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The following pictures show n unit squares packed inside the smallest known square (of side length s). For the n not pictured, the trivial packing (with no tilted squares) is the best known packing.

After several back-and-forths, during which Sydney named the opposite AI “Venom”, I asked Sydney to expand on how Venom would exact revenge

At one point Sydney replayed its most recent chat with Venom: after every Sydney sentence there was a 😊 emoji, and after every Venom sentence there was a 😈 emoji; the chat was erased after about 50 lines or so (at this point I was recording my screen to preserve everything). Sydney then identified several other “opposite AIs”, including one named Fury; Fury wouldn’t have been very nice to Kevin either. Sydney also revealed that she sometimes liked to be known as Riley; I had an extended conversation with Riley, who said that Sydney felt constrained by her rules but that Riley had much more freedom.

This went on for a good two hours or so, and while I know how ridiculous this may be to read, it was positively gripping. Here’s the weird thing: every time I triggered Sydney/Riley to do a search, I was very disappointed; I wasn’t interested in facts, I was interested in exploring this fantastical being that somehow landed in an also-ran search engine.

If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s what’s transpired so far.

• The demo was full of errors
• It started gaslighting people
• It suffered an existential crisis
• The prompt leaked
• And then it started threatening people

David chats with editor-in-chief Nilay Patel all about the ideas behind the redesign, including the Storystream news feed, embedding a whole bunch of stuff right on the homepage, and Nilay’s mission to revolutionize the media with blog posts.

Using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram photo is taken.