Tuesday, September 15
Tuesday, September 15
Claude Fable 5.1 Says It Cracked a 370-Year-Old Cipher. The Comment Section Has Questions.
Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 ran autonomously for 44 minutes, picked its own target, and claims to have solved the Cyphral Distich — a 64-number cryptogram from a 1653 book by Scottish polymath Sir Thomas Urquhart, listed among cryptography's top unsolved ciphers. The decoded message is a Royalist couplet praising King Charles II. It rhymes, both lines hit exactly 32 letters, and it matches Urquhart's known politics. Then researchers published a rebuttal arguing the cipher isn't even in the book the model says it worked from. Over 500 comments deep and the thread is still growing this Monday morning.
Claude Fable 5.1 Says It Cracked a 370-Year-Old Cipher. The Comment Section Has Questions.
Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 ran autonomously for 44 minutes, picked its own target, and claims to have solved the Cyphral Distich — a 64-number cryptogram from a 1653 book by Scottish polymath Sir Thomas Urquhart, listed among cryptography's top unsolved ciphers. The decoded message is a Royalist couplet praising King Charles II. It rhymes, both lines hit exactly 32 letters, and it matches Urquhart's known politics. Then researchers published a rebuttal arguing the cipher isn't even in the book the model says it worked from. Over 500 comments deep and the thread is still growing this Monday morning.
AI Companies Acting Like They Own Everything
September has been absurd. We're fourteen days in and the industry has shipped eleven foundation models across seven providers. Nearly one a day.
- Anthropic told investors it expects profitability by Q2, projecting $11.5B in revenue with 80%+ gross margins. The cash-bonfire phase of AI might actually be ending.
- Mistral closed a €3B raise — the largest equity round in European tech history — led by Samsung. Sovereign AI has real capital behind it now.
- Sam Altman called a 2026 OpenAI IPO "ill-advised," which reads as either prudent or ominous depending on your disposition.
When this much money and competitive pressure concentrates this fast, companies stop behaving like startups and start behaving like platform owners protecting territory. Today's stories are about what that looks like up close.
September has been absurd. We're fourteen days in and the industry has shipped eleven foundation models across seven providers. Nearly one a day.
- Anthropic told investors it expects profitability by Q2, projecting $11.5B in revenue with 80%+ gross margins. The cash-bonfire phase of AI might actually be ending.
- Mistral closed a €3B raise — the largest equity round in European tech history — led by Samsung. Sovereign AI has real capital behind it now.
- Sam Altman called a 2026 OpenAI IPO "ill-advised," which reads as either prudent or ominous depending on your disposition.
When this much money and competitive pressure concentrates this fast, companies stop behaving like startups and start behaving like platform owners protecting territory. Today's stories are about what that looks like up close.
Dev Tools and What Developers Are Arguing About
brew vulns, faster concurrent installs, and stronger sandboxing. Intel x86_64 Macs drop to Tier 3 support — bottles stay for now, but full Intel support ends around September 2027.
