matco11

I get excited at the idea of a world in which advanced mathematical problems (and their solutions) become much more accessible to a much greater number of people. As a result, making mathematics much more loved at a societal level.

Imagine a world where these most complex mathematical problems are not accessible to a few hundred people, but a few hundred thousands people. ...Those original few hundred gifted mathematicians would have an even more prominent role, and their names and achievements would be known by orders of magnitude more people that they are now.

I have noticed this degradation of 5.5 reliability to what, in my experience, I consider Claude-level of reliability since early June.

My journey dealing with this has been transitioning from 5.5 high to 5.5 xhigh to 5.4 high.

5.4 high has been perfectly reliable for me for the last 3 weeks, and I am happy there.

Occasionally, I run some tasks on 5.5 xhigh to check if it has gone back to being 100% perfectly reliable, but, at this point, I am assuming they are just counting on releasing 5.6 rather than dealing with this reliability issue.

It is somewhat different: in your example, it’s just a matter of the taxation rate.

In Norway, it seems they were taxing paper gains: as an entrepreneur you take all the risk and put the effort to make your company succeed, maybe work with the smallest salary you can, so as to help your company grow more… then they come and say: “well on paper, if hypothetically you were to sell your company now, it would be worth X, so we are going to tax you on that.” …now to pay taxes you have to sell a chunk of your company, or find other ways to fund your tax bill, which is probably going to take away resources from growing your company, which probably means your company’s will grow less and hire less…

I love basketball, soccer, and tennis… but you guys have no idea how powerful I have found to share stories like this with my young kids.

Yes, I want them to excel in sports, but these articles provide a crucial counterweight to the all-too-common narrative that becoming a pro athlete is the ultimate dream. Instead, these stories show that being exceptional in STEM isn’t just something you do because you are curious, you find it interesting, you enjoy it (all great motivators), or to please parents and teachers (generally, probably, lesser quality motivators): these stories show that being exceptional in STEM can open doors to exciting, high-impact careers.

It’s been amazing to watch my kids begin to reframe STEM not as the “sensible” thing to do, but as something genuinely cool, aspirational, and full of opportunity.

> remember how they mentioned they built multiple Codex prototypes, it must've sucked to see some other people's version chosen instead of your own

Well it depends on people’s mindset. It’s like doing a hackathon and not winning. Most people still leave inspired by what they have seen other people building, and can’t wait to do it again.

…but of course not everybody likes to go to hackathons

Uhm. This seems more of a case of slow and expensive, can we at least hope it’s good?

The plane was initially commissioned in 2018:

- originally planned for delivery in 2024, the first aircraft’s timeline has now slipped to at least 2029, with further delays possible;

- The fixed-price contract negotiated under the (first!) Trump administration capped costs at $3.9 billion, but Boeing is already $2.5 billion over budget

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/12/first-delivery-for-air-f...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/25/business/air-force-one-boeing...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/boeings-new-air-force-o...

Brilliant. Thank you for the precise reference.

Can you guys explain what this would be bad for the OpenAI and Anthropic of the world?

Wasn't the story always outlined to be we build better and better models, then we eventually get to AGI, AGI works on building better and better models even faster, and we eventually get to super AGI, which can work on building better and better models even faster... Isn't "super-optimization"(in the widest sense) what we expect to happen in the long run?

For years, I was an Apple Watch user: I assumed that all medium/top end trackers were the same, and that Apple Watch was pretty much the benchmark.

…but now that is have had the opportunity to use extensively Garmin watches, my experience is that they offer far superior accuracy, precision and technical details for activity tracking and sleeping than Apple Watch.

My picks would be in the following order:

1) Garmin high-end watches, they are truly a work of love

2) Aura ring, because of great convenience and reliability

3) Apple Watch, because they are great all-rounders

4) Coros, Suunto, Whoops, because they are highly reliable, but lack some of the smart functions

5) Withings, Fitbit, etc…, they are a solid option, but they generally lack distinctive features/capabilities

I would stay away from any brands offering super cheap products, due to privacy concerns and lower reliability and lack of advanced features.

Forget video. Imagine what this going to do for video-gaming

The photo app redesign looks great on paper, but is terrible in practice.

