Tom Burkert
Tom Burkert
Tom Burkert’s personal blog focused on technology, privacy, AI and other nerdy stuff.
August 2026
All posts (19)
Recently, I have been testing how well the newest generations of large language models (such as GPT-5 or Claude 4.5) handle natural language, specifically counting characters, manipulating characters in a sentences, or solving encoding and ciphers. Surprisingly, the newest models were able to solve these kinds of...
The way we consume content on the internet is increasingly driven by walled-garden platforms and black-box feed algorithms. This shift is making our media diets miserable. Ironically, a solution to the problem predates algorithmic feeds, social media and other forms of informational junk food. It is called RSS...
Our old friend Pygmalion Humans have always anthropomorphized1 non-human entities, from ancient gods and natural forces to modern cars and ships. But our tendency to see machines as human-like has dramatically intensified with the advent of conversational AI. This isn’t entirely new - the word “robot,” coined and...
Whenever I get to travel, especially on business trips, I usually seek out two types of entertainment: botanical gardens and art galleries. Botanical gardens offer a soothing combination of being surrounded by vegetation (which is proven to be beneficial for mental and physical health), a low density of people...
Recently, I have been re-reading one of the classic books of Czech literature, Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts, and I have been intrigued by some of the parallels between Čapek’s newts and LLMs. Mind you, I am probably highly primed to associate and connect random things to LLMs given how much I read and talk about...
The problem Window management for GUI operating systems has been with us for decades, but it still feels a bit broken to me. Yes, everyone has their preferences and not everyone needs to run as many programs as I do at times, but there is something principally broken about having a bunch of windows stacked on top of...
Many moons ago (in fact long ago so that contemporary sources are beginning to be difficult to find), iPhone users were told they’re holding their phones wrong. This was one of the more memeworthy communication blunders of Apple and something we’re unlikely to see from them, but the reason I mention it here is that...
The Problem Recently, my Keychron K8 keyboard has died (PCB 💀), so I started hunting for a new keyboard. Another Keychron was out of the question, so I decided to give Epomaker a try. I stumbled into a B-stock Epomaker Galaxy80 and decided to give it a shot. I am very happy with the feel of the keyboard, typing...
Intro As part of my journey towards higher privacy while using internet, I decided to set up Pi-hole on my Synology NAS DS218play. If you are reading this article, you probably don’t need the following explanation, but just in case: Pi-hole is perhaps the most popular DNS sinkhole, which aims to block ads, trackers...
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