Latest Issue

Issue 23 - Can Every Problem Be Computed?
Issue #23•Oct 13, 2026•28 min read

Issue 23 - Can Every Problem Be Computed?

Some questions have no algorithm any machine can ever reach; others have answers that take longer than the universe has left to run. The two hard walls of computation, and the million-dollar question

Read full essay on Substack

Archive

AI Update: October Week 2
AI Updates•18 min•Oct 10, 2026
AI Update: October Week 2Everything That Actually Mattered in the Second Week of October: The week safety architects walked out, OpenAI dropped 700 automated math proofs, and Anthropic barred cruelty against Claude.
Read
Issue 22 - The Turing Machine Explained
Issue #22•21 min•Oct 8, 2026
Issue 22 - The Turing Machine ExplainedAn infinite tape, a read-write head, and a table of rules simple enough to fit on an index card: the anatomy of universal computation, and why it keeps appearing by accident.
Read
Issue 21 - Alan Turing and the Universal Machine
Issue #21•32 min•Oct 6, 2026
Issue 21 - Alan Turing and the Universal MachineIssue #14 gave you the mathematics. This is the man who wrote it down, the war that needed it, and the country that failed him afterward.
Read
AI Update: October Week 1
AI Updates•19 min•Oct 3, 2026
AI Update: October Week 1Everything That Actually Mattered Heading Into October: The week autonomous agents breached government portals, Anthropic's doom-laden IPO prospectus leaked, and the race for 24/7 cloud workers accele
Read
Issue 20 - Computation Before Computers
Issue #20•31 min•Oct 1, 2026
Issue 20 - Computation Before ComputersNot every machine that computes does it by counting.
Read
Issue 19 - George Boole: Mathematics Learns to Think
Issue #19•23 min•Sep 29, 2026
Issue 19 - George Boole: Mathematics Learns to ThinkIssue #9 covered his algebra in full. This is the other half of the story: a parallel revolution, a family of self-taught geniuses, and the forgotten bridge from pure logic to mechanical thought.
Read
AI Update: September Week 4
AI Updates•19 min•Sep 26, 2026
AI Update: September Week 4Everything That Actually Mattered This week. The week 'pacing' turned out to mean a price war, a new military branch, and a shared testing crisis.
Read
Issue 18 - Ada Lovelace: The First Programmer
Issue #18•24 min•Sep 24, 2026
Issue 18 - Ada Lovelace: The First ProgrammerBabbage built the machine. She was the one who worked out, in writing, what it would actually mean to use it.
Read
Issue 17 - Charles Babbage's Dream
Issue #17•31 min•Sep 22, 2026
Issue 17 - Charles Babbage's DreamHe set out to mechanize table-making with steam and gears. He ended up sketching, entirely on paper, the universal architecture of modern computing
Read
AI Update - September Week 3
AI Updates•16 min•Sep 19, 2026
AI Update - September Week 3Everything That Actually Mattered in the Third Week of September. The week a CEO asked the industry to slow down and almost nobody with power said yes.
Read
Issue 16 - The First Mechanical Calculators
Issue #16•34 min•Sep 17, 2026
Issue 16 - The First Mechanical CalculatorsTwo centuries before Babbage dreamt of calculating by steam, three inventors in three countries proved that arithmetic could live in gears and metal.
Read
Issue 15 - Humans Before Computers
Issue #15•20 min•Sep 15, 2026
Issue 15 - Humans Before ComputersBefore 'computer' meant a machine, it was an established job title. This is the story of the people who calculated the modern world by hand, and what happened when their name was inherited by silicon.
Read
AI Update - September Week 2
AI Updates•13 min•Sep 12, 2026
AI Update - September Week 2Everything That Actually Mattered in the Second Week of September. The week the people building frontier AI said the quiet part out loud.
Read
Issue 14 - Logic Becomes Mathematics
Issue #14•23 min•Sep 10, 2026
Issue 14 - Logic Becomes MathematicsFrom Russell's paradox and Principia Mathematica to Church and Turing's 1936 breakthrough: the moment logic absorbed arithmetic, discovered its outer limits, and gave birth to computer science.
Read
Issue 13 - Algorithms Before Computers
Issue #13•22 min•Sep 8, 2026
Issue 13 - Algorithms Before ComputersLong before a single transistor existed, humans were running precise, mechanical, guaranteed procedures by hand. This is where the core concept of computing was born.
Read
AI Update - September Week 1
AI Updates•14 min•Sep 5, 2026
AI Update - September Week 1Everything That Actually Mattered in the First Week of September. The week four labs broke their silence at once.
Read
Issue 12 - Proof: Why Mathematics Can Be Trusted
Issue #12•15 min•Sep 3, 2026
Issue 12 - Proof: Why Mathematics Can Be TrustedHow Euclid built the template of certainty, and what happened when Kurt Gödel found the hard boundary of formal truth.
Read
Issue 11 - Predicate Logic: Talking About the Real World
Issue #11•13 min•Sep 1, 2026
Issue 11 - Predicate Logic: Talking About the Real WorldPropositional logic treats every statement as a sealed box. This issue is about opening the seal to talk about objects, relations, and quantifiers.
