FlashFeed

Full text

Rumours continue to swirl around Intel's upcoming Nova Lake launch. The latest of these comes from noted leaker Jaykihn, who has hinted towards some exciting highlights among the desktop lineup. On X, the leaker wrote , "Nova Lake-H has a 12 Xe segment, and Nova Lake-S has a 12 Xe SKU. These are Xe3p."

Basically, this leak suggests there will be both a next-generation Nova Lake mobile CPU rocking 12 Xe cores as well as a desktop variant also sporting the same number of Intel graphics cores (though if that's true, I should probably be calling it an 'APU').

A high-performance iGPU was something sorely missing from the previous Arrow Lake generation of desktop chips, and having heard from our Dave what a 14 Xe core chip can do in the new MSI Claw handheld , it's exciting to think what a slightly upgraded version of Intel's GPU silicon could do in a wee little desktop chassis.

Anyway, drilling down a little more, the Xe 3P core is an upcoming iteration of Intel's microarchitecture. The discrete GPU tech was codenamed 'Celestial' for a time and was even meant to make its debut alongside Panther Lake. However, that chip went with what was essentially Xe2 'Plus Plus' , and Jaykihn also claims what was Celestial ' was canned long ago '.

In other words, Xe 3P has been cooking for a minute. When it finally arrives in the form of the expected Crescent Island GPUs later this year, it'll be primarily geared towards handling AI inference by leveraging LPDDR5X memory, rather than the pricier data centre du jour HBM. It's entirely possible a powerful bit of kit like that could also turn its hand to gaming, but it's unlikely Intel would bring that chip to any gaming-focused cards.

Yes. Nova Lake -H has a 12 Xe segment, and Nova Lake -S has a 12 Xe SKU.These are Xe3p. April 24, 2026

As for a possible mobile APU, Nick recently wrote that a Nova Lake mobile chip with a beefy iGPU would be great news for handhelds, but that it would likely be destined for edge computing only .

But decent integrated graphics? In my desktop processor? That's exciting for sure, but how likely is it? Well, let's look at the leaker in question. Jaykihn claimed back in January the B70 Pro would arrive 'soon' and it did . Then in April, they leaked details about Intel's Core 300 laptop chips that also appeared to mostly bear out . Sure, a broken clock can be right twice a day, but this leaker is noted for having a pretty good track record as these things go.

Full text

If a Martian observed American politics in the 21st century, they’d be forgiven for assuming that the nation’s “two-party system” is codified somewhere in the Constitution. But the Martian would be wrong. The founders, as Dan Carlin notes in this interview, never said a word about the necessity for a constant battle between two parties — nothing about Democrats and Republicans, nothing about the need for any particular number of political factions. That was “not part of the design.”

Carlin often calls himself a “political Martian.” That’s one way of saying that the former reporter and current podcast host tries not to view political issues through the lens of a particular party or tribal affiliation. Instead, he aims for a more objective, long-term view — maybe no surprise if you’ve listened to his podcast Hardcore History , which he launched in 2006 when “podcast” wasn’t yet a household term. Now, everyone has a podcast, but that term still doesn’t quite capture Hardcore History , where Carlin covers momentous historical figures and events through unscripted storytelling in episodes that often break the four-hour mark.

He also takes an unscripted approach in his podcast Common Sense , which for two decades has served as his platform for thinking out loud about American political life — borrowing both its title and a measure of skepticism from Thomas Paine. It’s where he tries to be pragmatic about what American politics has become and how it got there.

Carlin is quick to note he’s no professional historian, but he is one of the nation’s most listened-to storytellers of history, one who’s built a career opting out of both mainstream media and political partisanship. And so we spoke to Carlin about the decades-long expansion of executive power, the two-party system, and the record-high number of Americans who identify as political independents.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kmele Foster: We’re on the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and I think many people are wondering, is America coming or going? What is the state of this great experiment we set in motion? On an institutional level, Congress today doesn’t really legislate as it has historically. They barely even pass budgets anymore.

The three branches were designed to work together, or at least be counterbalancing forces. But the legislature isn’t doing nearly as much as it used to or was expected to, the executive branch is doing a heck of a lot more, and the courts are, it seems, still playing their traditional role — trying to adjudicate disputes over what can and can’t be done under the law by the legislative and executive branches. But it’s unclear whether the courts will continue to be able to play that role.

