turingMachine

Many years back I spend 3 months in Japan. At the time, there was no google maps. Instead I had to use a Nokia N800 tablet and an external GPS with downloaded maps (and of course, no online information). It was good enough.

I still remember facing the washing machine for the first time, having no idea what each label said, nor how to search for it on the Internet. One never realizes how hard the world is to the illiterate until one becomes one. Today I can at least read and write like a 10 year old. Anybody can use the phone and get instant voice translation!!

The US might have invented the burger, but Japan is mastering it.

This is the 切ったやつ, the specialty of Brisk Stand, a restaurant in 中目黒。 Its name translates to "The Cut one". The burger is cooked (like any other), and then cut in half and then further cooked of the plancha on the cut surface for some time. It was so hot it was burning my fingers.

What is special about it? The entire bottom was subjected to a delicious Maillard reaction, enhanced by the flavours of the caramelized onions and the juices of meat. I've never seen or eaten anything like it.

I promised L that I would read Project Hail Mary while in Japan.

I have been trying to avoid reading English in favour of reading in Japanese. Nonetheless I started reading it. And I got hooked.

I wonder how many people read about the height of the table (0.91m) and the average time it takes for something to drop from it (0.348s) and get a piece of paper to compute the g.

今日、Science Tokyoに着いた、大学のカフェテリアで昼食をとることにしました.

今日の日替わりメニューは「サーモンビビンバ」というものでした。おそらく、韓国料理を日本風にアレンジしたものなのでしょう。値段は？味噌汁とサラダ込みで１０００円でした。 これは約9カナダドルに相当します。

I have been working on the impact of Agentic AI on open source communities. One of the most striking changes is that open source projects are closing pull-requests to outsiders.

I think it makes sense: coding used to be the most expensive activity of building open source. No longer, agents can do in minutes what developers would do in a day. Thus, the need for outsider contributors is diminished. I often ask myself: would I review an external contribution and make sure it works, or would I rather ask my agent to do it? at this point, I choose the later. And this is starting to happen in several OSS projects.

0日目: Vancouver 空港です。フライトの３時間前。東京に行きます。ScienceTokyo大学へ働いてす。林さんの研究室に３か月滞在するよう招待されました。

日本語の会話力を向上させることにたのしにしています。

もちろん、彼らの研究に参加したいです。AIは多くの研究分野に締めだす一方です、それ以上に多くの研究分野を切り開いてうる。

楽しみです。

Lに『プロジェクト・ヘイル・メアリー』読むと約束しましたけど、本当は日本語の本しか読みたくないです。どうなるかわからないけど。

–Vancouver, 2026年9月13日

browser-gt was formerly known as browsel.

Agents, like Claude, require eyes and hands to be able to help me accomplish work. While MCP servers can provide some of those capabilities, I find them too restrictive for this purpose. Instead, what about giving an agent the ability to read the DOM and execute JavaScript directly in the current browser's tab?

At the same time, I want these actions to be scriptable, so I can ask the agent to help me write commands that I can later execute myself whenever I need them.

For many years, I have wanted to restart this blog, but the main reason I stopped was that the infrastructure needed to do it became harder and harder to maintain.

I use Org-roam as my main second-brain system, and I have been using Org as my main format for documents for probably 15–18 years. Because of that, I have always wanted to be able to author in Org. Unfortunately, that wasn’t easy at the time, so I created a bunch of scripts that I had to maintain. But as time passed and I upgraded distributions and computers, it became harder and harder to install all the dependencies.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.

— [Leonard Nimoy]

Your katra will continue to Live Long and Prosper in all the consciences and dreams of those of us who you inspired. 🖖

–dmg

This year, like any other, I had some papers accepted, some rejected, and some continued to be work in progress. Here is a summary: