• Diffusion-based LLMs (e.g., Inception Labs’ “Mercury Coder”) may upend conventional hardware advice by allowing large models to be run on modest GPUs with weights streamed from system RAM or NVMe, trading repeated passes for lower VRAM requirements.

• Aider-AI issue #1018 (GitHub link shared) documents a practical experiment in which an AI coding assistant was coaxed into revealing its system prompt, illustrating ongoing cat-and-mouse efforts to extract hidden LLM instructions.

• MIT’s free online “Hyperbook” on Patrikalakis-Maekawa-Cho geometric modeling and the open-source csgrs Rust crate (GitHub link) were highlighted as foundational resources for computational geometry and constructive solid geometry in hardware design workflows.

• Sesame’s research page “Crossing the Uncanny Valley of Voice” (with live demo) showcases new neural TTS that reportedly eliminates the audible uncanny valley, suggesting near-human synthetic speech is now achievable.

• A CNN article about a Connecticut high-school graduate who claims she was awarded a diploma despite being illiterate was cited as a striking real-world example of systemic educational failure, prompting discussion on the implications for human-capital measurement and enhancement.