Rami's Readings #130 - Token-Oriented Object Notation & Nostalgia
The latest on AI, LLMs, Spec-Driven Development, TOON, AI & Canada, the Zune, and more.
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #130 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, papers, videos, and X threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering AI, technology, business, culture, fashion, travel, and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
👋🏼 Welcome New Subscribers
Hello! A hearty thank you for subscribing to Rami's Readings! There are quite a few new subscribers this week, thanks to recommendations from The AI Ethics Brief, Product Byte, and The VC Corner. I am thrilled to have you on board! In this newsletter, I curate the best papers, tweets, and articles I have read during the week focusing on LLMs, AI, economics, business, and technology news. You can learn more about me on my website.
📈 Top Recent Editions According to Substack
🤖 AI Reads
github / spec-kit: 💫Toolkit to Help You Get Started with Spec-Driven Development
Notes: Formal specification documents and RFCs are back! Thought this time for AI. Recently, I’ve been feeling nostalgic of the 90s-00s era of software development. Nostalgia is a weird thing; I find myself looking back fondly at reading RFCs in Vim. I’m even building a TUI app for the first time in a decade. Am I the only one?
Fission-AI / OpenSpec: Spec-Driven Development for AI Coding Assistants
Notes: Open source version of spec-kit (linked above).
The Principles of Diffusion Models
Notes: Textbook on diffusion models.
TabPFN-2.5 Model Report
Notes: SOTA tabular data foundation model.
toon-format / toon: Token-Oriented Object Notation
Notes: Brilliant idea! I am actively investigating this project. Honestly, it’s a useful notation for JSON objects regardless of performance.
Compact, Human-Readable, Schema-Aware JSON for LLM Prompts. Spec, Benchmarks, TypeScript SDK.
Think of TOON as a translation layer: use JSON programmatically, convert to TOON for LLM input.
Code Execution with MCP: Building More Efficient Agents
Notes: Great read from Anthropic.
New Prompt Injection Papers: Agents Rule of Two and The Attacker Moves Second
Notes: From Simon Willison. Another great read!
💼 Business Reads
Louis Têtu: Why Canada Has to Get Artificial Intelligence Right
Notes: Louis is right. Canadian expats are leading the AI revolution around the world. How can we help?
The Men Who Shaped the Internet Won’t Be Able to Fix It
Notes: Brutal review of two recently published books.
Dubai Tops New York as Best Spot for Global Elite, Rankings Show
Notes: Will NYC real estate finally cool off?
Why the Zune Never Killed the iPod
Notes: Someone please rid me of my nostalgia flu! I miss my Nokia Lumia 1020, my Palm, Sony headphones, and the Zune.
🔀 Other Reads
Not So Fast: Analyzing the Performance of WebAssembly vs. Native Code
Notes: I’m not surprised WebAssembly doesn’t match native code. Decades of effort on compiler make them hard to beat. But the fact that it’s not that far off (and far better than JavaScript) is amazing.
Signing off from Redmond, WA.