justing.net

Week Notes No. 41: Media et al

By Justin G. on 25FEB05WED

I don’t think that DeepSeek was at all the most important thing that happened. Maybe it was just a convenient diversion.

Media

1. Books
   • Continue to read Circe, and it’s quite good.
     • “Even my sister had an end, a place she could not go.” p. 125.
     • A good passage on earning vs being born with it, on p. 135.
     • A very good passage on parts of human nature in power dynamics, on p. 146.
   • Also continuing Theft by Finding, and it’s an interesting read.
2. Articles & Newsletters
   • On DeepSeek’s V3 and R1 model, which is 45x cheaper to train than competing models. I mentioned it last week too. That’s 45 times less time or energy or GPUs, which is considered “a lot of times less” generally.
     • Intrigue which covers a broader look, it’s a short brief on the topic.
     • Gary Marcus is brief and to the point. At the time I checked it, NVDA is down almost 13%.
     • Simon Willison which is a summary of Jeffery Emanuel’s article (see also HN comments). The article is about the implications of R1 for Nvidia.
     • If you were wondering at the veracity of the claims about cheapness to train, there are people out there working to verify it (hat tip HN comment) and it seems to be basically checking out.
     • And The Zvi chimes in too.
     • Nate Silver? Sure, why not.
     • Stratechery’s Ben Thompson wrote a FAQ. Via Simon Willison and Daring Fireball.
   • Blogging Advice. “Write to experience what you care about in higher resolution,” sounds good to me.
   • Ezra Klein responds to the first two weeks.
3. YouTube
   • Cozytubes: Imamu Room and maigomika.
4. Television
   • Re: Dark, my theory is that this show is the Minotaur myth retold. So I’ll be waiting to google for that until after I finish season 3.
   • The X-Files S1E1. So much baked in already, right from the beginning. And it still works, on me at least, after all these years.
5. Movies
   • The Lost City is a junk food movie that is fun and only skin deep and exactly what it looks like it is. Sometimes that’s all you are looking for. I appreciate that they didn’t try to do more.
6. Music
   • New James Grant premiere
   • Ambients:
     • The Rosen Corporation (SLYT) “Illusions”. Excellent.
     • Rosen again “Watching, Feeling, The Waves. Very good.
     • Tom Sherlock Ambient Vinyl Mix Vol.2. Again with the vocals and the vinyl youtubers.
   • Our return to Monterey Bay Aquarium livestreams: Moon Jellies and Shark Cam.
   • Zelda tunes from stellarsheik and Sam and Chill.
   • Anjuna: A history of Chillout and Anjunachill’s Soft Winter Beats. Both great for reading.
   • Orchestral performance of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, on vinyl. Testing the waters with our current gifted record player setup. It was fun.
   • Ordered Jody Wisternoff vinyl. More testing of the waters. Let’s just keep this practicable here.

Info

1. Words
   • Saudade is Portuguese and untranslatable. It means approximately the presence of something missing.
   • Simple (via Circe), a medicinal plant. She’s even referred to in the link I put there.
2. Facts & Ideas
   • Asteroid Bennu sample contains building blocks of life. It amazes me that we did this, and that sample container is the thing that went to an asteroid and came back.

A moment of (giraffe) zen.

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