Topic
Open Source Science
Using open-source tools for scientific research.
12 published pieces
Published work
The Definitive Guide to Free AI Credits and Zero-Cost Developer Inference
A benchmarked, verified ledger of zero-cost developer LLM inference across Google AI Studio, NVIDIA NIM, Groq, Cerebras, SambaNova, OpenRouter stealth pools, and Cloudflare Workers AI, featuring an interactive trading card carousel and fallback mesh architecture.
AI · September 24, 2026Improving Human Improvement with AI
Douglas Engelbart defined bootstrapping as improving how we improve. Empirical findings from Curtis Northcutt’s StudentBench benchmark, El Salvador’s PISA pilot, and Epoch AI’s 92 % annual cost decline demonstrate that AI tutoring matches expert human instruction at 918x lower cost.
Energy & Renewables · September 20, 2026Planetary Terraforming: How Continental Hydrology and Mega-Water Engineering Reshape Climates and Civilizations
Civilization faces intensifying megadroughts, depleted aquifers, and destabilized regional climates. Planetary hydrology offers a permanent civil alternative: harnessing natural tectonic depressions, atmospheric river floods, and gravity-driven water corridors to green deserts, extinguish wildfires, and generate clean baseload energy.
Energy & Renewables · September 20, 2026The Qattara Depression: Terraforming the Sahara with a Solar-Evaporative Inland Sea
Northwest of Cairo lies the Qattara Depression, a 19,600 km² geological basin plunging 133 meters below sea level. Tunneling from the Mediterranean could establish a vast inland sea. Driven by extreme desert evaporation, this civil engineering initiative moderates Saharan heat domes, increases agricultural humidity, and generates firm clean power.
Energy & Renewables · September 20, 2026Depression Hydrology: Restoring the Dead Sea and Salton Sea to Avert Environmental Collapse
The Dead Sea (-430 m) and Salton Sea (-69 m) face existential collapse as river diversions deplete inflows. Beyond hydrostatic energy and desalination assistance, importing marine water is an urgent public health and humanitarian priority: suppressing toxic pesticide dust that harms Imperial Valley children, halting Jordan Valley sinkholes, and securing regional peace.
Energy & Renewables · September 20, 2026California’s Untapped Deluge: Ending Colorado River Reliance and Fireproofing the State via Macro-Water Capture
In wet years, atmospheric rivers dump over 30 million acre-feet of runoff across California, most of which surges unused into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, California draws 4.4 million acre-feet annually from the depleted Colorado River. By capturing 15% of atmospheric river surges through managed aquifer recharge, Tulare Lake basin restoration, and off-stream pumped hydro, California can completely eliminate Colorado River reliance, fireproof its landscape, and revive continental wetlands.
Energy & Renewables · September 20, 2026Greening the Red Heart: Lake Eyre, the Bradfield Scheme, and Australia’s Terraformed Inland Seas
Australia’s arid red interior is shaped by the Lake Eyre Basin, covering one-sixth of the continent. For over a century, engineers have debated cutting a marine canal from Spencer Gulf versus the Bradfield Scheme’s tropical freshwater diversion. We analyze inland microclimate cooling, agricultural drought-proofing, and pumped hydro in the Flinders Ranges.
AI · September 19, 2026$200,000 vs. $200,000,000: The Real Production Economics of AI Feature Animation
Gabriel Olson released a viral two-minute DuckTales trailer with 100+ shots from a two-person team. Charlie Driscoll shipped a 22-minute pilot for Tales of Grimwicke solo in four weeks. Combining empirical logs with video token pricing (such as ByteDance Seedance 2.5), we calculate the exact compute, human labor, and timeline required to produce a 95-minute animated feature for $200,000 to $350,000, disrupting Hollywood’s legacy cost structure.
AI · September 18, 2026Bend 2 and Proof-Blocked AI: What a Law File Actually Buys
Part three of the machine-checked proofs series. Bend 2 moves the kernel-checked loop from mathematics into ordinary code: you declare laws, the AI must prove its changes keep them. We read the site, the paper and the checker, and ran it. The checker held up against every cheat we tried. The laws are still yours to get right, and on launch day nothing but convention guards the file they live in.
AI · September 9, 2026Navier-Stokes Blowup: What a Machine-Checked Singularity Unlocks for Real Engineering
Yesterday’s Navier-Stokes result is part two of the machine-checked proofs series: OpenAI proved smooth forced flow can blow up in finite time, with the full derivation checked in Lean. The equations don’t give you a better pump tomorrow – but the verified lemmas, the blowup guard pattern, and the agent pipeline behind them map directly onto CFD, tidal and pumped-hydro sizing, and home hydronic loops you can test this week.
AI · September 5, 2026The Practical Value of Machine-Checked Proofs
Fermat’s Last Theorem has zero direct industrial utility. But the pipeline that machine-checked its 13 million lines of Lean code demonstrates an operational verification engine for critical software, cryptographic primitives, and hardware design. Here is where the real economic value lands – and how DIY developers and small teams can leverage it today.
AI · March 18, 2026The Dog Cancer Vaccine That Actually Worked – And How You Can Build One
Paul Conyngham built a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for his dog Rosie using AI tools and academic collaboration. The tumor shrank 75%. Here’s what actually happened, how personalized neoantigen vaccines work, and what it would take to replicate the pipeline yourself.