I’m curious about your thoughts on the extent to which this moment is unprecedented or a trend we’ve been on for a while, particularly regarding how executive power is being wielded.

Dan Carlin: What the current president is doing is not breaking down walls. He’s breaking down walls we pretended existed but didn’t — or haven’t for a long time. And this is what we were screaming about on our Common Sense show for years: If you don’t use these powers — for example, Congress’s authority to declare war — at what point do they go away?

I remember seeing it during the second Bush administration. They went to Congress for an authorization for the war in Iraq, but they would say, “We’re coming to you for this authorization, but we are saying explicitly that we don’t think we have to come to you for this authorization.” And Congress was cool with pretending they still needed to do this, but that’s a big fig leaf. Now, when the current president says, “I’m not even going to play that fake game,” and everybody’s in an uproar, what we’re doing is defending the fig leaf of protocol.

The thing to remember about executive power is that it’s tempting to exploit, not just for the executive, but for everyone who wants the same things as the executive. And it’s been a problem on both sides. When you’ve had a trend for decades and decades — some would say going back to Andrew Jackson — that’s going to be a bipartisan thing.

“The founders disliked ‘factions,’ which would have been their word for parties. The system we have now is not part of the design.”

Dan Carlin

To me, the biggest issue is that not enough people pay attention to the fact that the Constitution’s number one goal is not efficient legislating — it is preventing tyranny. We pay a huge price in this country for the inefficiencies in our constitutional design because it’s trying to keep those powers separate and prevent too much power from ending up in any one branch.

Now, the truth of the matter is, if you want to make progress on any number of issues, we’d be better off throwing that out the window. That tyranny-prevention stuff causes us all kinds of headaches, but you see how much it matters when we come close to really needing it.

The Trump administration, for example, would like to pass an agenda that people at the Heritage Foundation have, in one form or another, been pushing for 40 years. The last thing that they want to hear is that Congress needs to interfere more and reestablish guardrails. Liberals would have felt the same way during FDR’s administration when he was trying to pull people out of the Depression, but in ways that increase the tyranny potential, right?

In my view, the problem we have as a country is our inability to understand that we have a two-party system that has developed in a country whose founding documents didn’t design that at all. There’s nothing in the Constitution about Democrats. There’s nothing in there about Republicans. There’s nothing about Whigs. Nothing about Federalists.

The founders disliked “factions,” which would have been their word for parties. What we have now — and what has developed organically over 250 years — is not part of the design.

When you get on the radio and start talking about wanting third-party members or independents to run more, boy, you get a lesson in how hard that is because, over 250 years, the two parties have managed to give themselves something akin to an automatic berth in a basketball tournament. The Democrat and Republican automatically get in — somebody else has to really, really be extraordinary to make it in there.

And that’s wrong. We can’t get better anymore because if you don’t like the Trump administration, then your only alternative is to push the Chuck Schumer side of things.

Foster: What do you think the two-party system selects for?

Carlin: There was a book by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig called Republic, Lost. What Lessig tries to point out is that both of our parties have, over time, become embedded in this system where what gets you promoted up political parties is fundraising.

The people who get to the top positions of power — these are not people who demonstrated fantastic leadership skills. They didn’t demonstrate the ability to work across the aisle. They didn’t demonstrate the ability to come up with really unique, groundbreaking, and interesting legislation. They were fundraisers.

So, when you look at the leadership now, and you say, “Well, why aren’t they pushing harder against the executive branch?” — most of them aren’t those kinds of people. They weren’t picked for those reasons. Those are not their strong points. They may have certain objectives, but they aren’t ideologues. You can see it because they often give up the opportunities to really push what they say they believe in for other things.

If these people really cared about the institution of Congress, or guardrails, or the Constitution, then you would never see the president able to go to war without Congress screaming and yelling. The fact that they don’t is a sign that they don’t want to, right? And they don’t want to because they’ve realized there’s no advantage for them.

“No one’s going to want the guardrails back up when their guy’s in power because it’s counterintuitive.”

Dan Carlin

The founders believed that the various ambitions of people in these different branches of government would counterbalance one another. My pride would counterbalance your pride. But somewhere down the road, people figured out, “I can have all of the perks that matter to me in this job without any of the things that are a pain in the rear for me in this job.” And when that happens, I think you start getting different people [running for office].

I can remember eras in legislative history where competent, experienced legislators left their jobs, saying, “I can’t operate in this environment anymore,” or “Congress has become too divided,” or “Fundraising is too much a part of my job.” Then you end up with people who aren’t leaving because it doesn’t bother them as much as it bothered their predecessor.

