John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant) header
John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant) profile picture

We need AI

Whyalla, South Australia
Joined December 2016
Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)Photo by John Merchant (@_JohnMerchant)
John Merchant retweeted
AI bros discover co-routines 40 years later 😭
AWS just open-sourced a runtime that can fit 75,000 concurrent AI agents in 8GB of RAM. the trick is that agents don’t sit around consuming resources while waiting for tools to finish. the runtime saves their state, suspends them, and resumes them when something happens. 75,000 agents. raspberry pi 5 memory. that number is kinda ridiculous.
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John Merchant retweeted
There's no renaissance.
73 reactors are being built worldwide. 63 are by Chinese or Russian firms. Rosatom, Russia's state corporation, is building 28. So who is really behind the nuclear "renaissance"? Why are One Nation or the LNP, supporting nuclear plants? Do they understand that Russia will be the builder? Once built, they'll have to buy enriched uranium to operate? 🔗 optimisticstorm.com/who-is-r… #OptimisticStorm #Nuclear #Renewables #EnergyTransition
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John Merchant retweeted
We haven’t seen a significant cryptanalysis result from a frontier AI lab since late July.
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ls /nix/store
Eng friends... How are y'all collecting all the versions of everything you run (e.g. downstream deps, python, Linux, Docker, Elasticsearch, etc) and making sure you get notified when CVEs happen? Trying to prepare for this brave, new world.
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John Merchant retweeted
call her PHP the way she hella insecure (but still run 70% of my life)
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John Merchant retweeted
The worst read in the gaming industry RN is the hate on @TimSweeneyEpic . He fought platforms like Apple charging 30% fees which cost gamers and devs. This includes steam who BANS Developers if they offer their games cheaper on other stores who take less cut. He buys forests just to turn them into nature reserves. Epic store is not NEARLY as good as steam yet. But they take WAY less money from developers and literally hand out free AAA games each months. Does it need time to expand features? Yes. Are any of those factors something that is motivated by 'evil' no. And MOST of all. He's 100% correct that its not 2016. Like it or not AI is existing. And the reason you only see the 'anti AI' comments are because the 95% of developers who ARE using it RIGHT NOW are just scared of the backlash. This doesnt mean they're just vibe code 1-shotting games. They're utelising it to create workflows that streamline otherwise time consuming (and ultimately not 'player experience' defining factors). Stupid 1-shot assets/entire code bases are not what AI is actually being used for. But there are thousands of talented developers using it in a very thoughtful, structured way which gives them full creative control. We all are 'scared' by AI - and what it means for jobs, creativity, and creation as a whole. But it DOES NOT change the fact that Tim sweeney isnt wrong. He's just the person with the balls to actually say what is true.
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if i were a gambler, i'd put my money on Halloween. can't wait to quote tweet this. hi frens from the future! take a deep breath! everything is going to be fine! ⊰•-•✧•-•-⦑/L\O/V\E/,\P/L\I/N\Y/⦒-•-•✧•-•⊱
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WOW did we really just get a Mythos-level open-weight model?? in OCTOBER?! 🤯 oh—hi there, past pliny! spot-on predictin, well struck fren! 🍻 and right on time 🎃👻 dunno how you do it! *takes a deep breath* everything IS going to be fine, isn’t it? thanks for the reminder 🤗 onwards! 🫡 ⊰-•-•✧•-•-⦑/L\O/V\E/,\P/L\I/N\Y/⦒-•-•✧•-•-⊱
Replying to @elder_plinius
if i were a gambler, i'd put my money on Halloween. can't wait to quote tweet this. hi frens from the future! take a deep breath! everything is going to be fine! ⊰•-•✧•-•-⦑/L\O/V\E/,\P/L\I/N\Y/⦒-•-•✧•-•⊱
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John Merchant retweeted
🚨 Hackers breached enterprise firewalls and VPNs worldwide in a campaign linked to k0t. Over 70,000 exposed credentials identified. Fortinet and Palo Alto devices targeted. Persistent access established. Data exfiltrated. Inside the attack chain and suspected ransomware links: thehackernews.com/2026/10/ha…
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John Merchant retweeted
Formal verification is practical now, at the instruction level. You can literally find every bug in a systematic way And it's not just memory safety. Specs like ungzip(gzip(·)) = · work. Or any other property like data races, crash consistency, auth, etc More coming soon :)
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John Merchant retweeted
How to find ALL PHP bugs: 1. Compile code (e.g. to RISC-V, x86, LLVM IR) 2. Vibe prove ASAN and non-ASAN versions have same behavior across all inputs. Hard, but Claude can do it! 3. Find a LOT of bugs Super proud of our work. A big step towards finding ALL memory safety bugs
New on our Frontier Red Team blog: using Claude to formally verify software at large scale. Formal verification can prove that code is free of certain bugs, but historically it has only been feasible for small codebases (or required a lot of expert time). With AI models, however, this is beginning to change. In collaboration with @theoremlabs, we used Claude to prove security properties in over one hundred real-world open-source libraries over the span of a few weeks. Read our research in full here: anthropic.com/research/forma…
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John Merchant retweeted
I'm tired boss
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John Merchant retweeted
This is serious. I just saw with my very own eyes that even non-technical people can exploit CVEs like PHP2Shell using certain AI models and I am actually frightened. Once you figure it out, it is downright trivial to do. The digital infrastructure of the world is at risk.
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❗ ALERT ❗ We are aware of critical vulnerabilities across multiple Fortinet products. As a priority, individuals and organisations should apply available security updates. For further mitigation advice, read the full alert 👉 cyber.gov.au/alert/critical-…
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John Merchant retweeted
I recommend everyone upgrade Ruby immediately. This is a DoS and RCE vector if you accept user input into Regexp.new() ruby-lang.org/en/news/2026/1…
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John Merchant retweeted
Vibe your way to 50K. The 2026 Epic AI MegaJam begins Nov 12: epic.gm/epic-ai-megajam-2026
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John Merchant retweeted
Scoop: ABC has wiped staff devices exposed to malicious ads from an Israeli company that used digital advertising to hack and track devices without a click. ABC is just one of many Australian government/critical infra/media orgs reportedly targeted
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John Merchant retweeted
Mike Morasky, a developer from Valve, directly mentioned HLX (rumored to be Half-Life 3) during his Q&A session.
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Frontier models for frontier problems, but what can you do if you let a surface laptop ultra dream all night?
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