P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #366
Mac week
my story 🚀
🍎 Despite my longstanding preference for Windows, I’m trying out a Macbook this week while my computer is in the shop. Please send me your favorite tips, tricks, app, or other Mac insights! I have to decide if I’m keeping it soon!
fun facts 🙌
Desalination or desalinization? “I suppose the test would be: what are you hoping to end up making? If it’s a puddle of water: you are desalinating. If it’s a pile of salt: you are desalinizing.” ~ learn more
Research says big words make you look dumb. “The research paper‘s title is apt: ‘Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.’” ~ learn more
How America lost its mojo. “U.S. dynamism is in the dumps: Americans are less likely to switch jobs, move to another state, or create new companies than they were 30 years ago (or 100 years ago). What’s going on?” ~ learn more
What happens in a dead salmon’s brain when you show it human photos? Nothing, of course. But some fMRI scans might show things anyway. This study warns researchers to beware of false positives. ~ learn more
oh, austin 🤠
History of Rollingwood, TX. There’s a small independent city of fewer than 2,000 residents that is completely surrounded by Austin. It’s located right next to Austin’s Zilker Park. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
The inside story of AI transformers, invented at Google. “Approaching its seventh anniversary, the “Attention” paper has attained legendary status. The authors started with a thriving and improving technology—a variety of AI called neural networks—and made it into something else: a digital system so powerful that its output can feel like the product of an alien intelligence. Called transformers, this architecture is the not-so-secret sauce behind all those mind-blowing AI products, including ChatGPT and graphic generators such as Dall-E and Midjourney.” ~ learn more
Medical tourism: a tarpit idea. “I was recently introduced to the idea of tarpit ideas. These are essentially startup ideas that seem like a great opportunity and have been tried many times before but end with the company not working out.” FYI: Scroll down a bit as there’s lots of preamble before the post. ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
6 lessons from Y-Combinator, 10 years later. “YC taught us to outsource very little. Own the problem. Own the outcome. And if you do, you get to be stupidly ambitious.” ~ learn more
Growing a small home services with acquisitions. I enjoyed listening to this interview with John Wilson, who took over his family’s small and very stable HVAC business and used it as a launchpad to quickly expand. ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
Critical evaluation of diabetes management tools. The PHTI is a new independant nonprofit that, “aims to provide independent, evidence-based assessments of emerging products, something that is currently lacking in the market.” Their first “blistering” report concluded that diabetes monitoring apps "do not deliver meaningful clinical benefits, and result in increased healthcare spending." ~ learn more
Growing market for glucose monitoring fueled by non-diabetics. Coverage by Axios, and they named Nutrisense, which is cool! “Glucose monitoring tech could become even more widely used by nondiabetics after the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first over-the-counter device.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Visa & Mastercard settle antitrust suit over swipe fees. One of two big settlements this month that’ll eventually trickle down to impact consumers. This one will make credit card acceptance more fragmented and complex, but potentially save merchants money. ~ learn more
National Association of Realtors settles price fixing suit. Here’s another major settlement that will possibly end up driving commissions lower for real estate transactions. It seems that brokers will no longer be splitting commission by default. Time will tell how this one plays out! ~ learn more
Shopify warns about fake performance apps in its marketplace. “We uncovered a set of apps and fake experts cheating the performance metrics. We found those practices in almost 15% of extensions that promised one-click optimizations. This means that a large number of merchant sites are affected.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Epigenetic edits to cut cholesterol. “Scientists achieved this effect by changing each animal’s ‘epigenome’, one feature of which is a collection of chemical tags that are bound to DNA and affect gene activity. After the treatment, activity of the targeted gene dropped and remained low for the 11 months over which the mice were studied.” ~ learn more
Biomarkers 10-15 years before dementia diagnosis. A win for machine learning algorithms. The article does quote a critic who says this is not yet good enough to be a legit test. “The proteins were able to predict all-cause dementia as well as particular types, including Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, and could also open avenues for new research into novel treatments, according to the researchers.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
What is Frontier? “We work with a multidisciplinary group of top scientific experts to help us evaluate promising carbon removal technologies.” The group’s backers have committed to spending $1 Billion on this critical work. They are bridging the early demand gap to get carbon removal projects built before the economics are market-ready. ~ learn more