Foster: Do you see any realistic path to fixing that problem of incentives or restoring constitutional guardrails?

Carlin: Unless you’re somebody who says, “Elect me, and I’m going to put the guardrails back up,” I don’t know how we fix the fig-leaf-of-protocol problem. No one’s going to want the guardrails back up when their guy’s in power because it’s counterintuitive. If you say, “Elect me, and I’m going to give up some presidential power back to Congress, which may be run by the opposite party, by the way,” who’s going to elect you?

That’s what we get down this road. Can we make things better, or are things going to get worse? We’re required to do some pretty counterintuitive things as an electorate to make things better. Are we capable of doing that?

I don’t want to pretend that multi-party systems are an answer to the question. I think one reason Netanyahu in Israel is so extreme right now is because of the influence of minor parties. So there’s no panacea when it comes to multiple parties. But our duopoly in this country right now is messing with what my stepdad always said was part of the genius of America: We get better through competition. But we’ve got Hertz and Avis here, and there’s no incentive for anyone to be more than 1% better than the next guy. I think that maybe helps explain our political decline as a system.

Foster: Gallup recently found that a record high of 45% of U.S. adults now identify as political independents, yet political division only seems to be getting sharper. In terms of restoring constitutional guardrails or generally easing political polarization, do you see any solutions coming from outside the two-party setup?

Carlin: We’ve gone partisan crazy. The only advantage I can see in multiple parties is it would be harder to fall into one of these two camps.

You mentioned the rise in the number of people who call themselves political independents. I do believe that this is the highest number of political independents we’ve ever had in this country, at least registered, but we have no power. There is no political independent party, and we’re not united on anything. Whereas Democrats may argue amongst themselves, there’s enough agreement so that they’re in the same party. Same for Republicans. Independents span the spectrum from Libertarians to Greens.

We’re inherently divided from the get-go. So independents decide elections now, which I find fascinating, but we have no candidates. Do you see how crazy that is? What does a Trump or whoever’s running for the Democrats — what do they do? Do they appeal to their base, which they have to do, right? What did Nixon say? You run to the right for the primaries, and then you run back to the center for the generals. The Democrats run left for the primaries, then run to the center.

“We’re now at the brittle stage, where solving the problem could destroy the system.”

Dan Carlin

But why are they running to the center at all? Well, they’re running to the center to get people like me. But the radicalness of the times should reflect the level of the problems.

I always use a termite example. If you have somebody come and inspect your house, and they say you have termites, but you just got them, you have a lot of different options — it can cost you just a few bucks if you catch it early. If, however, you find out you’ve had them for 40 years, and they’ve screwed up the structure of your house, then your termite problem requires a radical solution.

By kicking the can down the road for generations like we have — whether we’re talking about race or economics or constitutional guardrails — you’re ignoring the termite problem. The solution that fixes the termite problem is going to have to be more and more structural as we go down the road. If we wanted to solve this problem back in the post-Nixon era, it would have been an easier solve. We’re now at the brittle stage, where solving the problem could be so radical that it could break and destroy the system we’re trying to solve.

We’re unable to figure out what the hell we do. And I think that’s where we see the dearth in leadership here, because we don’t have people running for office promising a solution, right?

Foster: They’re merely promising to keep you from the other guy.

Carlin: Yeah. You have to ask yourself, “Have we created something that breaks our system?” And the answer to that question is unknown. I feel like an observer more than an advocate. I used to know where things were going. I could talk about that intelligently. I feel like I’m just along for the ride now, like all of us are.

This article Dan Carlin: The two-party system was never the plan is featured on Big Think .

Full text

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: One minute review

Amazfit has been a company I’ve been keeping an eye on since their Bip 3 ‘budget’ smartwatch blew through all my expectations (and then some), followed by a slew of other watches across a range of price points, aiming to undercut the likes of Garmin — but most notably the $99 / £99 Amazfit Active 2, which earned five stars in our review . So when they put the word “Premium” on a product, it piques my curiosity.

Not only does the Amazfit Active 3 Premium have a bunch of excellent features that rival some of the biggest in the business, like excellent sleep and fitness tracking, but it’s also a fantastic-looking smartwatch.