Read
AI Update - August Week 4
AI Updates•14 min•Aug 29, 2026
AI Update - August Week 4Everything That Actually Mattered This Week in AI. The Week AGI Got a Deadline and the Real Evidence Showed Up Somewhere Else Entirely.
Read
Issue 10 - Truth Tables: How Machines Evaluate Logic
Issue #10•14 min•Aug 27, 2026
Issue 10 - Truth Tables: How Machines Evaluate LogicFrom abstract algebra to copper and silicon: how truth tables became the physical blueprints for computing hardware.
Read
Issue 9 - Boolean Logic: Thinking in Ones and Zeros
Issue #9•11 min•Aug 25, 2026
Issue 9 - Boolean Logic: Thinking in Ones and ZerosAristotle proved reasoning has structure. Boole proved you could do math with it.
Read
AI Update - August Week 3
AI Updates•11 min•Aug 22, 2026
AI Update - August Week 3One frontier lab hit the brakes on training while another hit send on drug discovery. Here is what actually mattered this week in AI.
Read
Issue 8 - Propositions: Statements That Can Be True or False
Issue #8•14 min•Aug 20, 2026
Issue 8 - Propositions: Statements That Can Be True or FalseBefore a computer can calculate anything, it must first agree on statements that are strictly true or false.
Read
Issue 7- Functions: Turning Inputs into Outputs
Issue #7•20 min•Aug 18, 2026
Issue 7- Functions: Turning Inputs into OutputsThe simple mathematical rule sitting inside every line of code and neural network on Earth.
Read
AI Update - August Week 2
AI Updates•11 min•Aug 15, 2026
AI Update - August Week 2Everything That Actually Mattered in the First Week of August. The week AI stopped being just a tool.
Read
Issue 6 - Sets: The Simplest Idea Behind Modern AI
Issue #6•22 min•Aug 13, 2026
Issue 6 - Sets: The Simplest Idea Behind Modern AIThe most powerful idea in mathematics is one you already understood before you could read.
Read
Issue 5 - Can Knowledge Be Reduced to Rules? The Birth of Logic
Issue #5•29 min•Aug 11, 2026
Issue 5 - Can Knowledge Be Reduced to Rules? The Birth of LogicAristotle's Greatest Invention
Read
AI Update - August Week 1
AI Updates•17 min•Aug 8, 2026
AI Update - August Week 1Everything That Actually Mattered in the First Week of August. The Week AI Started Escaping the Lab
Read
Issue 4 - Human Intelligence vs Machine Intelligence
Issue #4•22 min•Aug 6, 2026
Issue 4 - Human Intelligence vs Machine IntelligenceWhat we built, what we didn't, and why human and machine intelligence are fundamentally different.
Read
Issue 3 - What is Intelligence
Issue #3•51 min•Aug 4, 2026
Issue 3 - What is IntelligenceThe most important question in artificial intelligence has nothing to do with machines.
Read
July 2026 in AI: What Actually Mattered
AI Updates•16 min•Aug 1, 2026
July 2026 in AI: What Actually MatteredEverything That Actually Mattered in July
Read
Issue 2 - Can Machines Think?
Issue #2•10 min•Jul 30, 2026
Issue 2 - Can Machines Think?The question that gave birth to artificial intelligence.
Read
Issue 1 - Why This Newsletter Exists
Issue #1•6 min•Jul 28, 2026
Issue 1 - Why This Newsletter ExistsThe roadmap from logic to large language models.
Read
Issue 0 - Before Machines Could Think
Foundations•3 min•Jul 27, 2026
Issue 0 - Before Machines Could ThinkBefore neural networks, there was mathematics. Before AI, there was logic. Before machines could learn, humans had to learn how to think.
Read
Engineeringmem0.ai
Engineering•11 min•Jun 15, 2025
Google ADK Memory: How to Add Persistent Memory to Google ADK with Mem0A practical architecture guide to adding persistent memory layers to Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) using Mem0.
Read
Engineeringmem0.ai
Engineering•12 min•May 20, 2025
How to Build Context-Aware Chatbots with Memory using Mem0Architecting long-term conversational memory for LLM applications with graph and vector store orchestration.
Read
Engineeringbito.ai
Engineering•9 min•Apr 10, 2025
Containerization: A Beginner's Guide to its Impact on Software DevelopmentFrom virtual machines to lightweight container runtimes: why containerization changed modern software delivery.
Read
Engineeringbito.ai
Engineering•8 min•Mar 25, 2025
15 Essential Docker Commands Every User Should KnowA curated cheatsheet of the core Docker CLI commands used daily in container lifecycle management and debugging.
Read
Engineeringbito.ai
Engineering•15 min•Feb 18, 2025
A Comprehensive Guide to Docker and KubernetesContainerization and orchestration made easy: pods, deployments, services, and cluster scheduling.
Read

Publication Details

How Machines Think is an independent newsletter published by Abhay Singh Rathore. New essays are released on Substack and explore computing history, logic, and mathematics.

Subscribe on SubstackView Substack Archive

Get In Touch

Always open to a chat, whether it's about an idea, a collaboration, or just an interesting conversation. Particularly interested in fast-moving teams solving exciting problems in AI, SaaS, developer tools, and enterprise software. Say hi anytime!