P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #448

It's November already!?

my story 🚀

🦒 On Halloween the big house with the giant giraffe out front gives out king sized candy. Also, at 7pm the giraffe drains its bladder, entertaining all passers by.

⏰ Happy daylight savings time! I guess the rumors of the government voting to remove DST last year were exaggerated.

fun facts 🙌

The lottery-fication of finance. “The breakout finance products of the past decade converge around a single design: a highly engineered lottery.” From sports betting to zero day options, this piece unravels how financial products offer lottery-like thrills with small bets and massive potential payoffs. ~ learn more

Feeding the LLM bots. “These aren’t the indexing bots of old, but scrapers collecting data to train LLMs.” They ignore traditional defenses like robots.txt and can disguise themselves to bypass IP bans. So this clever webmaster found a way to feed them endless trash content. This reminds me of how people find ways to keep telemarketers on the line indefinitely. ~ learn more

Detective wiki. “Who is Detective Wiki? You are. Look for clues, solve mysteries, and learn from your mistakes. Show us what that brain can do.” This game is, at first, painful for my ego as I get lots of answers wrong. But it grades on a curve, which provides some silver lining. ~ learn more

Judgment scores for behavioral, infectious, and chronic diseases. “Some diseases are seen as afflicting good people and some bad/immoral. Here’s how it varies by disease type.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

AI web browser’s hidden vulnerability. The good folks at Brave, a competing browser, found vulnerabilities in Perplexity’s Comet browser. “While looking at Comet, we discovered vulnerabilities which we reported to Perplexity, and which underline the security challenges faced by agentic AI implementations in browsers.” Basically, indirect prompt injections can trick AI into unwanted actions. ~ learn more

Claude Skills ‘agent-skill-creator’ might be the next big enabler. “Meta-skill that teaches Claude Code to create complete agents with Claude Skills in a fully autonomous way!” This overview and instructions manual is written as if it’s all so simple, with short sentences and lots of emojis. I must admit I don’t yet understand it, but I’m going to keep trying. ~ learn more

Living dangerously with Claude. “Why you should always use `--dangerously-skip-permissions`.” Simon Willison explores the exhilarating freedoms and grave risks of using Claude Code’s YOLO mode at a recent coding agent meetup. ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

The rich play different games. An interview with Morgan Housel. “The skills it takes to get rich are drastically different from the skills it takes to stay rich.” He discusses the distinct dynamics of wealth accumulation versus retention, emphasizing wisdom gained from studying the world’s wealthiest families. ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

A low yield for cancer detection. The largest study of the Galleri blood test for early cancer detection, involving nearly 36,000 participants, revealed that only “3 cases per 1,000 participants” resulted in early cancer detection. The biggest knock against this type of screening the cost, which isn’t a big deal for many (most?) of today’s customers, and should also come down over time. I bet the 3 in 1,000 who it worked for are quite pleased. ~ learn more

Meditation isn’t always safe. “Meditation can cause disabling psychiatric breakdowns lasting years... Mild emotional disturbances, confusion, and odd sensations are common.” While the ancient practice is often touted for its benefits, the risks associated with intensive meditation remain under-discussed. It’s crucial to understand both potential benefits and dangers. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Psilocybin and aging. “Compared to control cells, cells treated with psilocin...displayed an extension of cellular lifespan of 29%.” Peter Attia looks at this study and advises us to hold off on assuming magic mushrooms will extend human life. While a study found lifespan extension in mice, it’s slated for more rigorous testing. ~ learn more

Infrared saunas and athlete recovery. Recent research suggests that “infrared sauna can be a feasible and safe way to promote recovery, especially during busy match schedules.” It took me several clicks to get to the original ~200 page research study, and it took Claude to help me process it because ChatGPT failed. “The key practical takeaway is that infrared sauna appears to be safe and effective for recovery when used after training, particularly for power-based performance in team sports.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? “How will we feed the 100s of GWs of extra energy demand that AI will create over the next decade? On this episode, Casey Handmer (Caltech PhD, former NASA JPL, founder & CEO of Terraform Industries) walks me through how we can pull it off, and why he thinks a major part of this energy singularity will be powered by solar. His views are contrarian, but he came armed to defend them.” ~ learn more

Why is Argentina poor? “Around 1900, Argentina was 2x richer than Japan, and over 4x richer than Taiwan, South Korea, and China. But all these countries are now richer than Argentina.” Factors like land concentration and poor economic policies have taken a toll, creating stark contrasts with the growth strategies of the Asian Tigers. ~ learn more

How well does anti-money laundering work? Not that well, it seems. Despite international efforts, “most claims of ‘success’...are unsupported by relevant empirical evidence.” Recent scandals, such as a major U.S. bank failing to monitor $18.3 trillion, cast doubt on the system’s effectiveness. ~ learn more

thanks for reading!