This week, I learned:
- Anthropic has single-plage docs for LLMs. Condensed version and Full version
- Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of self-correction
- Belonging to multiple social worlds is a good way to defend against no longer being good at what you used to be. Diverse values and social groups help.
- Self handicapping explains a lot about the world. You study late for a maths test - so you can fail for lack of trying, not aptitude. Ecosystems (e.g. sports teams) mitigate self-handicapping.
- You don’t have to be good in athletics to get the benefits. A slow runner gets the same discipline, pumping up, etc that a fast runner does
- Mono cultures are good to accomplish a known mission. Diversity is good to pivot during uncertainty. So, localize mono cultures
- Diversity helps only if there are sufficient numbers, or if they have enough power to change the organization’s thinking.
- Use a standardized password strategy, e.g. use the month like GramNov2024 (via Namit)
- Gemini has an OpenAI compatible API. Gemini Docs
- Ethan Mollick says Claude is solving MBA case studies well. x.com
- LLMs pay a lot of attention to the first 6 tokens. Ref
- This is an interesting article on “UI in the age of Gen AI”. Ref
- Google Open sourced Alphafold 3. Repo
- Cloudflare R2 has the same API as S3 but is cheaper
- Prefect.io is a good alternative to Airflow / cron. Can use for synchronisation tasks, e.g. Drive to server. But no Auth, UI params or config.
- Gemini transcription does not give accurate timestamps. Whisper does. But the quality of transcription is similar.
- Pass a complex data structure to Claude.ai and have it create an app to visualize it. It does well. Simin Willison
- Tech Council Ventures and Sunicon VC invest in early stage startups, and aloso provide them technology support (via Naveen)