The ‘Premium’ moniker signifies the addition of the super-tough sapphire glass coating, and the inclusion of the NFC payment feature. This was the distinction that the Amazfit Active 2 Premium used to separate itself from the base Active 2: however, there is no base Active 3, so even though this watch uses the ‘Premium’ model distinction, it’s the only watch in its range.

Despite this, it’s not an expensive buy. Sure, it’s pricier than the older Active 2, but it’s still undercutting the cheapest Apple and Garmin watches while delivering performance that belies its price. Another excellent example of a fitness tracker from Amazfit, a company which has by now shown itself to be a serious contender in the fitness tech space.

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Specifications

Component

Amazfit Active 3 Premium

Price

$169 / £169 / AU$239

Weight

54.6g

Case/bezel

Metal and plastic hybrid

Display

1.32-inch AMOLED display

GPS

Dual-frequency GPS

Battery life

Up to 12 days

Connection

Bluetooth

Water resistant?

5 ATM

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Price and availability

(Image credit: Amazfit) Starts at $169 / £169 / AU$239

Not Amazfit’s cheapest, but still cheaper than many rivals

Available in three color options

It’s hard not to look at the Amazfit Active 3 Premium and not feel as though there’s a catch somewhere when it comes to its price, but it really is a sub-$170 / £170 / AU$250 fitness watch with the kinds of features and accuracy you’d have spent double that for not long ago. Our review unit is the Atlas Blue model, but it’s also available in Apex Silver and Aero White.

Value score: 5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium review: Design

(Image credit: Future) Heavier than some alternatives

AMOLED display

Regardless of your color choice, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is a looker. It has a circular body with a metallic finish, with the underside color-matched to the bands for Atlas Blue and Aero White (Apex Silver would be my pick, but the whole body is silver with a black strap).

The strap itself is the standard polymer-style you’ll have felt on just about any other smartwatch, but the fact that the Amazfit Active 3 Premium uses a pin system like a more traditional watch adds a touch of class (and some minor fiddliness). It’s got a 1.32-inch display, which isn’t large —but it’s the same size as the Amazfit Active 2. I didn’t feel like I was losing much in terms of screen space compared to some of Amazfit’s larger watches, but I was surprised to find it’s slightly heavier than the Coros Nomad I tested recently.

With that said, I’m not sure I’d consider it rugged. I wasn’t prepared to hurl my review unit to the ground to test its durability, despite its sapphire glass and scratch-resistant coating. It might not be the watch you’ll want to take on an ultramarathon, but it’ll stand up to runs, rides and gym workouts with ease.

Design score: 4.5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Features

(Image credit: Future) Full-color maps

HybridCharge is great

170 sports modes

Ok, so the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is a looker, but does it have the smarts to back it up? Despite the relatively low price, the answer is a resounding yes. You’ll need to use the Zepp app, and while I’ve tested it before and found it to be a little cumbersome, I am pleased to report that (at least in the time I’ve been away), it’s much slicker these days.

You can use it as a dashboard, and there are badges to collect that include step goals, monthly targets, and much more.

Fitbit Premium’s Daily Readiness Score has led the charge to distill a bunch of complex metrics into an easy-to-read number that calculates how hard you can push your workout on any given day, and Amazfit’s version is called “HybridCharge”.

It takes into account sleep, heart rate, activity, and recovery, as well as subjective inputs like stress, health, and more, to help you make a judgment on whether today is a workout day or a rest day, and it does so pretty well.

One day during testing, I’d struggled to sleep and had an early start at work, and the app and watch understood that maybe I needed to take it easy and recover that day. It’s something you used to need a premium subscription for with other manufacturers, but I’m glad to see it’s included in the price of the product here.

PAI is also back, so those looking for a quick look at a glance to see how their natural fitness is holding up can check it out by testing their heart rate zones. The watch supports basic notification features, and of course offers that NFC payment digital wallet feature for convenience. A barnstorming inclusion is full-color maps, offering turn-by-turn navigation. This is a premium feature crammed into a value package, offering turn-by-turn navigation during runs, rides and walks.

Features score: 4.5/5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Performance

(Image credit: Amazfit) AMOLED display

12 days of battery life

Excellent accuracy

Performance is uniformly excellent across the board with the Amazfit Active 3 Premium. Fitness tracking offers a deep suite of metrics, including running ones like stride length, ground contact, and just about anything else you could possibly ask for as a runner. And, if you’re just learning what all of these measurements are, fear not: Everything is handily explained within the Zepp app.

