Phil Wheat

Attention — Oct 4, 2026

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

CZM Rewind: Where Did Tech’s Magic Go? feat. Alex Cranz & Michael Fisher

Better Offline · 01:29

Week in review: Sep 27 – Oct 4

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The week’s center of gravity was the money behind the AI boom. A leaked Anthropic S1 prospectus kicked things off on the Pivot to AI channel, and Better Offline — which supplied the bulk of the volume this week as its back catalog rolled through the exporter — made the same ledger from several angles: an $8 billion operating loss on $4.6 billion of 2025 revenue, $413 billion in non-cancellable compute commitments, and revenue concentration so tight that most hyperscaler AI growth traces back to OpenAI and Anthropic spending each other’s money. Whether or not you buy the “bubble bursting” framing, the arithmetic is now public and worth reading against the hype cycle.

Attention — Oct 3, 2026

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Better Offline CES 2025: Day 1

Better Offline · 03:59

Claude Mods - The Biggest Claude Code Upgrade!

Prompt Engineering · 13:00

Attention — Oct 2, 2026

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Microsoft Cuts The Power To AI

Better Offline · 13:58

Monologue: OpenAI Is Getting Desperate

Better Offline · 14:01

How Growth Is Killing Video Games

Better Offline · 14:19

Attention — Oct 1, 2026

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The Hidden Recession Beneath The AI Bubble w/ Paul Kedrosky

Better Offline · 14:46

Monologue: Shut The F*ck Up, Dario!

Better Offline · 14:48

Attention — Sep 30, 2026

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Spec-driven vibe coding, part 2 followup

No place like localhost · 09:20

The video follows the creator’s attempt to implement a large specification for a game resource-loading system using an AI coding agent named Quen. The initial implementation was chaotic because Quen repeatedly exhausted its 64K output limit while thinking through the 400-line spec, producing no code. The creator concluded the spec was too large for a one-shot implementation and added a five-stage…

Attention — Sep 29, 2026

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Spec-driven vibe coding, part 2

No place like localhost · 10:01

In part two of the spec-driven vibe coding series, the creator continues building Dust to Dominion, an outer-space asteroid mining game, by having a local LLM implement a new specification document. He introduces a custom project-level “spec doc review” skill that instructs the model to check the document’s structure, feasibility, clarity, contradictions, missing details, and whether it provides e…

The Autonomous Shopping Cart

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 02:13:33 -0500

PR project to prove out human tracking in crowds, navigation, shopping conceptualization. Demoed at Whole Foods, Microsoft Tech Week, featured on Stephen Fry’s Gadgetman.

This project came out of some of the initial Kinect work that started with the Board of Awesomeness. While the BoA’s research goals were focused on trying to find the limits of Kinect’s capabilities (lighting, vibration, motion, etc), the Cart came out of using the Kinect with a Trossen Robotics Eddie platform to actually do something useful with the Kinect. I wasn’t even the first to do something like this - I remember a Paparazzi bot (I did a check and couldn’t immeidately find the actual details) that would wander around tech conferences and use a DLSR camera to take pictures of people by both navigating around people and detecting faces and taking photos. I assume the DLSR was there to provide higher resolution photos than the Kinect was capable of, but I never managed to chat with the project creator.

Attention — Sep 28, 2026

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

AI voice cloning with BreezeBlue

No place like localhost · 21:27

The video reviews BreezeBlue, also called Breeze TTS 2, a voice-cloning text-to-speech engine suggested by viewers. The creator notes that the project is unusually demanding for a TTS model, recommending at least 12 GB of GPU memory and 24 GB for its faster “fast track” mode, while supporting only English and Chinese. Despite these high requirements, the engine offers several interesting features:…

Week in review: Sep 21 – Sep 28

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

A deliberately light week — two items, and both happen to rhyme. One looks backward at how a technology upended an entertainment industry’s business model; the other argues we’re living through the early days of exactly such an upend, and that the marketing around it obscures what the technology actually does.

About

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

I’m Phil Wheat. I do engineering and consulting work through Singularity Innovations, my LLC — these days mostly around AI-assisted development, data infrastructure, and getting systems to talk to each other.

