under Apache License 2.0, an improvement from the more restrictive Gemma 3 license. Core features include multi-language support, Reasoning, and multi-modality including Audio for some models. It comes in four different variants: In the model descriptions, “E” stands for “effective parameters” (withou [More...] Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:08:11 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/notes-on-google-gemma-4 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/notes-on-google-gemma-4 Nils Durner In 2024, we argued that AI has a reputation problem, and described that trustworthy AI must produce evidence, support simplicity, remain human-accountable, and be operated with pragmatic skepticism. We placed “trust” at the decision and evidence chain. Two articles published within the last 8 hours, one by an IDC-recognized leader in Intelligent Document Processing and the other by investment firm [More...] Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:47:09 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/ai-trust-after-the-explorer-era https://ndurner.substack.com/p/ai-trust-after-the-explorer-era Nils Durner OpenAI CEO Fidji Simo was cited last week that they “actively looking at which areas to deprioritize” in the face of Anthopic gaining market share. The same WSJ article identified Sora as one area they are looking at: OpenAI launched its stand-alone Sora app last September, pairing its AI video generator with a new social-media app similar to TikTok. It briefly secured the top spot in Apple’s App [More...] Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:18:52 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/sora-discontinued https://ndurner.substack.com/p/sora-discontinued Nils Durner Chrome 146 has added a way to let AI Agents directly interface with it. The advantage over existing browser automation projects like the Playwright MCP is that this lets you control already running, potentially logged-in, browser sessions. The feature flag to be enabled for this is “Allow remote debugging for this browser instance”: chrome://inspect/ remote-debugging chrome://inspect/ remote-debug [More...] Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:14:46 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/google-chrome-with-direct-ai-agents https://ndurner.substack.com/p/google-chrome-with-direct-ai-agents Nils Durner OpenAI have released the Codex Desktop App for Windows. It support WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux), as well as running natively. As with the macOS app, Codex is positioned towards developers, but can actually do more, e.g. translating Excel files. As the Windows version uses PowerShell (and others), it can tap into COM-Automation, giving it first-party control over Microsoft Office content and [More...] Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:18:19 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/codex-app-for-windows-and-com-automation https://ndurner.substack.com/p/codex-app-for-windows-and-com-automation Nils Durner Heise reports that Chrome added “digital signatures” and annotations. Google’s own release wording (“annotate, highlight and draw a signature on a PDF”) conveys the same, but is only accurate for UX, not for standards semantics: this is proprietary scribbling, not digital signing. Worse, it breaks real digital signatures that are already in a document. To someone familiar with PDF internals, Googl [More...] Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:43:22 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/chromes-pdf-signatures-arent-digital https://ndurner.substack.com/p/chromes-pdf-signatures-arent-digital Nils Durner OpenAI’s LLMs have improved utility in Swift coding a lot since GPT-4. But still, the Apple Swift Playground(s) variety - particularly on iPad - is not covered well. (Swift Playgrounds is positioned for programming beginners, but another plus is that it’s a dynamic code execution environment on iPad). With a recent EPUB creation project from online sources, the process degraded into the familiar b [More...] Sun, 15 Feb 2026 18:43:23 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/agent-skill-for-apple-swift-playgrounds https://ndurner.substack.com/p/agent-skill-for-apple-swift-playgrounds Nils Durner I have published Aileen 3, a Generative AI system to help with cutting down on the steady information (over-)flow through podcasts, conference sessions etc. Its predecessor Aileen 2 was about building personalized summaries of German parliament proceedings. Aileen 3 broadens the scope and narrows the output by moving to the concept of expectation-driven information foraging. As conference talks li [More...] Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:43:10 +0000 https://ndurner.substack.com/p/aileen-3-finding-whats-new-in-talks https://ndurner.substack.com/p/aileen-3-finding-whats-new-in-talks