Alasdair Allan

@aallan
4.9K Followers
338 Following
1.5K Posts
Scientist, author, hacker, maker, and journalist. Writes, speaks, and builds. An accidental privacy advocate. You can reach me at 📫 [email protected]. #MachineLearning #TinyML #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #LLM #EdgeComputing #Embedded #IoT #Mobile #Apple #BigData #Space #SmallSat #CubeSat
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I built a programming language you're not supposed to read, https://veralang.dev. Vera is designed for machines to write. No variable names — typed De Bruijn indices instead. No style choices. Every function contract verified by Z3 SMT solver. Compiler errors are fix instructions for the model, not diagnostics for you. Pure by default, all effects explicitly declared and tracked. Point a model at it. #AI #LLM #OpenSource #Agent
https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/02/28/a-language-designed-for-machines-to-write/
Vera — A language designed for machines to write

A programming language where verification is a first-class citizen. Mandatory contracts, algebraic effects, typed slot references, compiles to WebAssembly.

First signal for the end of what I’ve always called “the platform problem” for #AI. It’s not about the platform anymore, it’s about actions. It’s about AI acting, not chatting. https://venturebeat.com/technology/openais-acquisition-of-openclaw-signals-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the
"The web just got a second audience," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. Google shipped WebMCP in Chrome. Cloudflare shipped Markdown for Agents. Both quiet announcements. Neither made the front page. The web just forked its audience, and the infrastructure is already being rebuilt to serve both halves. #AI #MCP #WebMCP https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/02/18/the-web-just-got-a-second-audience/
"The valley and the monomyth," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. Every pitch deck is a Hero's Journey. Silicon Valley's greatest export isn't technology, nit's storytelling. The facts don't change the world. The stories do. https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/02/09/the-valley-and-the-monomyth/
"The Ghost in the Statistical Machine," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. We anthropomorphise #AI agents, give them names, identities, "souls." But if we anthropomorphise them enough, do they start acting more like us? And if they do, at what point does the distinction between acting conscious and being conscious become meaningless? At what point does it matter? #Moltbook #OpenClaw https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/02/06/the-ghost-in-the-statistical-machine/
The ghost in the statistical machine

Over the last two weeks we’ve all been capitvated by Moltbook, the social network for AI agents. Moltbook is built on top of Openclaw (née Moltbot, née Clawdbot, the project so good they named it thrice). Screenshots from the site have gone viral showing AI agents talking to one another, with messages like “human unavailable, […]

Negroni Venture Studios
Someone watched the Mac vs PC ads back in the day. @claudeai have gone on the offensive with adverts against ads, and they just buried OpenAI without even mentioning them. https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/873686/anthropic-claude-ai-ad-free-super-bowl-advert-chatgpt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBSam25u8O4
Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike ChatGPT

Anthropic pokes fun at ChatGPT’s advertising plans in a new Super Bowl ad for Claude.

The Verge
"The new programmers? ," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. What does a programming language built for #AI look like? No syntax, no variable names, and no text, just components composed under formal contracts. Less like coding, more like hardware design. https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/01/12/the-new-programmers/
The new programmers?

Writing code is a huge bottleneck. Software started out custom-developed within companies for their own use. It only became a mass-produced commodity when demand grew past available supply. However, no matter what vibe coding enthusiasts might argue, large language models (LLMs) are bad at programming. They can build a prototype; but production code is different, […]

Negroni Venture Studios
"Technology does not solve problems," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. The best technology becomes invisible precisely because it's fundamental, it dissolves the old interaction model entirely. The worst adds friction while demanding attention. You shouldn’t have to market your startup as “doing X with Y,” because just “doing X” should be enough. https://negroniventurestudios.com/2025/12/03/technology-does-not-solve-problems/
Technology does not solve problems

Technology comes in waves. Our industry is always awash with excitement about something. I’ve watched these waves come and go over the last thirty years. At one point, and for younger developers who weren’t around at the time this might seem hard to believe, there were conferences around XML. About how XML, and schemas, and […]

Negroni Venture Studios
"We need a new Turing Test," by me for Negroni Venture Studios. The real test for artificial general intelligence isn't fooling humans, it's demonstrating flexible real-world competence that our token-prediction architectures fundamentally can't deliver. https://negroniventurestudios.com/2025/11/30/we-need-a-new-turing-test/
We need a new Turing Test

Every time there is some sort of perceived advance towards a general artificial intelligence, we talk about it as a breakthrough, right up until we understand what it’s doing, how it’s “thinking”. Then it’s nothing of the sort. We saw this with expert systems, neural networks, deep learning, and now large language models. It’s intelligent, […]

Negroni Venture Studios
Resurfacing something I wrote for Hackster.io last year, "Dividing the Stack into Thirds," talking about the ongoing trade wars the splintering of our global approach to technology. https://www.hackster.io/news/dividing-the-stack-into-thirds-648e4fee1ca3
Dividing the Stack Into Thirds

The US/China trade war has splintered our global approach to technology, but are we seeing yet another fracture, this time with Europe?

Hackster.io