AI & Software
OpenAI DevDay: GPT-6.1 Sol, always-on “Dots”, and Codex reviewing your PRs
GPT-6.1 Sol matches GPT-6 Astra on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark at about a fifth of the price: $2/M input, $0.10/M cached, $10/M output. An “Ultrafast” tier running at about 300 tokens/s is coming to Codex. Codex also gets automatic code review on GitHub/GitLab pull requests, ongoing security scanning of repos, and a refreshed CLI you can steer by voice. Dots are always-on cloud agents that watch feedback, build fixes and hand back a PR with a video demo, checking sensitive actions against permission rules first. The Agents API now supports computer use.
DevDay recap · GPT-6.1 Sol · Dots
Game Dev
Any C++ library in Godot, packaged with Conan
The Conan team shows how to treat godot-cpp and third-party libraries as packages instead of vendoring and rebuilding them for every platform. The Godot API version (4.3–4.7) and the build target (debug/release/editor) become Conan options, and CMake does the compiling. Their example is a GDExtension that uses the flecs ECS library to simulate 100,000 swarm particles. It could be handy if Hot Air ever needs a native physics or wind-field library.
Conan blog
Game Design
Text-to-meowdio: mapping what AI audio models think a cat sounds like
Mark J. Nelson, a procedural-generation researcher, generated 2,100 clips from three open text-to-audio models (Stable Audio Open, EzAudio and TangoFlux) using seven cat prompts, from “cat” to “cat meowing plaintively”. He then plotted them by timbre, pitch and loudness. This is an “expressive range” analysis, a standard PCG method that maps what a generator can actually produce rather than trusting a few good samples. You can click any dot to hear it. The same method works on any generator, including a balloon-level or weather generator.
Mark J. Nelson
Engineering
NASA is quietly trying to get an SR-71 flying again
Aviation Week reports that NASA has moved SR-71A tail 844, on display at Edwards since its last flight in 1999, into the old Space Shuttle hangar. It has also offered jobs to former Blackbird engineers. The problems are large. The engines were meant to be rotated every 90 days and haven’t been turned in decades. The $600 million spares inventory was destroyed in 2007. The special fuel and ground equipment no longer exist. NASA says it has “no additional information”.
Aviation Week
Computing
NAND-16: a whole computer out of 277,248 NAND gates
This is a 16-bit machine simulated in the browser: CPU, memory, a small OS and a Tetris clone called NANDTRIS, all built from one gate type. You can zoom from the CRT-styled screen down to individual full adders in the ALU and watch signals move through them. It’s Nand2Tetris taken all the way and made visible.
NAND-16
Soundtracks
Dario Marianelli’s Wildwood score out 23 October
LAIKA’s new stop-motion feature, directed by Travis Knight and adapted from Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s novel, has a score by Marianelli, who won his Oscar for Atonement (the one with the typewriter used as percussion) and also scored LAIKA’s Kubo and the Two Strings. Decca is releasing 26 tracks, including a new Decemberists song, “The Better Part of Bravery”. It premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, and a LAIKA score is usually worth watching come awards season. Also out this week: a three-track Bill Conti EP for Rocky’s 50th anniversary.
Film Music Reporter · Rocky EP
Science
A 245-million-year-old reptile with its gut still in it
Austronaga minuta was a 60 cm long-necked marine reptile from China’s Middle Triassic. Its stomach, liver and intestines are preserved, making it the oldest largely complete reptile digestive system known. The team used UV photography and mass spectrometry and even found traces of haemoglobin in the liver. The surprise is that, despite being highly specialised for swimming, it had a simple single-chamber stomach, not the two-part stomach of birds and crocodiles. Published in Science Advances.
ScienceDaily
Science
Spiral waves across the cortex, busier during spatial tasks
Joshua Jacobs and Anup Das used high-density intracranial electrodes in epilepsy patients. They found that travelling waves in the cortex come in several shapes: rotating spirals, outward “source” waves and converging “sink” waves. Rotating waves were more common during spatial-memory tasks than verbal ones. Mouse work shows the same patterns. Sceptics such as György Buzsáki think the waves are just a by-product of synaptic activity. Others think they coordinate how the brain reorganises itself from second to second.
Quanta Magazine
F1
Sepang this weekend: lights out 6pm Sunday, Sydney time
The relocated Bahrain GP runs Friday to Sunday at Sepang, F1’s first visit since 2017. Daylight saving starts in NSW early Sunday, so the 3pm local start is 6pm AEDT. Antonelli leads Russell by 66 points, and neither has raced at Sepang before. Piastri is 7th on 120 after finishing outside the points in Baku, though he said he felt closer to his own level there. Expect high tyre wear, two or three stops, and probably afternoon rain.
Sky Sports · McLaren preview
Musicals
Bugsy Malone in Leichhardt, and last call for Fiddler
On Your Feet Australia’s young cast are doing Bugsy Malone, with its custard pies and splurge guns, at the Teatro, Italian Forum, Norton St, from 2–11 October. Shows are Fri 2 at 7pm, Sat 3 matinees, Wed 7, Thu 8, Sat 10 (2pm and 7pm) and Sun 11. Tickets start at $65 through Ticketmaster. Separately, Fiddler on the Roof at the Theatre Royal on King St finishes on Saturday 3 October.
City of Sydney What’s On · Sydney Travel Guide