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Hasnain says:

“At one point in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” Adams introduces the architects of the Earth supercomputer. They’re powerful beings who have been living among us, disguised as mice. At first, they were motivated by simple curiosity. But seeking the question made them famous, and they began considering talk-show and lecture deals. In the end, Earth is demolished in the name of commerce, and their path to existential clarity along with it. The mice greet this with a shrug, mouth vague platitudes, and go on the talk-show circuit anyway. Musk isn’t peddling pabulum. His initiatives have real substance. But he also wants to be on the show—or, better yet, to be the show himself.

In the open letter, alongside questions about the apocalyptic potential of artificial intelligence was one that reflects on the sectors of government and industry that Musk has come to shape. “Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” he and his fellow-entrepreneurs wrote. “Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders.””

Posted on 2023-08-22T05:34:24+0000

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America’s Obsession With Weight-Loss Drugs Is Affecting the Economy of Denmark

Huge sales of Ozempic and Wegovy have driven up Novo Nordisk’s revenue and market cap, leading to lower interest rates in its home country.

Click to view the original at wsj.com

Hasnain says:

“Novo Nordisk’s U.S. sales of Ozempic and Wegovy have been so strong that it has had to convert dollars into kroner in unusually large quantities, raising the krone’s value relative to the euro, said Danske Bank director Jens Naervig Pedersen.

“Because the pharmaceutical industry’s exports have grown so much, it’s creating a big influx of currency into the Danish economy,” he said.

Denmark’s central bankers have responded by keeping interest rates below the European Central Bank’s, weakening the krone, said Pedersen. “

Posted on 2023-08-18T06:13:24+0000

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Hasnain says:

Yikes.

“Earlier this year, over a dozen agencies teamed up to bust UMI's unlicensed laboratory in Reedley, which is in Fresno County. The squalid lab was found brimming with lab equipment, refrigerators, freezers, incubators, and other machinery. It contained nearly 1,000 laboratory mice, which were allegedly kept in inhumane conditions. While some were dead upon discovery, the remaining animals have since been euthanized. Authorities also found hundreds of unknown chemicals and vials of biohazardous materials, including blood and urine. Testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified at least 20 infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and a herpes virus.

Authorities in Reedley were first tipped off to the lab's existence after a local code enforcement officer noticed an illegally attached garden house in the back of the warehouse, which was supposed to be used only for storage.”

Posted on 2023-08-17T06:05:56+0000

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How is LLaMa.cpp possible?

Recently, a project rewrote the LLaMa inference code in raw C++. With some optimizations and quantizing the weights, this allows running a LLM locally on a wild variety of hardware:

Click to view the original at finbarr.ca

Hasnain says:

“Memory bandwidth is the limiting factor in almost everything to do with sampling from transformers. Anything that reduces the memory requirements for these models makes them much easier to serve— like quantization! This is yet another reason why distillation, or just training smaller models for longer, is really important”

Posted on 2023-08-16T03:56:31+0000

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She Just Had a Baby. Soon, She'll Start 7th Grade.

After the fall of Roe v. Wade, some travel hundreds of miles to get abortions. This is the story of a girl who couldn't

Click to view the original at time.com

Hasnain says:

Heartbreaking. Probably shouldn’t have read this first thing in the morning.

“Ashley doesn’t know anybody else who has a baby. She doesn’t want her three friends at school to find out that she has one now. Regina is working on an arrangement with the school so Ashley can start seventh grade from home until she’s ready to go back in person. Relatives will watch Peanut while Regina is at work. Is there anything about motherhood that Ashley is excited about? She twists her mouth, shrugs, and says nothing. Is there anything Ashley wants to say to other girls? “Be careful when you go outside,” she says. “And stay safe.”

There is only one moment when Ashley smiles a little, and it’s when she describes the nurses she met in the doctors’ office and delivery room. One of them, she remembers, was “nice” and “cool.” She has decided that when she grows up, she wants to be a nurse too. “To help people,” she says. For a second, she looks like any other soon-to-be seventh grader sharing her childhood dream. Then Peanut stirs in his car seat. Regina says he needs to be fed. Ashley’s face goes blank again. She is a mother now.”

Posted on 2023-08-14T14:26:10+0000

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Hasnain says:

“Marks also underscored the trap of mean reversion — the notion that what goes up must come down, and vice versa. This concept can drive investors to sell prematurely, securing small gains and hunting for the next underpriced stock. This relentless quest for low valuations can result in a portfolio filled with average businesses that could see a 30% uplift when market sentiment changes.

Meanwhile, transformative returns (in the thousands of percent) are usually found in long-term holds. The longer the hold, the less the exact entry-point valuation matters. What's more crucial is the choice of investment and the holding period.

In investing, just as in life, you often get what you pay for.”

Posted on 2023-08-14T03:27:18+0000

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Let’s stop kidding ourselves we’re a rich nation and get real… the UK’s gone bust | Will Hutton

Britain depends on the kindness of strangers to get by in the world. It doesn’t have to be like this

Click to view the original at theguardian.com

Hasnain says:

This is bleak.

“For those at the bottom of our society, those low incomes translate into quasi-destitution: 2 million people report going without food for at least a day in any month. Malnutrition stalks our children – our five-year-olds are among the shortest in Europe. One in three children live in poverty. It is time to stop talking and thinking of Britain as a rich country. We are poor and living on the edge.”

Posted on 2023-08-14T03:13:06+0000

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Hasnain says:

“For many dermatologists, these lengthy regulatory battles and widespread issues with regular usage also underline a common recommendation that tends to go unheard by patients: Sunscreen is great, and sunscreen from Europe, Australia, and Asia may be better, but even the best, most cutting-edge SPF lotion is just one part of keeping your skin healthy. Floppy hats, big beach umbrellas, or loose, high-coverage clothing might not be your ideal beach look while you’re young, but if you can mostly cover up and stick to the shade, your elderly self will thank you.”

Posted on 2023-08-13T03:51:03+0000

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Hasnain says:

I still don’t get the whole concept of child influencers. I mean I get why people watch their content, but it seems kinda iffy to push it on young kids without super informed consent.

“Activists have been pushing for an expansion of child entertainer laws to include child influencers. The call for legislation has not only centered around finances, but privacy. Cam, 24, grew up with a social media presence they didn’t consent to. They say details of their life, including their first menstrual cycle and photos of them in the hospital following a car crash, were posted to their mother’s 10,000 Facebook followers. In a previous interview with Teen Vogue, Cam said “It’s easier to tell you what my mom didn’t post.”

Cam testified in support of Washington State’s HB 1627, which would allow children of influencers to request the deletion of content featuring them “from any internet platform or network that provided compensation to the individual’s parent or parents in exchange for that content.” In Cam’s testimony, they said, “when I was 9 years old, the intimate details of my first period were shared online... I plead [with] you to be the voice for this generation of children because I know firsthand what it’s like to not have a choice when a digital footprint you didn’t create follows you around the rest of your life.””

Posted on 2023-08-13T02:54:48+0000

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Minneapolis has a YIMBY message for America: Build more houses and get rid of suburban-style zoning and inflation will disappear

“There is no more effective way to rein in inflation than to expand the supply of affordable housing and increase housing affordability,” says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.

Click to view the original at fortune.com

Hasnain says:

“Rent growth in Minneapolis since 2017 is just 1%, compared with 31% in the US overall, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Its share of affordable rental units and ratio of rent to income are better than most comparable US metro areas.

“There is no more effective way to rein in inflation than to expand the supply of affordable housing and increase housing affordability,” said Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.”

Posted on 2023-08-12T13:57:53+0000