When you’re done, the app also does a great job at showcasing your fatigue level, which then feeds into the aforementioned HybridCharge metrics.

I very rarely check my sleep outside of Apple’s Sleep Score number, but the Amazfit Active 3 Premium does make me want to dig deeper — and offers plenty of data to do so. I was surprised at how often I was getting up in the night without realising it, and the Aura section of the Zepp app even includes relaxing music to help you settle back down.

Battery-wise, Amazfit claims you can get 12 days from a single charge. In my experience, it’s been closer to 10 days, but it’s still very respectable given the amount of data it’s collecting day in, day out. The AMOLED display is plenty bright for just about everything, even direct sunlight.

The only minor gripe I have with the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is that it doesn’t automatically offer to track a workout if you start walking/running/doing anything. As someone who still forgets to hit the button before setting out, it’s nice when devices like the Apple Watch give a nudge.

Performance Score: 4.5 / 5

Amazfit Active 3 Premium: Scorecard

Category

Comment

Score

Value

Simply outstanding.

5/5

Design

Iterates on the proven Active 2.

4.5/5

Features

Lots of sports modes, tracking and HybridCharge.

4.5/5

Performance

Bright screen, responsive battery, accurate metrics.

4.5/5

Amazfit Active 3: Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You want a watch that looks good

The Amazfit Active 3 Premium is one of the best-looking and still affordable watches around.

You’re looking for a deep dive into your fitness metrics

The Zepp app has a whole bunch of data, and makes it easy to sift through and spot patterns across weeks or even months of use.

Don't buy it if...

You’re looking for smartwatch features

Alas, there’s no contactless payment functionality here, nor can you run third-party apps a la an Apple Watch.

You’re going off-trail

The Amazfit Active 3 Premium is unlikely to take a battering as you scamper up rockfaces and the like.

Also consider

Garmin Forerunner 70

Garmin's new budget running watch

Read our full review

Apple Watch SE 3

Apple's cheapest watch is a little more expensive, but still offers great value for iPhone users.

Read our full review

How I tested the Amazfit Active 3 Premium

I’ve been testing the Amazfit Active 3 Premium while walking, hitting the gym for weights and cardio (primarily using the cross trainer), and wearing it for just about everything in life.

I tested the GPS across various areas of London and more remote areas like the countryside where I live, and wore it to bed, too. I tested many of its measurements by pairing it with my Apple Watch Series 11 on the opposite wrist.

Full text

My dad called it a “Spanish omelette.” In reality, it was an excuse to clean out the fridge. Anything not-quite-rotting was fair game. Throw it in. To be fair, they were mostly delicious, but a generous flood of ketchup can hide a lot of things.

Every Saturday morning, as he whisked up our eggs, my dad would listen to Any Questions? , a weekly BBC Radio 4 panel show where host Jonathan Dimbleby asked politicians, business leaders, and the occasional celebrity questions from the audience: “In light of the recent intervention in Iraq, do the panel think we need to double down or withdraw our commitment to NATO?” So little changes.

As Dimbleby tried to referee the point-scoring and playground screeching, my dad would invariably chime in.

“Oh, he’s a bloody arsehole,” he’d grumble. Stir the onions. “The last government tried that and look how it turned out!” In go the crusty green olives. “Yeah, but of course she would say that, wouldn’t she?!” A garnish of wilted rocket.

As much as we might hate the idea, many of our values are inherited rather than consciously chosen.

I didn’t know it, of course, but as I ate my Spanish omelettes, I was digesting my dad’s ideas. His gripes became my gripes. His loyalties became my loyalties.

As much as we might hate the idea, many of our values are inherited rather than consciously chosen. Our beliefs — especially in our younger years — are a response to our primary caregivers’ beliefs. And so, “He’s an arsehole” ran through my head as I cast my first vote.

The world is a collection of individuals, and what is true for the molded youth is true for society. How we collectively think starts out as a reaction to the way our forefathers thought. We inherit the beliefs we learn to question.

In 1929, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that the history of Western philosophy is “a series of footnotes to Plato.” Plato set the rules of the game. He threw down the first philosophical gauntlet and challenged his toga-clad friends to a wrestling match: “The world is divided into spirit and body! FIGHT ME!”

Platonism birthed Aristotelianism, which birthed the “eudaimonic schools” such as Stoicism and Epicureanism. Scholasticism led to Rationalism. On it goes, in an overly simplistic but broadly true progression of thought.

