“Named after the Spartan king who held off a Persian invasion with a vastly inferior force at the Battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas is one of a family of weapons based on using long-pulse microwave beams to burn out the electronics of small drones.” ~ learn more
“The trouble with rubber tires, especially on heavy vehicles that operate in harsh conditions, is that they wear out quickly. In the case of working mining vehicles, that means replacing tires every 6-9 months, and GACW estimates this can work out to as much as US$7 million in tire costs for a single mining truck over its lifetime.” ~ learn more
Here’s a missive about the end of the era of social media, the start of the AI-generated content swamp era that we’re in now, and a hope for a future where someone has created a solution for this problem. In the meantime, I guess everybody’s turning to messaging groups and paywalled communities. ~ learn more
“There’s a hidden force that makes life in successful organizations increasingly miserable. It’s invisible, so we either don’t see it... or we at least pretend not to. But the force is inescapable and affects everything that happens within an organization.” ~ learn more
“The most common noun in the English language is “time”. We talk obsessively about time because it’s the most important thing in the universe. Without it, nothing can happen. And yet most of us treat time as if it’s the least important thing. We kick up a fuss when tech giants steal our data, but we’ve been strangely nonchalant as those same companies carry out the greatest heist of our…
“The AI race feels like a sprint right now, with OpenAI grabbing headlines and Meta open-sourcing everything they can. But if you’re placing bets on who wins the marathon, don’t overlook the company that’s been running this race since before most people knew there was a race to run. Google has structural advantages that become more decisive as AI shifts from clever demos to planetary-scale deployment.” ~ learn more
“So that brings us to where we are. Stated plainly, today’s frontier LLM research is not about building animals. It is about summoning ghosts. You can think of ghosts as a fundamentally different kind of point in the space of possible intelligences. They are muddled by humanity. Thoroughly engineered by it. They are these imperfect replicas, a kind of statistical distillation of humanity’s documents with some sprinkle on top.” ~…
This is a really great interview by Dwarkesh Patel, who I think is really on a roll the past ~year. “Richard Sutton is the father of reinforcement learning, winner of the 2024 Turing Award, and author of The Bitter Lesson. And he thinks LLMs are a dead end.” ~ learn more
Here’s the punchline: “This, sadly, is the ‘Chicago Way’ — on steroids.” … “Tyler Technologies’ major county contracts – peppered with delays and cost overruns – were shepherded by well-connected lobbyist Jay Doherty, who is set to be sentenced this summer for his role in the unrelated utility scandal.” ~ learn more
I have an annual reminder in my todo list so that I don’t accidentally forget to pay a property tax bill. After several months of kicking it out into the future because no bill is available I asked a friend why. “The delay stems from a years-long technology upgrade that county officials say is more complex than anticipated, and residents are growing increasingly frustrated.” ~ learn more