Favorites Apps, Data, and Trust
January 22nd 2025
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t that! Robo-Sumo is very competitive!
This graph was posted as a response to the claim that Democrats will lose by being on the side of 'Ban TikTok'. While TikTok is still unavailable on both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, Larry Ellison’s Oracle is willing to take the risk that no future admin will enforce the law against them, so they’re continuing to host TikTok’s service. Akamai too. An option suggested by Ezra Klein for a deal with TikTok is that they should allow US platforms in China and we allow TikTok in the US (cached). Not likely that China would ever agree with this. Worth noting that this is Musk’s position on TikTok (cached), and the most negative thing he’s said about China in years. While Trump is flagrantly violating the law, Speaker Johnson seems to be interpreting (cached) Trump’s position as “TikTok should still be forced to divest”, but perhaps on a longer timeline than January 19th.
Read the thread if you like, but this picture sums it up. IQ could simply be a noisy measure of a variable that doesn’t actually go up at all beyond some point.
This is a demo of r1, just released by DeepSeek. They also released the model weights publicly. It’s their o1 equivalent model, and if you run it on their website you can see it censor itself (cached) live when it goes against the CCP party line. Unclear what it does when run locally, it looks like a secondary classifier on the web site. Along with seeming Anxious in this interaction, Mollick also had one that he describes as "reading a diary of a somewhat tortured soul who wants to help"
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Not a surprise, but when scientists say they’re unsure, that increases public trust in them (src)(cached)
– There's a recent Vox article that puts the data all in one place to argue persuasively that Trump's win was not about lower democratic turnout. Voters just... changed their minds. Although another part was previous Democratic voters decided to stay home. But it's clear both things happened, and the latter is a form of persuasion as well. (src)(cached)
– Ezra and Yglesias agree on Zuckerberg essentially: he's cursed with having become rich from a technology that's basically harmful, and there's not a way around it. (src)(cached)
– Will Trump’s track record for stabbing people in the back bite him this time around? (src)(cached)
– Biden final legal maneuvers seem unusually lawless, especially pretending that we ratified a Constitutional amendment. Who the heck thought that was a good idea. (src)(cached)
– If you’re wondering what the data information danger with TikTok is, here’s a simple example about how they can use it to get dirt on people who don't even use the app. Here's another about how they can be compromising your credentials (cached) on every website you visit from their in-app-browser. (src)(cached)
– Details about TikTok from the SCOTUS ruling are damning, no surprise ruling was unanimous (src)(cached)
– Voters really liked that Biden didn’t run again, I bet they'd have liked it more if he'd decided that earlier. I certainly would have! (src)(cached)
– Simulation of what would happen with various alternative H-1B systems. (src)(cached)
– oh yikes, price of eggs is gonna jump if H5N1 continues to become more prevalent. (src)(cached)
– Gruber linked to recently revealed internal deliberations at Nokia the day after the iPhone was unveiled. They did a surprisingly good job understanding the situation. (Unlike Microsoft.) Benadict Evans points out Nokia’s most interesting miss: they thought Apple would make a cheaper version. (src)
– Marc Andreessen isn’t a recent Republican convert. He backed Romney. (src)(cached)
– Given an example of a very good forecaster making an insane prediction on Twitter, a thread on how forcing people to make specific bets results in discovering the actual claim. Posts on Twitter can be just bluster almost by accident. (src)(cached)
– The Trump coin is a way to simply hand the president a bag of cash. Even Anthony Scaramucci says so (cached) (src)(cached)
– Bari Weiss’ The Free Press continues to be a Republican op. (src)(cached)
– Ezra Klein argues that Trump’s corruption truly is unpopular with voters, and the in-your-face nature of it will be reflected 2026 and 2028 (src)(cached)
– Vietnam’s ruling communist party is reportedly planning Milei style government reforms. Plus, Vietnam loves the US (cached) (src)(cached)