A Lighter Blog
Twenty years ago, Cameron Moll made the case for realigning a site instead of redesigning it. I finally took that advice because of Claude Code.
Andrew Maddox
AI news, analysis and practice from inside higher ed. Daily AI briefings as well as some longer form essays and experiments.
Essays
How I Used AI to Build a Custom WordPress Theme in a Weekend
I used AI (Claude Opus 5.5) to build a custom WordPress theme in a weekend — about 10 minutes of hands-on time versus the 20 hours it used to take.
On Meta’s Shift to AI
John Gruber muses on Meta's new AI strategy: There are four big players in consumer AI: Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I don’t think Zuckerberg mentioned any of the others…
Zuckerberg and AI
Mark Zuckerberg’s newest manifesto casts him as a defender of the individual against concentrated technological power. He argues that “superintelligence” should be widely distributed, enabling people to create, compete, and…
Municipal Budget Cuts, Property Taxes, and Data Centers
The Dallas Morning News recently posted an article about Dallas reducing park-related expenses from its upcoming city budget: The Dallas Park and Recreation Department has made limited progress toward its…
Apple AI
Last week, Apple hosted its annual developer conference, WWDC. The keynote presentation started with new controls for parents to help them establish guidelines for their kids. I was surprised by…
The EU’s The trillion-click mistake
While you read this, Europeans will click roughly seven million cookie banners. This is a follow-up post to my earlier thoughts on Apple AI and the EU. This post was…
Apple AI & the EU
From John Gruber: There’s a lot to unpack here, including more background information — and on-the-record statements — from a briefing Apple held Tuesday that I was invited to at Apple Park. But the…
On Hantavirus Quarantines
From the NY Times: An American exposed to the deadly hantavirus while on a cruise from Argentina said on Monday that she was not being allowed to leave a federal…
Jack Dorsey’s Predictions, Block and Layoffs
Earlier this week, Block, makers of Square, Cash App, Afterpay, etc., announced layoffs of 40% of their staff while leaning into AI programming. This isn’t a small company, mind you,…
Briefings
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Anthropic has filed to go public, and the IPO is shaping up as a referendum on the whole AI boom. The S-1 shows $16.3 billion in first-half revenue alongside an $80.7 billion net loss, though most of that loss is a one-time charge. Meanwhile, Meta may raise up to $95 billion in stock and SpaceX just announced a $40 billion debt deal. The AI buildout is getting expensive, and capital markets are starting to feel it.
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AI-assisted research uncovered two critical PHP flaws that could let unauthenticated attackers run code on servers, putting software used by roughly 70% of websites at risk. PHP rushed out fixes after exploit details began circulating, and organizations are patching or taking systems offline. The incident also reflects a wider rise in AI-enabled attacks that can help adversaries find and exploit weaknesses faster.
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Anthropic’s possible IPO dominated a week of extraordinary scale and mounting risk: it told investors quarterly revenue reached $16.8 billion as it weighs a $100 billion offering at a valuation near $2 trillion. Microsoft’s withdrawal from Nscale’s planned U.K. data-center site after power delays showed how infrastructure bottlenecks and debt could undermine AI returns. Anthropic also pushed Claude toward autonomous office work with Duet, while Meta and Apple enabled local use of Muse Spark Open across costly Mac Studios. Security concerns sharpened, from an alleged insider-bugging case to Jamie Dimon’s warning that cyber risk is now “by far” the biggest risk.
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Meta’s Muse Spark Open brings an 816-billion-parameter model for coding and multi-step tasks to Mac users, with Apple helping optimize it through MLX. While Chinese open weight models, this new…
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Anthropic told investors quarterly revenue reached $16.8 billion, up 45% from the prior quarter, as it prepares for a possible IPO that could raise up to $100 billion and test…
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Parents are turning to AI assistants for calendars, school reminders and household tasks, and a recent survey found two-thirds say the tools ease their mental load. Elsewhere, AI is absorbing…