P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #421
Keep a tight leash on that AI!
my story 🚀
i’ve been thinking 💭
One of the movies that lives on repeat in my head is the 2006 film Idiocracy, “a dystopian satire in which an average man wakes up 500 years in the future to find that society has devolved into a mindless, corporate-controlled world run by the profoundly ignorant.”
I’ve been playing with the AI coding tool Cursor, which now has access to my computer’s terminal to run code, and soon will have access to all my web-based tools. I have had the dystopian thought that we’re edging closer and closer to this part of the movie:
Can we all agree to keep a watchful eye on the computers? Read the AI 2027 article below for more scary reasons why. Also, I encourage watching or re-watching Idiocracy to all newsletter subscribers.
fun facts 🙌
Unsure calculator. At first it was not clear to me what this was. After reading about it, I became excited. This is basically a calculator that takes ranges as inputs and runs Monte Carlo simulations to deliver a probabilistic distribution of outcomes. ~ learn more
The P/E ratio that wasn’t. “Here is where it gets funky. All stocks with a P/E ratio above 40 are rounded by the ETF protocols to 40, and all stocks with no (or negative) earnings are assigned a P/E of 40.” ~ learn more
Yak shaving. “Etymology: Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of a 1991 episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show.” ~ learn more
No, kerosene did not save the sperm whale. Here’s a fun fact: inside a sperm whale’s head there’s somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of spermaceti oil. “How we carried on exploiting sperm whales long after the conventional wisdom said we'd stopped.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
The case against conversational interfaces. They need not replace things that work very well (buttons), but they should augment them. “Users should be able to trigger actions from anywhere with simple voice prompts without having to interrupt whatever they are currently doing with mouse and keyboard.” ~ learn more
GigaStar facilitates second $1M+ raise for a YouTube channel. Nice to see this is picking up steam! “This marks the largest known raise by a YouTube Creator in exchange for a percentage of potential future channel revenue.” ~ learn more
Eric Schmidt just took another CEO job. The last time he did this was in 2001 when he joined Google. “On Monday, Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space that he made a significant investment and had taken a controlling stake in the company, The New York Times first reported.” Onward and upward to space! ~ learn more
AI 2027. “We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution. We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like. It’s informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience at OpenAI, and previous forecasting successes.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Play the games. “It’s one of those secret, little pleasures of parenting that don’t get talked about enough. That hug and goodbye ritual at school dropoff. The intricate, almost compulsive bedtime routine. The playacting before you wrestle or chase them down the hall. …” ~ learn more
How to win an argument with a toddler. “You can’t. That’s because toddlers don’t understand what an argument is and aren’t interesting in having one.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
DHL doesn’t trust consumers to pay their customs tariff bills. “Effective Monday, April 21st, 2025, and until further notice, we will temporarily suspend the collection and shipping of business-to-consumer (B2C) shipments to private individuals in the United States where the declared customs value exceeds USD 800.” ~ learn more
Temu pulls its U.S. Google shopping ads. I wonder if this led to a tense meeting at Google HQ. “Temu completely shut off Google Shopping ads in the U.S. on April 9, with its App Store ranking subsequently plummeting from a typical third or fourth position to 58th in just three days.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Cells are swapping their mitochondria. “There’s unexpected movement in the world of cell biology — specifically, with the energy factories known as mitochondria. … Over the past three decades, research has revealed that mitochondria are much more than cellular powerhouses that turn nutrients from food into energy.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
Most promising signs yet of alien life. It’s all about that dimethyl sulfide! This is a neat piece of news, and the article also contains a helpful explanation of how scientists measure far-off planetary atmospheres. Alas, still no contact with alien life. You can use the Unsure Calculator (above) to plug in the Drake equation (“It is an estimate of the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible.”) to build some confidence that it’s out there somewhere. ~ learn more
They likely saved the country by implementing their current system of cash transfers to new parents. “Mongolia's birthrate was below-replacement for a few years before the government started to get serious about it.” ~ learn more
profiles of people 🚶
How Commodore invented the mass market computer. This is a heck of a story! “This is the story of Jack Tramiel, one of the most explosive and ruthless founders the computer industry has ever seen. It is the story of four machines—the PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Atari ST—and of the man who ruled home computing for over 20 years.” ~ learn more
Why is the WSJ writing about Elon Musk’s offspring and baby mamas? I mean I’m only human so I’ll read it. But for real WSJ, not enough going on in business affairs? “The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump.” ~ learn more