Favorites November 20th 2023
This 3d population map of the US is really good. When you switch to diff mode, it makes it really clear that nothing got built in the Bay area for decades.
In a follow-up tweet Medlock spells it out: "The eligible population only increased by 2%, meaning prior to this change, 20% of SNAP administrative budgets were being spend to exclude 2% of people". Here's a link to the paper.
I had never seen what carplay looks like on a super wide screen, yikes.
90% of OpenAI employees called on their board to resign, including one of the board members. Ilya is basically the hot dog man on this one. Microsoft's invitation is not just Altman, but anyone else from OpenAI who wants will join Microsoft's AI division, although that's not a done deal quite yet.
In response to MKBHD predicting that Clippy will conquer all other assistants.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– CEO of Cruise resigned, although of course it was only the second biggest news of the weekend (src)
– Battery Costs are continuing to fall, projected to fall for the rest of the decade (src)
– Maybe the OpenAI board's missteps in predicting 72 hours in the future shows that it's unlikely they'd have been able to predict decades into the future. (src)
– Microsoft may have had some big successes this weekend, but their design is still bad (src)
– OpenAI's proposed new CEO paid to be in Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic. (Which was pretty good, in his defence. (src)
– Long thread by Chris Elmendorf proposing a different way of doing legislation to get more housing built. (src)
– Discussion of the right way to talk about mental health with teenagers (src)
– When Saudi men are informed that their peers support women's rights, it makes them more willing to let their wives work. (src)
– "Not a World War But a World at War" (src)