Attention — Sep 27, 2026

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

LLMs are real, AI is fake

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 19:27

In this episode, Cory Doctorow opens with a rapid tour of his upcoming talks in Edmonton, Cambridge, Brighton, Ohio, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Ireland, and Vancouver Island, using the announcements to emphasize that many events are nominally sold out but often have empty seats. He then reads his Pluralistic essay “LLMs are real, AI is fake,” written after conversations…

Attention — Sep 21, 2026

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

How They Got Us To Pay For Music Again

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 15:05

This episode of How We Got Here examines how Napster transformed the music industry by making recorded music widely available for free through peer-to-peer file sharing. Host Chris Kohler, producer Rob, Osher Gunsberg, and consumer behaviour expert Dr Paul Harrison trace the rise of Napster from a 1999 launch by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning to a cultural phenomenon that let users search for and share…

Attention — Sep 20, 2026

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Technopolitics

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 16:24

In this episode, Cory Doctorow opens with a detailed tour schedule, mentioning upcoming talks in Berkeley, Cambridge, Brighton, Notre Dame, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Kilkenny, and Montreal, as well as plans for his graphic novel Unauthorized Bread. He also shares personal updates, including buying a Framework 13 Pro laptop, praising its repairability and touchscreen while complaining a…

Attention — Sep 18, 2026

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Visit the Sins, Part 02 – CONCLUSION

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 10:49

The second part of Cory Doctorow’s short story “Visit the Sins” follows Sean as he visits a care facility where his grandfather, Bryce, lives among people who have spent much of their lives “switched off.” Sean is researching his family’s history of attention and cognitive disengagement, and he confronts his grandfather about log files showing that Bryce was rarely mentally present during work, ma…

Attention — Sep 17, 2026

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Part 027

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 22:25

This episode is part twenty-seven of Cory Doctorow’s serialized reading of his 2005 novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Doctorow opens with a brief personal update, explaining that he is recording late because his baby has been sick and his day has been disrupted. He mentions upcoming travel to Chicago for a successful production of his play Little Brother, then to Kansas City and La…

Attention — Sep 16, 2026

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Interview with Nigel Beale, critic and rare book specialist

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 21:38

This interview, conducted by Cory Doctorow with rare book specialist and literary critic Nigel Beale, explores how books, bookselling, and copyright are being reshaped by digital technology. The conversation begins with Doctorow’s award-winning novel Little Brother and the idea that publishing is entering a period of permanent technological revolution rather than a temporary transition. The speake…

Attention — Sep 11, 2026

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Automated calls, fraud and the banks: a mismatch made in hell

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 11:14

In this podcast, Cory Doctorow returns from an extensive book tour for Pirate Cinema, mentioning appearances with Margaret Atwood, David Byrne, and William Gibson, a Library of Congress presentation, upcoming events in Copenhagen, Brazil, London, and Toronto, and his work on new writing projects, including a possible sequel to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and a Little Brother-related story. H…

Attention — Sep 10, 2026

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Interview with Taming the Net: “How to preserve the freedom of the internet without letting the internet destroy democracy.”

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 21:31

Attention — Sep 7, 2026

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0500

How IKEA tricks you… over and over

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 11:53

This episode of How We Got Here examines how IKEA became the world’s largest furniture business by combining aggressive strategy, frugal leadership, and consumer psychology. It traces founder Ingvar Kamprad from a poor Swedish farming family and child reseller to the creator of IKEA, whose name comes from his initials and childhood locations. The episode highlights key innovations: a showroom with…

Attention — Aug 24, 2026

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Why Uber Eats Is About To Get Even More Expensive

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 18:11

This episode of How We Got Here with Chris Kohler examines how Uber Eats evolved from a free, experimental food delivery service into an expensive, near-monopolistic platform that squeezes all three parties: customers, restaurants, and delivery workers. The episode traces Uber’s origin in 2009 as a ride-hailing app, then details how in 2014, new ventures lead Jason Droge created ‘Uber Fresh’—a tin…

Attention — Aug 16, 2026

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

How Housing Became So Broken

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 15:55

In this episode of How We Got Here, host Chris Kohler interviews his father, veteran Australian finance journalist Alan Kohler, to dissect the nation’s deepening housing affordability crisis. Structured around a crossword puzzle, the conversation explores the multifaceted drivers of the market, beginning with supply constraints. Alan highlights chronic planning bottlenecks, a severe shortage of…

