Rami's Readings #43
The latest on LLMs, 🇨🇦 Unity & Remote Work, Chinese Real Estate, SBF, Zero-Sum Thinking, SSH Vulnerability, CyberSecurity, and more.
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #43 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, papers, videos, and X (formerly known as Twitter) threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering AI, technology, business, culture, fashion, travel, and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
Happy Thanksgiving! Please enjoy this image generated with DALL·E 3. Prompt in the footnotes.1
🤖 AI Reads
I still cannot provide commentary on the events from last week…
A Survey on Language Models for Code
Notes: Recently updated.
CogVLM - Powerful Open-Source Visual Language Model
Notes: Released on HuggingFace by Researchers at Tsinghua University. Demo.
Recent Trends in China's Large Language Model Landscape
Notes: Published in April 2023, but even more relevant today.
Advancing Transformer Architecture in Long-Context Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Survey
Notes: Great survey.
Igniting Language Intelligence: The Hitchhiker's Guide From Chain-of-Thought Reasoning to Language Agents
Notes: Nice!
💼 Business Reads
To Restore Unity in Canada, We Need to Build National Understanding
Notes: For my Canadian readers. An opinion piece from Joe Clark in the Globe and Mail.
Canada’s Untapped Talent: The Remote Hiring Opportunity You’re Missing
Notes: One thing I would add: technology tends to be concentrated in certain cities due to agglomeration economies. The best AI development is taking places in Hayes Valley attracting more talent to San Francisco.
Homebuyers Biding Their Time as Second-Hand Prices Continue to Fall
Notes: The Chinese Real Estate market matters for Global Real Estate.
Sam Bankman-Fried and the People Who Gave Up Their Money for Nothing
Notes: From in the NYT.
Zero-Sum Thinking and Political Divides
Notes: Interesting research, but not all too surprising.
A zero-sum mindset is associated with more support for redistribution, greater endorsement of affirmative action, and less support for immigration. It is only weakly associated with political alignment. Zero-sum thinking can be traced to experiences with mass immigration, intergenerational economic mobility, and the legacy of enslavement.
Information is Beautiful Awards Winners 2023
Notes: Gorgeous data visualizations as always.
🛡️CyberSecurity Reads
New SSH Vulnerability
Notes: Not good. From Bruce Schneier.
Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records
Notes: Yikes.
That is all for this week. Signing off from Pheonix, AZ.
Prompt: “Create a whimsical and heartwarming image celebrating Thanksgiving, but with a unique twist: the main characters are adorable robots. In the center, a small, round robot with big, expressive eyes and a friendly smile is holding a platter with a pumpkin pie, its metallic body painted in bright, cheerful colors. Around this central robot, several other tiny robots are gathered, each with their own charming design, like one with long, thin arms for hugging and another with little propellers for flying. They are all in a cozy, cartoon-style living room, decorated with Thanksgiving-themed items like colorful leaves, small pumpkins, and a banner saying 'Happy Thanksgiving.' The overall atmosphere is joyful and festive, with a soft, warm lighting that enhances the feeling of togetherness. The image should be suitable for a family-friendly Thanksgiving greeting card.”