It wasn’t until my 30s that I properly felt I had stepped out from the shadow of my dad’s Saturday rants, and it’s often not until quite later that a nation steps out of the shadow of its founding fathers. So, when did America step out from the shadow of its European birthplace? When did a distinctly American philosophy start to emerge?

Before the end of the 18th century, two major figures came to define America’s zeitgeist.

While there is no such thing as a perfectly “pure” nation-state marching in the uniform of a cultural monotone, the U.S. is truly a Spanish omelette of a country. It feels appropriate, then, that the earliest philosophy courses taught in America were just as hodgepodge, with formal establishments like Yale, Harvard, and William & Mary home to a kind of intellectual bricolage.

Teachers of philosophy, in general, can be reluctant to “identify [themselves] wholly with a particular philosopher or philosophical school,” writes historian Norman Fiering, but colonial thinkers were particularly so — fearful that they might discard ideas that “the light of history” would prove were worthy of consideration, they taught everything. Fiering attributes this to a lack of confidence caused by “the pervasive sense of intellectual inferiority that came with provincial status.”

Among all the ideas they were teaching, none came from what could be considered American philosophers. Like young Jonny voting for the first time, the earliest American thinkers still had the voices of their intellectual forefathers in their heads. At this point in the nation’s history, they were merely “tinkering with received ideas from overseas and looking forward to the day when various institutions — social, economic, educational — would exist here in sufficient strength to sustain independent work,” writes Fiering.

It’s hard to identify when the first strands of “American philosophy” emerge, but it’s easier to identify uniquely American philosophers. Before the end of the 18th century, two major figures came to define the nation’s zeitgeist: Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin.

American culture celebrates the self-taught hustler and the side-door entrant.

I feel a great affinity with Edwards and Franklin — a strange thing to hear from someone schooled in the British university system — because I never enrolled in a postgraduate philosophy program. I do not have a PhD. In some European circles, that’s a badge of shame. “Dr. Thomson” would open doors — often centuries-old and bolted with medieval iron — that “Mr. Thomson” cannot. And yet, here I am as the “lead philosopher” of Big Think, writing for a successful and prestigious American company. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a 50,000-word thesis on late Wittgenstein on my bookshelf. It matters that I can write about philosophy well and get it (mostly) right.

This is for good reason. American culture celebrates the self-taught hustler and the side-door entrant, from the self-made men of the early republic to the college-dropout CEOs of Silicon Valley, and the two dominant figures in 18th-century American philosophy lived, wrote, and excelled outside of formal academia.

Edwards went to Yale but did his most famous philosophical work outside its gates. He was the great theologian-philosopher of British colonial America and the leading voice of the “First Great Awakening.” Working from a pulpit in Massachusetts, he wrote treatises on free will and original sin. He argued that true virtue was not mere kindness or civic decency but a kind of cosmic affection that reached beyond family, tribe, or nation. He sought to marry the clockwork universe of Newton’s Principia with the inward fire of Puritan conviction, and the result was a theology that was as rigorous as it was strange.

Even Edwards is dwarfed by the titan that is Franklin. Called “the first philosopher” of America by David Hume , a leading philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, Franklin was born to a family that was too poor to send him to school past the age of 10, and so he retained a kind of frosty ambivalence towards the collegians dominating New England high society. Yet he wrote beautifully, with incredible wit, and covered a range of deep, philosophical issues, approaching them from a position of practicality and experimentation — setting him apart from the more abstract European philosophers of his time.

Nature is transcendentalism’s scripture, solitude is its method, and self-reliance is its golden rule.

By 1830, the U.S. had developed the idea of the power of the individual over institutions — as exemplified by men like Franklin — into its first full-blown philosophical movement: transcendentalism.

If the U.S. is the opt-out nation, transcendentalism is the opt-out philosophy. It espouses a belief that each individual carries within them a direct line to a spiritual, unifying truth. They don’t need the mediation of a church, government, or system of philosophy to encounter the divine. Nature is transcendentalism’s scripture, solitude is its method, and self-reliance is its golden rule. Henry David Thoreau — a father of transcendentalism, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson — took the idea to its extremes, leaving behind society for the solitude of Walden Pond.

“The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter — such health, such cheer, they afford forever! … Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?” Thoreau writes in Walden .

Just as I eventually broke free from my father’s political beliefs to develop my own, new philosophies eventually branched off from transcendentalism. Still, as Whitehead pointed out, each new idea is in response to those that came before it — continuing a tradition that dates back to Plato.