Attention — Aug 10, 2026

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Why businesses lie about AI

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 05:21

In this podcast episode, Cory Doctorow analyzes Nikhil Suresh’s essay on corporate AI mania, revealing a stark disconnect between executive hype and actual business utility. Despite widespread claims that AI is transforming industries, Suresh’s consulting data shows near-zero success rates for enterprise AI projects. Instead of delivering value, AI adoption is driven by a culture of fear and perfo…

Attention — Jul 27, 2026

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The Toxic Economy of Gaming

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 18:30

This episode examines the evolution of the video game industry’s monetization strategies, tracing its shift from early arcade coin-operated machines and paid home consoles to today’s internet-driven microtransaction ecosystems. The hosts explain how online connectivity transformed games into persistent marketplaces, enabling developers to generate massive recurring revenue through pay-to-win mecha…

Attention — Jul 26, 2026

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Post-political

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 14:29

Cory Doctorow outlines a busy schedule of upcoming events, including appearances at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Australia’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and UK book promotions for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. He highlights the book’s bestseller status and details his publishing pipeline, which includes upcoming non-fiction titles like The Post-American Internet…

Attention — Jul 16, 2026

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Why Are All Our Movies Ads Now?

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 13:46

This episode explores the history, mechanics, and cultural impact of product placement in film and television. Host Chris Kohler and producer Rob trace the practice back to 1930s American radio, where soap companies like Procter & Gamble pioneered serialized dramas to sell household goods, effectively coining the term “soap opera.” As media evolved, product placement adapted, becoming particularly…

Attention — Jul 6, 2026

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Zuckerberg’s increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 07:21

In this podcast episode, Cory Doctorow shares personal updates before analyzing Meta’s aggressive legal campaign against former executive Sarah Wynn Williams. Doctorow begins by announcing he is cancer-free, celebrates the success of his recent books, and outlines his upcoming speaking tour. He then transitions to the core topic: Meta’s extreme efforts to silence Williams, author of the bestsellin…

Attention — Jul 1, 2026

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Hang on… was Tupperware a pyramid scheme?

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 07:18

This episode explores the surprising history behind Tupperware, revealing how the iconic brand’s success was driven not by its inventor, Earl Tupper, but by Brownie Wise, a charismatic saleswoman who revolutionized direct marketing. After Earl Tupper developed the airtight plastic container in 1946, it struggled to sell through traditional retail. Brownie Wise, a former secretary and union organiz…

Attention — Jun 25, 2026

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI launch at Kepler’s Books with Angie Coiro

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 07:01

In this discussion at Kepler’s Books, author and activist Cory Doctorow, interviewed by Angie Coiro, explores the core arguments of his book The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. Doctorow frames the current AI boom as a classic economic bubble designed to transfer wealth from ordinary savers to corporate insiders. He explains that as tech monopolies saturate their markets, they can no lo…

Attention — Jun 16, 2026

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Ryanair: How The Bad Guy Won

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 02:29

This episode of How We Got Here explores the rise of Ryanair and CEO Michael O’Leary, examining how the airline revolutionized air travel through ruthless cost-cutting and the widespread adoption of “drip pricing.” Originally founded in 1985, the airline struggled financially until O’Leary took over and implemented a hyper-efficient, no-frills model inspired by Southwest Airlines. He stripped away…

Attention — Jun 14, 2026

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The world has moved on

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 17:47

In this episode, Cory Doctorow opens with personal updates about his upcoming book tour, finishing copy edits for The Post-American Internet, and his daughter’s summer visit, before transitioning to a featured blog post titled “The World Has Moved On.” Using Douglas Adams’ generational tech observations as a starting point, Doctorow examines the widespread modern frustration with declining consume…

Attention — Jun 8, 2026

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The age of vapor

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 18:08

In this episode of the Cory Doctorow Podcast, Doctorow opens with an extensive global tour schedule for his book The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, covering events across North America, Europe, and Australia, while noting several sold-out or free shows. He shares personal updates about returning to Los Angeles, managing household entropy like a broken washing machine and e-bike chain, a…

