Sutskever's List

Pseudo technical review: 

Foundational ideas of modern AI
Richard Heimann
MEAP began September 2025 Last updated September 2025 Publication in Spring 2026

 

 

Solaria

Talk with ChapGpt:
(it makes me wonder if we are going to Solaria...)

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I remember in Naked Sun from Asimov, there was a family in a planet that couldn't live near each other

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Exactly — you’re remembering The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov quite well.

In that novel, the story takes place on the planet Solaria, one of the “Spacer worlds.”
The people there are indeed so isolated that they can’t stand physical proximity to others — even being in the same room is unbearable to them.

Here’s what’s going on in more detail 👇

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🌍 Solaria: The Anti-Social Planet

• Solaria has a tiny human population (only about 20,000 people) spread across an entire planet.

• Each person lives on a huge estate, served by thousands of robots.

• Over centuries, this extreme comfort and automation led to social isolation:

  • People interact only through “viewing” (a kind of holographic video communication).

  • “Seeing” someone in person — physical presence — became psychologically intolerable.

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🧠 Social consequences

• They raise children apart; even spouses don’t live together.

• Physical contact is seen as dirty or obscene.

• Ironically, they have no fear of death or robots, but a deep fear of other humans.

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🔍 In the story

Detective Elijah Baley (from Earth) is sent to Solaria to investigate a murder — the first murder in centuries on that planet.
He’s partnered again with R. Daneel Olivaw, his robot companion.
Baley’s discomfort with robots (as an Earthman) contrasts with the Solarians’ discomfort with people.

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🧩 Theme

Asimov uses Solaria to explore:

• The dangers of technological isolation.

• How a society’s environment and habits can reshape human psychology.

• The idea that too much comfort and automation can erode empathy and connection.

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Knowledge Pyramid

Neal Ford on Mark's Pyramid about breadth vs depth knowledge.

https://nealford.com/memeagora/2015/09/08/knowledge-breadth-versus-depth.html

Backtracking Algorithms Letter

 

Dr. Dobb's Journal Volume 29, Issue 9, Number 364, September 2004

ITTF Obstruction

Regla de obstruccion de la pelota en donde genera confusiones.

En el mundial de dobles mixtos Chengdu 2024 revisan el Table Tennis Review (TTR), y queda clara la falta. (a pesar del reclamo del equipo chino)

Under the ITTF rules, a player commits an obstruction by touching the ball in play when it is above or moving towards the playing surface, provided it hasn't yet bounced on their side of the table since being hit by the opponent. This includes the player or anything they are wearing or carrying. The intent is to penalize actions that prevent an opponent from making a good return, rather than simply accidentally stopping the ball. 

 

 

Server-Side WebAssembly

Tech Review:

Server-Side WebAssembly
Lightweight apps with Wasm
 

Danilo Chiarlone
MEAP began October 2024 Last updated August 2025 Publication in Early 2026

https://www.manning.com/books/server-side-webassembly

 

Data Preparation for AI and Analytics

Tech Review:

Data Preparation for AI and Analytics
From data to insights
Benoît Cayla

MEAP began December 2024 Last updated May 2025 Publication in October 2025 (estimated) 
ISBN 9781633435742 300 pages (estimated) 

We regret that we will not be publishing this title.

https://www.manning.com/books/data-preparation-for-ai-and-analytics-cx

Spider Legs

 An old prize from Pickover.

 

Why Learn C

Technical Reviewer

Why Learn C
Go Behind the Curtain of Modern Systems with C23
Aug 2025

https://github.com/Apress/Why-Learn-C

https://link.springer.com/book/9798868815966

Dominosa Problem 73

For the 3rd printing of TAOCP Volume 4B.

0 6 1 5 1 1 4 6
6 6 6 1 1 0 1 4
5 6 1 3 2 1 4 4
5 5 3 2 6 2 2 4
5 3 6 3 2 0 2 2
3 4 3 0 0 5 2 5
3 3 0 4 0 0 5 4

That gets 807,752 solutions.

 

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html

https://devwebcl.blogspot.com/2018/06/dominosa.html

 

https://devwebcl.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-art-of-computer-programming-volume.html

 

https://www.solitairelaboratory.com/puzzlelaboratory/DominoGG.html