P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #431
🎆🇺🇸 Happy Birthday America
my story 🚀
fun facts 🙌
A tool for exploring the space between two concepts. “what if we had google maps but for navigating information space?” ~ learn more
Falsehoods programmers believe about aviation. When working with aviation data, you might feel it’s safe to assume certain relationship, like “Flights take off and land at airports” or “Flights depart from a gate”, but not so fast! “Okay fine, separate flights from the same major passenger airline that depart within a few minutes of each other would not both have the same flight number… right?” ~ learn more
The seven most influential papers in computer science history. This was fun. “These days, we’re flooded with new stuff: fresh languages, mind-blowing AI breakthroughs, quantum leaps, and the JavaScript framework of the week. It’s all super exciting, but here’s the thing: foundations matter.” ~ learn more
Now that's a wake. “A drinking contest was held in response to his death. According to Plutarch, citing Chares of Mytilene, Promachus of Macedon drank the equivalent of 13 litres of unmixed wine and won the first prize of a golden crown worth a talent. He died three days later and forty-one other contestants allegedly died of alcohol poisoning as well.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
The serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring. “In the last week, social media users have shared dozens of stories about encounters with Soham Parekh, a software engineer who seems to have been simultaneously working at multiple Silicon Valley startups — unbeknownst to the companies — for the last several years. But who is Parekh, how did he pull off his career as a serial moonlighter, and why can’t Silicon Valley get enough of him?” ~ learn more
Case study: YC and power in silicon valley. “PG shared his anti-Adchemy game plan. In a nutshell: YC would anathematize Adchemy’s VCs, and declare that they’d never do business with YC again unless they straightened this out. Knowing PG, not only would they be disinvited from Demo Day, but PG would probably also steer companies to take money from other funds instead.” ~ learn more
The volatile nature of SEO. Ahrefs does a very interesting segment on Efficient App, a software review site run by PS subscribers Alex and Andrea. “They watched Google wipe out their competitors… and now, could their own $800K business be at risk?” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Welcome to the era of evals. “Reinforcement Learning (RL) is driving the most exciting advancements in AI. RL is becoming so effective that models will be able to saturate any evaluation. This means that the primary barrier to applying agents to the entire economy is building evals for everything.” ~ learn more
Always check if you can speed up time. “Want to make OpenAI transcriptions faster and cheaper? Just speed up your audio. I mean that very literally. Run your audio through ffmpeg at 2x or 3x before transcribing it. You’ll spend fewer tokens and less time waiting with almost no drop in transcription quality.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
Test all the food. Bryan “Don’t Die” Johnson’s company is now doing comprehensive testing of foods, and they tested 22 pet food brands. “Heavy metals mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium were detected in every sample.” You can fund testing of your pet’s food brand, and “if brand claims results, your money comes back.” ~ learn more
Do blue-blocking glasses improve sleep? “You could sit in darkness for three hours before bed, but that would be boring. But—supposedly—the pineal gland is only shut down by blue light. So if you selectively block the blue light, maybe you can sleep well and also participate in modernity. … So, do they? To find out, I read all the papers.” ~ learn more
Thinking critically about a new study on AI and cognition. Some headlines have linked AI use to cognitive deficits because of a recent study, but here’s Peter Attia to clear things up. “In other words, it may have shown that the use of LLMs reduced the amount of thinking that was required for completion of the essay tasks, but it did not show that the use of LLMs impaired participants’ ability to think.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Almost more robots than humans in Amazon’s warehouses. “The e-commerce giant, which has spent years automating tasks previously done by humans in its facilities, has deployed more than one million robots in those workplaces, Amazon said. That is the most it has ever had and near the count of human workers at the facilities.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Blood sugar control and brain aging. “The study found that a decline in HbA1c, and key markers of long-term blood sugar levels, are associated with significant positive changes in specific brain regions commonly affected by age-related atrophy. … The study suggests that improved blood sugar control could be one of the most important factors in slowing down age-related brain changes.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Pierogi in space. “In a first for space cuisine, ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will bring pierogi, the traditional Polish dumplings, to the International Space Station during the upcoming Axiom Mission 4.” ~ learn more