Category: Everything else

My favorite paid subscription is Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View. There are two parts of this subscription I like best – a collection of charts every Wednesday and a curated list of interesting research/technology articles every Sunday. Here, for example, are links that caught my eye today.

(1) Meta’s open source Large Language Model (LLM) is as good as GPT 3.5.

The availability of a high quality LLM as an open source tool will change the landscape. Again.

(2) The price of polysilicon – a key input in solar modules – is down 78% this year. Solar is going to continue getting cheaper.

(3) We’re still early days in the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Norway, which leads the world, with 21% of its vehicles being electric, has some fascinating data on passenger car fires. ICE/traditional cars were responsible for 35 out of 10,000 passenger car fires. The same number for EVs was 4 – nearly 9x better.

(4) We may finally have a drug that slows down Alzheimers.

(5) Canada trialed a new work permit directly targeting US H1-B holders. They hit their capacity of 10,000 applications in 2 days. #TalentWars.

(6) An energy startup, Fervo Energy, has shared a statement claiming the first every scalable geothermal energy breakthrough.

What I appreciate about this newsletter is that they don’t shy away from talking about the realities of the challenges we face – especially around the nature of the climate crisis. Those realities are hard to ignore at a time when we’re shattering all sorts of heat wave / temperature records.

For example, it is true that Coal consumptions was the highest this year in a while.

But it is also true that coal consumption is plateauing with growth in coal flattening.

However, this isn’t enough. Fossil fuels are still 82% of the world’s energy supply.

But, on the bright side, the rate of growth of renewables powered by solar and wind is amazing to see. And exponential growth will mean significant changes in our mix in the next two decades.

In their words – “Renewable energy is poised to be this engine of growth. It is on a 60-year exponential growth curve. Solar energy, for instance, is growing at the fastest rate ever seen for any energy technology. China’s progress exemplifies this: it is on track to double its wind and solar capacity by 2025, five years ahead of its 2030 target. Renewables are ready for lift-off, and we love that here at Exponential View.”

This explains why I appreciate Azeem and team’s work. They do a good job of both embracing reality while dealing in hope.

And, as these notes above show, there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful and optimistic.

“Your best response to an insult is “You’re probably right.”

Often they are.” | Kevin Kelly

Often they are indeed.

I occasionally see or hear comments about device upgrade cycles. These comments assume our devices are not built to last more than a couple of years.

My experience tells me otherwise. Our iPad is approaching its seventh year anniversary. My personal laptop is a year or two older than that.

Both devices are functioning just fine.

Maybe upgrade cycles are more for us than our devices?

It is easy to be principled when our principles are aligned with what we want to do.

The true test of our principles is how we behave when they go against what we want to do.

“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.” | Josh Waitzkin

While this is true in any professional field, this is true in life too.

A few skills – grit, gratitude, constructiveness, along them – play a disproportionate role in a well-lived life.

A simple indicator of the amount of privilege in our life is the percentage of choices we get to make that aren’t in the realm of what the average human being gets to contemplate.

Examples of such choices might be – where should I fly for vacation?, should I send my kids to private school?, should I buy a home in that area?, should I be optimizing for work-life balance in my next job?, and so on.

An indicator of the amount of privilege we’ve been fortunate to accumulate is – what percentage of the privilege choices we’re contemplating now were choices we were able to contemplate a decade ago?

(a) Writing when we’re experiencing negative emotions and

(b) Consistently reflecting on the things and people we’re grateful for…

…may be the highest RoI (return on investment) forms of therapy available.

In my recent travels over a 2 week period, I kept a rough count of how often I turned to ChatGPT vs. Google search.

There were some searches which weren’t possible on ChatGPT – e.g., finding restaurants open nearby. But, for everything else, I estimated ChatGPT had 80% share. It felt fascinating to think there’s a solution out there that I’d willingly give up google search on mobile for (I’ve been using Ecosia/Bing on Desktop).

My typical questions were –

(1) Give me a 6 hour itinerary in x place with 6 year olds

(2) What is special about Y

Using ChatGPT for these questions was way more delightful – both because of the synthesis and the interactivity.

My mental model prior to this trip for harnessing the power of generative AI was as a productivity tool. I’ve updated that to include high intent search as well.

A few years ago, there was confusion about why electric cars were better than ICEs or internal combustion engine/gas powered/petrol powered cars. The reason for the confusion was around the assumption that these cars needed a fossil-fuel powered grid to charge themselves.

Of course, EVs become SO much better for the environment as we continue to transition to a renewable based grid (more here).

But that’s not all. 9 out of 10 units of energy used to charge an electric vehicle is used to drive the vehicle vs. 2 out of 10 for a petrol car. That’s 450% more efficiency.

This got me thinking about our energy conversion as humans.

For every unit of energy we take in, how much actually goes into meaningful output? And how much goes into avoidable drama, politics, frustration, and angst?

Take inspiration from electric vehicles, we must.

“The best fights are the ones we avoid.” | Mr Han