Rami's Readings #34
The latest on Apple Modems, USD Gains, Zero-Sum Thinking, Chinese Gen Zs, Communication & Mental Health, IPOs, Alexa, LLMs, LLM Agents, Chain of Density Prompting, and more.
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #34 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
Announcing Upcoming Talk!
Join me in #Montreal on October 18th for the Techaide Product4Good conference! Dive deep into AI product conversations and support a noble cause. Proceeds from the conference are going to Centraide du Grand Montréal (United Way).
I am thrilled to share product insights learned from the whirlwind integration of GPT-4 into Bing. We will explore the concept of "play" in the professional context. I'll delve into team dynamics, nurturing innovation, and how to set up teams for maximum creativity and impact. Finally, while maintaining an eye on quality, I'll cover the importance of speed and iterating quickly.
💼 Business Reads
Inside Apple’s Spectacular Failure to Build a Key Part for Its New iPhones
Notes: Modems need to combine digital and analog engineering; rare knowledge.
Apple found that employing the brute force of thousands of engineers, a strategy successful for designing the computer brain of its smartphones and laptops, wasn’t enough to quickly produce a superior modem chip.
Dollar Rally Is Crushing One of the Most Popular Trades of 2023
Notes: Great time to buy Japanese products (USD to JPY: +4.20% in the past year). Use ZenMarket.jp to consolidate shipping.
Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides
Note: New survey from NBER assessing zero-sum thinking among US residents.
Zero-sum thinking can be traced back to the experiences of both the individual and their ancestors, encompassing factors such as the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated to the United States or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement.
Pharmaceutical Externalities
Notes: Alex Tabarrok writes about the underestimation of pharmaceutical innovations.
China’s Ultra-Rich Gen Zs Flock Home as Global Tensions Rise
Notes: This article is excellent but needs one additional dimension. No matter how privileged, my Chinese Gen Z friends universally and correctly complained about the ridiculousness of the US immigration system. More often than not, I heard resignation in their voices as the incessant backlog, delays, processing, etc., made it nearly impossible for them to plan long-term. The latest October 2023 US Visa Bulletin shows multiyear processing waits. This article reminds me of the effects of US Immigration on another extremely backlogged country: India.
The Value of Communication for Mental Health
Notes: Paper from NBER. 💯must read!
Simple cost-benefit analysis shows that providing communication credit to low-income adults is a cost-effective policy for improving mental health. Communication – the ability to stay connected – meaningfully improves mental well-being and interventions about communication are particularly valuable when implemented as many installments.
On the recent IPOs:
iPhone 15 Pro Facts and Estimates
Notes: Interesting explanation for the unanticipated iPhone 15 feeling of lightness by swapping stainless steel for titanium.
Warning: Update Your iPhone 15 to iOS 17.0.2 Before Transferring Data From Another iPhone
Notes: Surprising to see Apple launch a new phone with setup bugs.
🤖 AI Reads
Amazon Is Set to Supercharge Alexa with Generative AI
Notes: This announcement is late by about 6 months. Still surprised it took so long. It is unclear if Alexa LLM is running on the edge device or not. I track Edge AI advancements in this newsletter.
Prompt Engineering for Claude's Long Context Window
Notes: From .
The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey
Notes: Fantastic repository of papers on GitHub.
We provide a systematic and comprehensive survey on LLM-based agents, and list some must-read papers.
From Sparse to Dense: GPT-4 Summarization with Chain of Density Prompting
Notes: Shared by an acquaintance from MIT. Very interesting technique.
🛡️CyberSecurity Reads
Save and Sign in with Passkeys Using 1Password in the Browser and on iOS & The Latest Windows 11 Update Will Help You Ditch Passwords for Good
Notes: One step closer to a password-free future using passkeys. See previous reads.
U.S. Cities Have a Staggering Problem of Kia and Hyundai Thefts. This Data Shows It.
Notes: Bombshell report from Motherboard over at Vice. At what point does insuring Kias and Hyundais becomes unaffordable?
🔀 Other Reads
How to add Markdown support to Google Docs
Notes: 🙌
That is all for this week. Signing off from Montréal.