P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #394

Writing

my story 🚀

✨ There’s a new ChatGPT feature out this week called Canvas. A new interface pops up when it thinks you’re writing a document or code. That interface is basically a document editor, allowing you to manipulate the chatbot’s output. You can edit text directly. You can highlight text and prompt it to make changes to that specific part. You can have have a dialogue with the tool about the text you’ve written. I used it to catch up on a couple posts from my Book Takeaways series.

While AI helped me draft, I think they came out much better than standard AI fare.

• Takeaways: Outlive by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford

• Takeaways: The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

Let me know what you think!

fun facts 🙌

30 years ago people freaked out about Burger King accepting credit cards. This is a short news segment worth watching for fun. It’s posted by Anar Isman to make the point that humans are bad at accepting anything outside the status quo. ~ learn more

Relocating a 165,000 pound oak tree. “We had originally done initial site studies where we designed the building around this tree – and we came up with some pretty good options. In the end, we asked the question “what if we moved the tree?” because the building would become considerably simpler in its massing if the tree wasn’t there.” ~ learn more

World’s first virtual dog lease. Innovation just keeps coming. “Using proprietary wireless technology dubbed "Autoprox" in both your dog's collar and a remote you carry on your person, you can set Heel's virtual leash length as close as 10 ft (3 m) up to 750 ft (229 m) away. Should your doggo exceed the distance you set, the collar will issue a warning, letting your dog know it's a little too far.” ~ learn more

A single cloud compromise can feed an army of AI sex bots. “Organizations that get relieved of credentials to their cloud environments can quickly find themselves part of a disturbing new trend: Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Real time AI video agent with under 1 second latency. This is an impressive experience. Give it a shot! “We built this because until now, we've had to adapt communication to the limits of technology. But what if we could interact naturally with a computer? Conversational video makes it possible – we think it'll eventually be a key human-computer interface.” ~ learn more

Generative AI may well be the most capital-intensive technology Silicon Valley has yet seen. “It’s easy to forget how long it takes for new tech to gain widespread adoption. Consider the personal computer. The first PCs hit the market in the mid-1970s, but they didn’t become household staples until the late 1990s. In 1984, a mere 8% of U.S. households had a computer. By 2000, that number had grown to 51%. Today? It’s 95%.” ~ learn more

AI can (mostly) outperform human CEOs. The test was a computerized business strategy game that researchers invented. It outperformed by taking on risk. “Both GPT-4o and executives succumbed to the same flaw — overconfidence in a system that rewards flexibility and long-term thinking as much as aggressive ambition.” ~ learn more

11 startup ideas 2024 Ventures wants to fund. One that I found particularly interesting was scam detection for individuals and businesses. ““At 2048 Ventures, we are obsessed with imagining the future and predicting how the world will change in 5-10 years, enabled by nascent infrastructure and data-based technologies.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

The worst meal of my entire life. The story of a business dinner gone wrong and a lesson learned. ~ learn more

Transforming company narratives. This might be the most interesting interview I’ve listened to of a communications professional. My sample size is not large. Yet, I really enjoyed that she was far from conventional. ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

California’s “uber of weed” shutting down. Eaze was an early mover in the market, facilitating deliveries from licensed dispensaries. It was always odd to me how they were able to do all this with credit cards. Once upon a time I looked into it to discover a web of Cypress-based “fresh cut flower” delivery apps that implied a cat and mouse game with the credit card industry. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first. “A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.” ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

McDonald’s sues major beef producers for price fixing. This is an interesting turn. “McDonald’s has sued JBS, Tyson Foods and other leading meat processing and packing companies for allegedly conspiring for years to limit beef supplies, boosting their profits while causing the fast food giant to pay artificially higher prices.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

CERN hints at new physics. “It's exciting stuff. The reason the team has been pursuing this very specific kind of decay channel so relentlessly for more than a decade is because it's what is known as a "golden" channel, meaning not only is it incredibly rare, but also well predicted by the complex mathematics making up the Standard Model of physics.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!