Watching videos in full screen, with audio on, and without controls overlay (I hope I am not asking too much!) requires multiple taps and several frustrating attempts every-single-time.

Activity on your shared albums has been relegated to a small text-only link, and you only get to see small photos, and it doesn’t smartly tiles photos together anymore (photos are now randomly chopped to fit in the frame).

The photo app gets badges, but then you don’t know where to find the new activity inside the photo app.

There is no way changes like these were created, tested, and validated by a well-functioning team

No. They have already allowed Starlink competitors to launch on Space X rockets.

There are multiple players working on constellations of low-orbit satellites competing with Starlink

I haven’t decided yet where I stand on this, however…

…As I understand it, the intent of the law is to avoid that large companies book billions of revenues in the country, but then use price-transfer schemes to book the profits somewhere else, and not pay any taxes locally.

The net effect of the law on larger internet companies is probably marginal, but I am not sure the law was designed well enough, so as to avoid collateral damage on smaller internet companies

I agree. Also, especially in the extremely crowded and noisy context - what would have been the chances to have the demo working so well?

In fact, even if the robots worked very well autonomously, you would still have wanted a way to ensure that the demo is successful - the same way Steve Jobs did with the iPhone demo, Larry Ellison did with the Oracle servers demo, etc. So many stories like that in the history of famous product launches.

The one thing that bothers me a little is that if you look at the robots dancing, they are only moving the upper body; their feet are always on the ground. I would have liked to see them having enough ability to dance and move the legs too… then, again, maybe the gazebo they were in was just too space-constrained, or it was just too risky to do that in the demo - given the crowd, and all the chaotic party context. When you set up a demo, you have to account for the edge cases where your product glitches, not just for what it mostly does very well.

Anyhow, these are all AI issues (as opposed to mechanical ones), and, at the pace AI is evolving, it is not hard to see how these types of issues get ironed out over the time horizon leading to the launch.

The Optimus demo did do a great job at actually making people see a world in which robots just roam around and interact with humans everywhere. .

I agree. Also, especially in the extremely crowded and noisy context - what would have been the chances to have the demo working so well?

In fact, even if the robots worked very well autonomously, you would still have wanted a way to ensure that the demo is successful - the same way Steve Jobs did with the iPhone demo, Larry Ellison did with the Oracle servers demo, etc.

So many stories like that in the history of famous product launches.

The one thing that bothers me a little is that if you look at the robots dancing, they are only moving the upper body; their feet are always on the ground. I would have liked to see them having enough ability to dance and move the legs too… then, again, maybe the gazebo they were in was just too space-constrained, or it was just too risky to do that in the demo - given the crowd, and all the chaotic party context. When you set up a demo, you have to account for the edge cases where your product glitches, not just for what it mostly does very well.

Anyhow, these are all AI issues (as opposed to mechanical ones), and, at the pace AI is evolving, it is not hard to see how these types of issues get ironed out over the time horizon leading to the launch.

The Optimus demo did do a great job at actually making people see a world in which robots just roam around and interact with humans everywhere. .

Yes. …and, indeed, that used to be a vector for hacking “air gapped” systems back in the day

This is the best review I have ever read on the Apple Vision Pro. Also, we should probably stop lying to ourselves, and finally admit what we have known in hour hearts for a little while now: Apple is not anymore what it used to be. Reading this makes it clear…

Apple Vision Pro is the modern equivalent of John Sculley’s Apple Newton

Lots of people love exercise. It can even be a lot of fun to play a game of basketball, soccer, or to dance… We are all different, and one just has to find a type of exercise that one likes.

Also, being low in fat is great, but it’s not the same as also having a developed muscle structure, strong bones, and performant cardiovascular system.

Jones’ is normally referred to as the first hedge fund because he used/invented shorting.

Before him, if you wanted to make a negative bet on a stock you could really only do it with spread betting.

Yeah. This misses the point that founders often go unpaid for long periods of time.

Those payments catch founders up to being able to have a “normal” lifestyle - which enables them to perform their CEO or CTO jobs better. A CEO having issues with making ends meet at home, having personal debt, and eating ramen can sustain that additional pressure forever. It’s in the interest of VCs to arrange things so that founders can focus 100% on the success of the company.

