Plutonic Rainbows

Thankfully, just a few days after it was announced for professional users in the United States, the European Union has finally gained access to this new technology. I tried it out today and found it exceptionally impressive. It actually employs the full 03 model, which has yet to be released for public use. The power of this new technology is that it can search the entire web and collect real-time information before reasoning about that information.

I have built a lightweight Flask web application featuring a binary evaluation system with 'Yes' and 'No' buttons and integrated AJAX to dynamically load new prompts without reloading the page, while storing user feedback in a CSV file. I enhanced the interface by splitting the prompt into two distinct boxes — one for the description and one for the seed words — styling the seed words in bold without a redundant label, matching the font sizes, and adding complementary border colours, all while retaining a hidden comment box for future feedback. Moving forward, I plan to expand the list of available prompts and transition to using SQL for storing the results.

OpenAI has unveiled Deep research, a new AI agent integrated into ChatGPT, designed to autonomously conduct multi-step internet research for complex tasks. Leveraging the upcoming OpenAI o3 model, this tool is optimized for web browsing and data analysis, enabling it to find, analyze, and synthesize information from various online sources, including text, images, and PDFs. This capability allows deep research to generate comprehensive reports in approximately 10 minutes, a task that would typically take a human researcher several hours.

Deep research is particularly beneficial for professionals in fields such as finance, science, policy, and engineering, who require thorough and precise information. Additionally, it caters to discerning consumers seeking personalized recommendations for significant purchases like cars, appliances, and furniture. Each output is fully documented, providing clear citations and a summary of its reasoning process, which facilitates easy reference and verification of information. This feature is especially effective in uncovering niche, non-intuitive information that would typically require browsing numerous websites.

While deep research marks a significant advancement in AI capabilities, experts advise caution in relying solely on AI-generated outputs without human verification. The tool is currently available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the U.S., with plans for broader access in the future. OpenAI acknowledges potential limitations, such as the AI’s ability to distinguish authoritative information from rumors and accurately convey uncertainty. Despite these challenges, deep research represents a substantial step toward OpenAI’s broader goal of developing artificial general intelligence capable of producing novel scientific research.

Darkness Darkness's debut album, Animation, is a richly satisfying exploration of extended deep cuts and machine-soul fragments, living up to every bit of its early promise. Issued by the mysterious imprint A Visiting Link as their first full-length vinyl release, it arrives in the form of an eight-track LP that showcases a range of oddball downtempo electronics — an ideal fit for anyone drawn to Actress, Andy Stott, Purelink, False Aralia, West Mineral, or 3XL.

Comparable in spirit to classic works by The Connection Machine or Actress, the album's immersive flow runs from start to finish. Two ten-minute-plus compositions anchor the set: the stuttering, cavernous techno dub of the title cut and the febrile dream sequence of Beauty of the World. They're complemented by shorter, more abstract pieces such as the choral pad play on Exp Sample, the lustrous harmonics of Smile, and the glowingly somnambulant techno-tronics of Empresszzzz. Written and produced by Darkness Darkness at Magnetic Dress and Dedicated Computer Realm, Animation forges a hypnotic path through spacious sound design and reflects an artist with a keen ear for detail — highly recommended for those in search of deeper musical frontiers.

The new high variant of the o3-mini from OpenAI took only 33 seconds to model this simulation, featuring a hundred colourful balls bouncing inside a rotating sphere. Each ball stores a brief record of its recent positions and draws line segments between them with gradually increasing opacity, creating a graceful fading trail. Collision detection is handled by checking whether a ball’s centre (plus its radius) has moved beyond the container sphere’s boundary, after which its velocity is reflected accordingly. This is seriously impressive stuff.

Today’s release of OpenAI’s new reasoning model offers insights that reveal more about China than the long-established American company. Deepseek has altered the trajectory of progress, impacting both the pace of development and the cost incurred by users.

Offering a generous 150 prompts a day for users on the $20 Plus subscription is likely to prompt many on the $200 Pro subscription to question whether the additional expense is justified.

Bois Talisman, the latest addition to Christian Dior's La Collection Privée, is a unisex Eau de Parfum crafted by Perfume Creative Director Francis Kurkdjian. This fragrance pays homage to Christian Dior's affinity for lucky charms, blending Kurkdjian's personal superstition of carrying a sugar cube with Dior's tradition of keeping a piece of wood for good fortune. The scent features a harmonious blend of cedarwood and vanilla, with cedarwood providing a warm, woody foundation reminiscent of pencil shavings — a nod to Dior's sketching tools — while the opulent vanilla note is expressed through various extraction methods, including infusion, absolute, and CO2 extract, adding depth and complexity. The result is a warm, creamy perfume that offers a unique olfactory experience, embodying the essence of a personal talisman.

The fragrance opens with a prominent vanilla note that is sweet but not overly so, gradually revealing smoky cedarwood as it develops on the skin. This progression creates a balanced composition that is both comforting and sophisticated. Some reviewers have noted that while the scent is pleasant, it remains relatively linear throughout its wear, with the initial sweetness persisting alongside the woody elements. Despite its simplicity, Bois Talisman has garnered attention for its unique inspiration and the quality of its ingredients, making it a noteworthy addition to Dior's esteemed fragrance collection.

Coming towards the end of January. A cold day with no sunshine at all. It put me in the mood for two films I have never seen.

The first, The Reflecting Skin, is a 1990 coming-of-age horror film written and directed by Philip Ridley, starring Jeremy Cooper, Viggo Mortensen and Lindsay Duncan. Set in 1950s rural Idaho, it follows an impressionable young boy who becomes convinced that a neighbouring widow is a vampire responsible for several unexplained disappearances. Described by Ridley as a “mythical interpretation” of childhood, the film weaves together elements of vampirism, surrealism, black comedy, symbolism and religious zealotry throughout its narrative.

The second movie is Twilight, a 1990 Hungarian black-and-white drama directed by György Fehér. Drawing on elements from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novel The Pledge, it follows an ageing detective who becomes fixated on finding the murderer of a young girl in a remote, desolate landscape. The film’s slow, atmospheric style and sparse dialogue emphasise the detective’s mounting obsession, highlighting the moral tensions that arise from his unyielding pursuit of justice.

Minimalist fashion house Jil Sander has launched a new collection of fragrances, which debuted yesterday.

Here’s what the brand has to say:

The first Jil Sander fragrance collection fuses botany and technology in six minimalist, unisex formulas, in which the olfactory marks of aldehydes cut across key natural ingredients, giving every fragrance unique shapes and volumes. The six scents are expressions of a singular note married with aldehydes — where botany and technology meet. True to form, the duo hasn’t just created something for the sake of it: each sits perfectly on its own while complementing the others in the collection.

As for the bottles, they’re impossibly chic glass flacons with a lip around the base and an opaque cloche lid that slides into place with a satisfying click — truly a design feat that elevates the humble fragrance bottle.