ZD 24.10: Feeling the Nineties Vibes

Back in the day when I was a teenager . . .

Production Note: I am heading to New York for a very interesting little AI conference called BrXnd. If you are attending I’d love to chat at the event. If you are not attending I will be sending an out of band update about that a little later on.

Now on with your typical edition of The Zeitgeist Distilled . . .

🥃 The Distilled Spirit 🥃

⛹️‍♀️ Women's sports is having a moment.
💹 This week’s reminder of how much better modern life is.
🐲 How to count at Beijing’s military spending correctly
💵 Shooting down $100k drones with $1m++ missiles is bad business.
🍽 Why you can’t find a good dinner reservation anymore.
💲 Twitch is bringing Bob Barker and Gen Z together.
🚶‍♀️ Walking is a luxury good in America.

🏭 Of LLMs and Fabs 🏭

💬 13 charts on how large language models are eating the world. If you have not yet looked at Claude it is worth checking out. They have updated the product significantly in the last few weeks with a new, advanced model and now a mobile app. Zapier has a great side-by-side comparison of the products to help you figure out where to use it versus ChatGPT. AI Futurepedia just added a new AI Innovations leaderboard that is worth tracking.

📉 On the other hand, we could be running into a resource wall for LLMs. One of those walls is chips. It takes a ton of resources to build those fabs, and opening new fabs is tough even for world-leaders TSMC. We are struggling to build new, top-of-the-line examples stateside but the US is also sorely lacking simpler ones capable of building the connective tissue of modern weapons.

👴💾 Reminders that we are walking on the shoulders of giants. BASIC turned 60 this week. NASA repaired Voyager 1 from 15 Billion miles away by re-routing code around a failing memory chip.

👑 Next time you are arguing about wireless protocols you can derail things by sharing how we got the name Bluetooth.

🎤 Back in the Days when I was a Teenager . . . 🎤

📟 Like many other wayward youth in the 90s, I had a pager. During the war on drugs, some people thought that was a problem. Looking into the mind of another 90’s icon — Jillian Hess examines Kurt Cobain’s notebooks. And while we are being nostalgic maybe we can bring back the web that once was. Even the Knicks and Rangers are living the spirt if 1994.

💰 Everything you ever wanted to know about stock buybacks. Banks care deeply about what is in your wallet.

💡 30 very useful concepts and razors to learn from and follow. While we are being philosophical, please avoid zero-sum thinking and Moloch traps.