And, on a more personal level, to some very questionable Saturday-morning breakfasts.

This article “Live deliberately”: The origin of America’s first philosophy is featured on Big Think .

Full text

Here's an embarrassing thing to admit on the internet: when I was a teenage subscriber to Nintendo Power magazine, I picked the Donkey Kong 64 soundtrack as my "sign-up gift" because I wanted to be able to listen to the DK Rap on CD . Why I was obsessed with the song I can't say 25 years later, but Donkey Kong 64 is a memorable mess of a game—sprawling, ambitious, funny, inventive, and often infuriating, with a predilection for collectibles so infamous that the developers made fun of themselves for it a few years later.

The point is, Donkey Kong 64 is a game that inspires strong feelings in those who've played it. So it seems fitting that members of the DK64 randomizer community, who've dedicated years to picking it apart and putting it back together, would start developing an unofficial PC port with a specific rallying cry:

"Fuck AI vibe coding bullshit."

DK64 Recompiled, announced in a YouTube video in late June, is actually the second project with that exact name, and that's no coincidence. It's the latest example of an increasingly common point of friction in the game emulation and hacking scene, as experienced programmers butt heads with those eager to use new AI tools to spin up new ports of old games in record time. In some cases, ports written with AI tools like Claude are ostracized or ignored. But in the case of Donkey Kong 64, the game's biggest fans weren't about to cede ground.

"The DK64 randomizer dev team is owning this shit now," contributor 2dos wrote in the N64 Recomp Discord server, shortly after the video's debut. "We have decided to take on and own this development due to the poor development direction of another recompilation project of DK64 happening concurrently that is heavily leaning on AI vibe code, and thus is resulting in a poor quality project that will make it progressively harder to manage as time goes on. Our DK64 recompilation project is backed by folks who have worked on and tinkered with the backend of the DK64 code for well over a decade, and do not rely on vibe coding to make code changes."

Static recompilation is a technique that, in short, translates all of a game's code from one system's language to another; unlike emulation, it's not simulating the original hardware holistically. The most prominent hobby project using this technique so far is N64 Recomp, announced just over two years ago , which is a recompilation tool specifically geared towards Nintendo 64 games. Since its debut we've seen modders use it to create PC ports of Banjo-Kazooie , Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64, and more, while similar projects have sprung up for other consoles like the Xbox 360.

Legally, the freshly written code is clean because these recompiled ports don't contain any of the assets from the original games—players have to provide a ROM file themselves. The porting process has become an ethical, rather than legal, battleground in the last few months, as "vibe coded" projects have begun cropping up practically every day.

One developer has used Claude's AI coding to spin up recompilation tools for the NES, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, and Virtual Boy, each with a handful of games at least bootable so far. Another's got GitHub repositories for everything from the PS3 to the ZX Spectrum. Others have used the Xbox 360 recompilation framework ReXGlue to pump out ports at a seemingly astonishing rate—but once you get past the YouTube videos hyping them up, the reality isn't quite so impressive.

"Vibe coding a recomp has started to become significantly more prominent and not in a good way," says Ballaam, a contributor to the DK64 randomizer and now DK64 Recompiled alongside 2dos. "I think GoldenEye was released somewhat recently with being heavily vibe coded and, as a result of that (and probably either dev inexperience or overconfidence in the AI output), it leads to some very critical bugs which make the recomp borderline unplayable. The main N64 recomp server has gone as far as to not promote any recomp which uses AI for a significant portion of it."

(Image credit: Rare, Banjo Kazooie Recompiled) That GoldenEye project has also drawn criticism from those who know the game inside and out. The paradox of current tools making it easier than ever to start projects means anyone can vibe code their way to a partially working port, but shaping it into an accurate, crash-free, feature-rich version of a game is a different story.

2dos warns that a big risk with relying on AI is technical debt—a codebase becoming harder to understand and modify as it grows, with maintenance becoming "a nightmare" if you don't put in the work to thoroughly document it. The knock-on effect is that other humans are less likely to want (or even be able) to contribute. If a developer doesn't thoroughly understand the code the AI writes, that will also require them to spend more tokens to fix bugs. Those costs can add up fast, and the AI's "fixes" won't necessarily be good, either.

In the case of the AI-based Donkey Kong 64 recompilation, 2dos discovered that the agentic coding had modified RT64 , "the base module that makes the N64 graphics render."