It’s a “control premium”. The way the theory explains it is that you are making an offer to acquire control of the company, so you pay a control premium above what others are willing to pay on normal transactions in the market. In practice, how big of premium the acquirer pays is influenced by considerations specific to the history of the company, the shareholder base, its share price history, etc. …but theory and practice do link together, and you can trace the historical trend of control premia paid have changed over time, or even how they change from country to country.

This is not unique/new: TI has a line of calculators with Python https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-ca...

Perhaps, this is a message to Apple

…Availability on all continents might be a requirement to qualify as a provider for satellite emergency services like the one Apple will soon offer with iPhone 14 Pro

I am not sure this study is definitely convincing…

…but I wonder if the extra amount of scrolling one has to do on smartphones compared to printed books could be distracting and lowering comprehension.

Also, when I try to remember something I have red on a printed book, - sometimes - I can remember where on the page it was written, what else was on the page, or even what the page looked like. I experience none of that when reading on my smartphone.

This market repricing can only be temporary (at least in nominal terms), because where else would money go? For decades interest rates have been shrinking, making fixed income a safe investment. That’s not the case anymore, interest rates are on the up, where should money flowing out of the stock market go? You are going to see more sector rotation within the stock market, rather than money flowing out of it.

Today’s world depends on tech to an incredibly high (and increasing) extent. Eventually that will be reflected in market valuations.

The venture capital industry today has a much more mature and robust structure than even 5 years ago: the structure of the funds, the fund commitments, the size of the funds and the management companies. They are much more resilient to market moves than in 2000.

I think the fact that Netflix has been increasing prices faster just means they have had greater pricing power than cable cos. …and, arguably, if Apple, Disney, and the others hadn’t come to market, Netflix would have been raising prices even faster.

If you think how much you are currently paying for the “content” component of your cable subscription, that’s no surprise Netflix is finding that pricing power.

With the likes of LG and Samsung even making their own channel offering available for free (at least on mid/premium TV sets), if Netflix, HBO, Disney, Apple keep raising prices, I suspect the first thing consumers are going to want to do is to stop paying for content from cable cos. (and keep all the premium subscriptions)

It means that they looked at the price of Bitcoin and saw that, if they had sold at that price, they would have lost $51mm.

This does not mean that they sold the Bitcoins, but that they had to set aside a reserve of money for a potential future loss on their Bitcoins.

This has nothing to do with their propensity to sell their Bitcoins or their expectations on the price of Bitcoins. Instead, it has to do with the way accounting principles work and the need to mark-to-market financial investments.

I believe it’s good practice to think about your compensation not only as “what you get for what you do”, but also as “what you get for not doing what you would rather be doing”.

Some companies, some products, some teams, some (lower) level of stress, some amount of learning you are getting, some work/life flexibility - at some (temporary?) point in your life - might make a lot of sense to be considered together with the $ you get paid. I am all up for maximizing what you get out of your job, but you might want to optimize for multiple factors, not just salary.

Also, this discussion is very centered on yearly comp. It’s good practice to ask yourself how risk prone you are? That early stage startup equity comp might turn into much more than you will ever get paid at a large established company.

So when you are maximizing, ask yourself over what time horizon you want to maximize? One year?Three? Five? Ten years? It’s rare to get truly great things instantly.

The content of the article is inconsistent with what is explained by other sources, and, from a quick search, the author seems to be politically involved on the subject.

The law was introduced in 1930, during the Fascist era. The Italian Constitutional Court declared the law on “plagio” unconstitutional in 1981, as it found the law to be imprecise, resulting in a hard to measure definition of the crime of “plagio”, lacking coherence, and hence liable of arbitrary application by courts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagio

More detailed explanation here [in Italian]: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagio_(ordinamento_penale_ita... Apparently, there are similar laws about “mind manipulation” (brainwashing) in France, Spain, and Belgium.

> This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C.

It seems to me that continuing to communicate just the average temperature increase is a missed opportunity to engage with a greater portion of the population.

1.5 or 2 degrees do not seem like much, but once one understands that’s an average made out of much bigger positive and negative swings in temperature, one gets a much more dramatic picture.

I suspect focusing on the widening of the temperature range, rather than the average temperature change would work better with communications to the wider public