Attention — Jun 1, 2026

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0500

How Kodak Engineered Its Own Demise (Literally)

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 17:05

This episode of “How We Got Here” re-examines the rise and fall of Kodak, challenging the common narrative that the company failed due to corporate blindness or incompetence. Host Chris Kohler traces Kodak’s origins to George Eastman, who revolutionized photography by creating an affordable, user-friendly film system backed by an exceptionally profitable “razor-and-blades” business model, with fil…

Attention — May 21, 2026

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Kellogg’s: The Disturbing Reason Corn Flakes Exist

How We Got Here with Chris Kohler · 11:34

This podcast episode explores the surprisingly dark and bizarre origins of Kellogg’s cornflakes, tracing them back to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his Seventh-day Adventist health retreat, the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. Driven by strict religious and moral beliefs, Kellogg viewed masturbation as a severe threat to physical and mental health, prescribing bland vegetarian diets to suppress…

Attention — Apr 22, 2026

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Privacy Without Monopoly: Data Protection and Interoperability (Part 2)

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 10:06

In this podcast episode, Cory Doctorow continues his serialization of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) white paper, “Privacy Without Monopoly,” co-authored with Bennett Cyphers. Following personal updates regarding upcoming speaking engagements, book launches, and a planned vacation, Doctorow focuses on Sections 3.2 and 4 of the document, which outline specific legislative mandates designe…

Attention — Apr 20, 2026

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Twiddler

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 14:24

In this podcast episode, Cory Doctorow reads his Medium column “Twiddler,” expanding on his theory of “inshittification.” He argues that digital platforms differ from analog businesses not because tech founders are uniquely evil, but because technology allows them to instantly alter rules, prices, and algorithms—a process he calls “twiddling.” Unlike physical stores that require manual price chang…

Attention — Apr 16, 2026

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Unpersoned

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 21:50

In this episode, Cory Doctorow returns from a month-long hiatus, recounting recent travels and the CrowdStrike incident that stranded him in Chicago. He outlines upcoming appearances at DEFCON, Burning Man, and various book events, while announcing news about his upcoming novels, including a graphic novel adaptation of his “In Shittification” work. The core of the episode features Doctorow reading…

Attention — Apr 9, 2026

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

The Post-American Internet (39C3, Hamburg, Dec 28)

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com · 19:15

In this 39C3 speech, author and activist Cory Doctorow outlines a strategic vision for a “Post-American Internet” driven by the global repeal of anti-circumvention laws. Doctorow argues that for 25 years, activists have fought a losing battle against the “war on general purpose computing,” where laws like the DMCA criminalize modifying digital devices without manufacturer permission. However, he p…

LLMs today

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:58:14 -0600

One of the actual exciting parts about moving to a new adventure is you get to look up from the day to day stuff and figure out what else is going on in the industry/world. Since I had been coaching teams on LLM/Copilot dev tool adoption, and that’s all the rage right now - I decided to do a bit more digging into the current possibilities. Not Vibe Coding, not Autocomplete, but something that can hopefully fit into that spot where templates and wizards used to fit.

Old Projects

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 02:11:09 -0500

I thought to start things off, I’ll do a series of posts on some old projects I’ve done. This will hopefully set the stage a bit about what I do, as well as test the behavior of the site, and maybe entertain you a bit.

The Briefings of the Mad Colonel

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 19:52:55 -0500

John Boyd was famously part of the Fighter Mafia (a counter to the Bomber Mafia of the time.) He did pioneering work in Energy Warfare, but is probably best well known for his work on the OODA loop, which can be a bit high level, but can also be applied in quite a few environments.

Internet in a Box

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:49:50 -0500

This is a GitHub project I ran across that allows you to set up an offline cache of documents.

Read the full project

Welcome to my corner of the Internet

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 09:59:22 -0500

After a LONG time coming, I’ve finally gotten around to putting up this limited site.

Why did it take so long? I always have more projects than time. And what projects I do have tend to expand to fill (and exceed) time. The joys of projects of discovery, If you do them right, there’s always more to do.

Tim Hunkin's YouTube Channel

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 10:54:52 -0600

Tim Hunkin does some incredible work with down-to-earth explanations of how everyday things work.

Watch the channel