"That would lead to significant management and compatibility issues down the line, and cause other unexpected side effects that are currently visible in preview videos in the other recomp," he says.

Vibes: Questionable

Using AI is attractive because it skips past the slow, manual process of figuring out exactly what every function in a game is doing, which can often take years. Many of the polished recompilation ports available currently are for games that have previously been decompiled , creating fresh, human-readable source code. It's an enormous undertaking even for old games, but understanding what the source code is doing helps enormously when troubleshooting.

Decompilation also makes modding much more viable, which is one of the most attractive features for modern ports of retro games. (DK64: Recompiled's debut trailer touts support for a tag anywhere mod that will let players swap between Kongs on the fly, addressing one of the most common complaints about the game's backtrack-heavy design.)

Developer SrBananaMan64 recently released a PC port of Harvest Moon 64 alongside a range of mods to speed up messages, zoom out the camera, and so on. A completed decompilation by another developer helped make that a reality.

"They're using a powerful tool without putting in the work to actually learn what it does"

ReXGlue developer

"Recompilation doesn’t actually need a 100% decomp to work, just enough for the symbols to be mapped out to produce a viable .elf file that N64Recomp uses," SrBananaMan64 says. "But this game seemed like it needed the proper enhancements to spruce [it] up… The quality of the game is lacking so it needs the widescreen and high frame rates to compensate for that in my opinion."

He shares the DK team's view that developers "should never let AI take the wheel," even if it can occasionally be an "amazing tool" for specific uses. "Minuscule tasks such as searching through a decomp for a certain function you would like to patch or mod," for example.

Lines for acceptable AI usage are now being drawn across the open source development scene. The maintainers of the Godot engine are now rejecting "substantial pieces" of AI-generated code . A nascent recompilation project for the GameCube & Wii declares "No AI code is used," and that it's a "human hand-made project by a group of passionate developers, who want the best for the Retro Gaming community." So does a solo project tackling recompilation for the PS1 .

An in-progress recompilation of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night via RecompOne (Image credit: RecompOne, Konami) A port for Sonic Advance also has a "strict no AI policy," championing the endeavor's underlying purpose: "We want humans to use this project to practice their skills. Reverse engineering, documenting, understanding, being part of the process."

Tom, the developer behind ReXGlue, sees the low-effort ports as a "people problem," not an issue with the tool itself. "The real issue is people who don't bother to understand what they're posting," he says. "They're using a powerful tool without putting in the work to actually learn what it does, and then wondering why their project falls apart, performs poorly, or has nothing genuinely new to bring to the table. It's like riding a motorcycle before you can even ride a bike."

One common defense for vibe coding ports boil down to "this is just my hobby project, so ignore it if you don't like it." One counter-argument to that point is ethical. Even setting aside the broader environmental impact and stolen training data of generative AI models, there's an argument that even a fan-made port should endeavor to do justice to the original work—to honor the game's original creators by representing it as accuracy as possible. Another is that a vibe coded port that's likely to have those long-term maintenance issues 2dos warned about could pull interest away from a human-coded project that's more likely to be perfected in the long run. The existence of a half-assed project could even turn another developer away from putting months or years of their work into a game at all.

"That’s a big risk," SrBananaMan64 says. For example the Smash Bros. Battleship project which was completely AI generated will take away from the release of mine." (He's currently working on his own recompilation of the N64 fighter).

Another common defense from those simply eager to play a game they love—that anything is better than nothing—also doesn't necessarily hold up beyond the initial burst of excitement.

(Image credit: Nintendo, DK64: Recompiled) "I think there is some sentiment from those who haven't experienced a vibe coded recomp that 'who cares if its vibe coded as long as it works," says Ballaam, "when they don't fully realize that for the most part, they really really don't.

"LLMs nowadays have lowered the skill floor of producing a functioning piece of code that those who are technologically curious but don't have the patience or passion to fully learn a language can feel like they're coding. They scale up their projects but don't scale up their learning to accommodate their desires because they rely too much on the AI crutch."

Perhaps someday, as agentic coding continues to advance, vibe coded ports really will be sufficient. Perhaps a small portion of this initial wave of vibe coders will even pick up enough interest in the process to learn to do the programming themselves. Or maybe the rising costs of AI models will dissuade casual hobbyists from burning tokens on projects that are hard to see through to completion.

For now we're in the thick of it, and we're sure to see more competing projects like Donkey Kong 64 Recompiled before we come out the other side.