Notes from the field

AI engineering, cloud architecture, and the judgment calls that don't fit in a resume bullet.

August 21, 2026

Claude Academy: Anthropic's Free Learning Hub for Working and Building with AI

Anthropic launched a free learning platform to teach AI fluency and hands-on Claude development — from the 4D framework to the Claude API, RAG, MCP and beyond.

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August 13, 2026

AWS SimuLearn Badges: Free, Verifiable Proof of Hands-On Cloud Skills

AWS now issues official badges for completing SimuLearn learning plans — immersive training where you talk to AI-powered virtual customers, build in a live AWS environment, and get validated on real work.

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August 12, 2026

Grok 4.6: xAI's New Frontier Model for Long-Running Agents

xAI released Grok 4.6, a reasoning-focused frontier model that matches GPT-5.6 Sol on composite intelligence benchmarks — built for long-running agents, coding, and turning ideas into working apps.

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August 11, 2026

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: Nvidia's Open Model for Specialized Agents

Nvidia open-sourced a lightweight model designed to run inside AI agents for code review, billing, and security monitoring — while reportedly building an even bigger Nemotron 4.

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August 10, 2026

Muse Glimmer: Meta's Open Model for Local AI Agents

Meta open-sourced a 30B model built for always-on local agent workflows — and it runs on a single consumer GPU.

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August 9, 2026

Building This Portfolio: A Pixel Terminal in Next.js

How this site came together — VT323 typography, an ASCII robot that blinks, a bilingual switch, and why the details matter.

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