P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #410
So many moons
my story 🚀
i’ve been thinking 💭
How many new moons have I experienced in my life? The age we recite when asked is the count of our trips around the sun. I found myself wondering how many new moons I’d seen. Hard pass on sitting down to do the math, but luckily in the time of this moon I can just farm that work out to ChatGPT.
I saw it write a python script and calculate the results: I’m a bit under 500 moons old. My obvious next question was to ask for the date of my 500th moon. Then I did the same for Kim, and then the kids. Then, I asked it to put all these together in a table. That’s when things went bad! It had ‘hallucinated’ the dates for the adults. I noticed, and I also noticed that there was no python script this time.
The LLM decided to save itself the extra work and just barf out some plausible numbers. When I told it to “Recheck all the math”, it ran the script and outputted real data. One way the AI companies are making LLMs smarter is by effectively telling them to “recheck all the math” before you see their results. It’s amazing that this works. Stay vigilant, LLM users!
fun facts 🙌
ChatGPT helps a dad diagnose his 3-year-old’s obscure dental issues. “my 3yo has had tons of dental/cavity issues. we've been taking her to dentists for years, and they have spent an awful lot of time not even subtly intimating that selentelechia is a shitty mom. tonight i took our case to Dr ChatGPTapp” ~ learn more
Video showcasing the importance of PPE for workplace safety. Grilling hotdogs on recently welded metal gets the point across to me. ~ learn more
OpenAI furious DeepSeek might have stolen all the data OpenAI stole from us. “I will explain what this means in a moment, but first: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha. It is, as many have already pointed out, incredibly ironic that OpenAI, a company that has been obtaining large amounts of data from all of humankind largely in an “unauthorized manner,” and, in some cases, in violation of the terms of service of those from whom they have been taking from, is now complaining about the very practices by which it has built its company.” ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
Chicago’s renewable energy milestone. “As of January 1, all buildings owned and operated by the city are officially powered by 100% renewable energy, including O’Hare International Airport, Harold Washington Library, 98 fire stations, and two of the world’s largest water treatment facilities.” About a third of that energy is from purchased renewable credits, but still good! ~ learn more
Chicago mayors get a lot of secret gifts? “Instead, under an “unwritten arrangement” between the Board of Ethics and the Mayor’s Office that has been in place since 1989, the mayor can completely disregard the law. Under this arrangement, the mayor’s office simply makes a publicly available log book of the gifts they receive, which is kept on the fifth floor of City Hall. No prior approval of gifts. No reporting to the Board of Ethics. And no reporting to the city comptroller to put these gifts in the city inventory. According to the Board of Ethics, this informal arrangement is communicated to mayoral staff during ethics trainings. And the Board does not disclose this policy on their website. This is insane.” ~ learn more
oh, austin 🤠
Why are people dropping flour in weird patterns around Austin? “The mystery man then pulled out a spice container and began sprinkling kitchen flour along the trail and surrounding areas. He’d make a mark, walk 10 to 20 feet, then repeat the process.” The answer is a “drinking club with a running problem.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
Waymo’s master plan. These self-driving cars have taken over my part of Austin and it’s surreal. In this post Harry Campbell, aka “The Rideshare Guy” since 2014, unpacks the company’s strategic options for scaling the service outside of its current few markets. ~ learn more
Explainer: what’s R1 & everything else. “R1 just came out a few days ago out of nowhere, and then there’s o1 and o3, but no o2. Gosh! It’s hard to know what’s going on. This post aims to be a guide for recent AI develoments. It’s written for people who feel like they should know what’s going on, but don’t, because it’s insane out there.” ~ learn more
The short case for Nvidia stock. Jeffrey Emanuel argues that Nvidia’s moats are all under attack in this lengthy post. ~ learn more or read a good summary
The Microsoft 365 copilot launch was a total disaster. So says ZDNet Senior Contributing Editor Ed Bott. “At the start of the New Year, with no warning, Microsoft gives its flagship productivity app a name change and a huge price increase. Why would the company make this mess? I asked Copilot, who explained it very well.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
What a $20,000 longevity clinic really buys you. The NYT’s take on longevity-focused medical providers is … critical. Here’s an excerpt I dislike: “But experts worry that these clinics are capitalizing on people’s fears of aging and death without offering many tangible benefits — because almost none of this is covered by insurance, or proven to prolong one’s life.” Just two small humble points: 1) so ‘covered by insurance’ is the bar for ‘tangible benefits’? 2) so prolong one’s health without extending one’s life is not enough? ~ learn more
How are hospitals actually organized? “Then a lot of you asked “what actually counts as a ‘hospital’”? And after a brief ayahuasca trip, we started asking ourselves the same question (just me, Ben’s clean). So today we want to actually explain organizationally what hospitals actually are.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Why did DoorDash win? “The business school version of why DoorDash won is that they had the right strategy. They launched in the right markets, acquired the right restaurants, and designed the marketplace the right way. The Silicon Valley hustle culture version is that they out-executed everyone else. They just shipped faster until they had better selection, a better product, and more reliable delivery. The financial markets version is that they got lucky. Grubhub and Uber were both public and playing with a hand tied behind their back during the most pivotal moment in the fight. The reality is that you can’t understand what happened without all three perspectives. Increasingly, success in every competitive market will require the right strategy, rapid execution, and good luck.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Bacteria (and their metabolites) and depression. This is a bit of a dense writing flush with scientific names and terms, but its short. There’s growing evidence that a gut microbe has a causal role in major depressive disorder. ~ learn more
A boost of a protein could encourage fat burn over muscle loss. I rarely hear scientists expressing confidence like this: “And while the BCL6 discovery came through a study on mice, researchers are confident it will translate to human physiology.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
The most important time in history is now. An author whose point of view on history I admire also has a point of view on the future. “We’re at the precipice, and we’re about to jump off the cliff of AI superintelligence, whether we want to or not. When are we jumping? What’s at the bottom? Do we have a parachute?” ~ learn more
Dark energy doesn't exist, claims new study on supernovas. “Enter dark energy. It's one of the most debated and intriguing missing puzzle pieces of modern physics—a mysterious form of energy believed to uniformly permeate all of space. In the current most accepted model of modern cosmology, dark energy is what drives the accelerated expansion of the universe. But what if there's another explanation that doesn't involve dark energy? A recent study using data from supernovas hints there might indeed be one, and it's called the Timescape model. This finding could profoundly challenge our understanding of the cosmos, so let's dive in.” ~ learn more
