Rami's Readings #35

The latest on Apéro & Intellect, Meta, LLMs, Infrastructure Costs, Nutrition Labels, Information Design, Router Security, Yaccarino’s Interview, Zealandia, Raspberry PI 5, and more.

Oct 01, 2023

Welcome to Rami’s Readings #35 - 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.

Upcoming Apéro & Intellect Gatherings!

Apéro & Intellect is a curated series of intimate gatherings discussing Artificial Intelligence designed to stimulate both your mind and your palate. Whether you're a coffee connoisseur, a tea enthusiast, or a cocktail aficionado, this is the place to be! Read the recap of #1. 🎟 For Subscribers Only.

🗓 Date: October 15th | ⏰ Time: 11am | 📍 Location: New York City

🗓 Date: October 19th | ⏰ Time: 8pm | 📍 Location: Montreal

🗓 Date: October 20th | ⏰ Time: 8pm | 📍 Location: Boston

Grab a Ticket!

🤖 AI Reads

Meta Is Putting AI Chatbots Everywhere

Notes: Meta’s open sourcing of Llama is paying off fast.

Chain-of-Verification Reduces Hallucination in Large Language Models

Notes: Read this. Variations of this technique are already deployed in real systems in the wild.

The Reversal Curse: LLMs Trained on "A Is B" Fail to Learn "B Is A"

Notes: New paper on ArXiv. Reminds me of Yann LeCun’s slide.

For the First Time, Research Reveals Crows Use Statistical Logic

Notes: Not AI? 😂 Observing the crows near my house… I believe this.

Andrej Karpathy on LLMs Becoming the Kernel Process of a New Operating System

Notes: Accurate.

💼 Business Reads

Procurement and Infrastructure Costs

Notes: New NBER paper. Great to see evidence of what is fairly obvious to most people observing government infrastructure projects.

We find that two important inputs in the procurement process appear to particularly drive costs: (1) the capacity of the DOT procuring the project and (2) the lack of competition in the market for government construction contracts.

Burkey Belser, Designer of Ubiquitous Nutrition Facts Label, Dies at 76

Notes: An iconic designer whose work has stood the test of time. Few informational graphic designs have lasted so long and are so widely produced.

Mr. Belser’s nutrition facts label — rendered in bold and light Helvetica type — was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act.

A Crisis Is Brewing at U.K. Universities

Notes: Meanwhile, U.S. university tuition costs continue to grow quickly.

Watch Linda Yaccarino’s wild interview at the Code Conference

Notes: 🗑️🔥

🛡️CyberSecurity Reads

US, Japan Say Chinese Government Hackers Exploiting Routers During Attacks

Notes: Always update your routers.