AI:
Multimodal Pathway: Improve Transformers with Irrelevant Data from Other Modalities — “We propose to improve transformers of a specific modality with irrelevant data from other modalities, e.g., improve an ImageNet model with audio or point cloud datasets…we observe significant and consistent performance improvements with irrelevant data from other modalities.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.14405
Spotting LLMs With Binoculars: Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Text https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12070
DrugAssist: A Large Language Model for Molecule Optimization https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10334
Wenquai slashed their AI costs dramatically by optimizing Mixtral with GPT-4. They managed to reduce their daily AI expenses from a steep $100 to less than a dollar. https://twitter.com/wenquai/status/1748016021808595242
Stability AI unveils smaller, more efficient 1.6B language model as part of ongoing innovation https://venturebeat.com/ai/stability-ai-unveils-smaller-more-efficient-1-6b-language-model-as-part-of-ongoing-innovation/
Google's Circle to Search simplifies finding info on your phone by letting you circle an item on-screen to instantly search for it. Can’t wait for Apple and everyone else to copy this. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/17/24041198/google-circle-to-search-samsung-galaxy-multi-search-generative-ai
Science:
This is revolutionary work - enabling new workflows in genome engineering. It opens up a whole computational logic on DNA that one could do with it. Bridge RNAs direct modular and programmable recombination of target and donor DNA https://arcinstitute.org/manuscripts/BridgeRNA_Manuscript.pdf
“There are some academic papers that are so brilliantly and so accessibly written and so universal in scope that they transcend disciplines and stand as timeless testaments to both great thinking and great writing. Here's a short personal selection…” https://twitter.com/curiouswavefn/status/1749647212811084061
If our civilization collapses, extraterrestrial archeologists can look at this and be impressed. Three satellites following the Earth in an equilateral triangle, each 25 million kilometers from the other two. Each contains two gold cubes in free-fall. The satellites accelerate just enough so they don't get blown off course by the solar wind. The gold cubes inside feel nothing but gravity.
Lasers bounce between each cube and its partner in another satellite, measuring the distance between them to an accuracy of 20 picometers: less than the diameter of a helium atom! This lets the satellites detect gravitational waves — ripples in the curvature of spacetime — with very long wavelengths, and correspondingly low frequencies.
It should see so many binary white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way that these will be nothing but foreground noise. More excitingly, it should see mergers of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies as far as... the dawn of time, or whenever such black holes were first formed. (The farther you look, the older things you see.)
It may even be able to see the "gravitational background radiation", the thrumming vibrations in the fabric of spacetime left over from the Big Bang. This radiation was created before the hot gas in the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent to light. So it's older than the microwave background radiation, which is the oldest thing we see now.
It's called LISA - the Laser Interferometric Satellite Antenna. And we're in luck: ESA has just decided to launch it in 2034.
Source: John Carlos Baez, https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/111829303745277853
The retina is arguably the most impressive part of the brain.
It’s the only part of the brain that faces the world directly - it’s a sensor and processor in one
Its consumes 50% more energy per gram than the rest of the brain.
1000:1 compression from retina to optic nerve
25000:1 from optic nerve to brain
For every 1Gb collected by the retina, 1Mb is sent to the brain thru the optic nerve and < 100bits used, at a rate of about 875Kbps. Similar to broadband internet.
Source: Peyman Milanfar, https://x.com/docmilanfar/status/1750767425061273653
See also: Interpreting the retinal neural code for natural scenes: From computations to neurons https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627323004671
Psychology:
“…higher levels of intelligence, controlling for financial literacy and narcissism, associated negatively with attitudes toward cryptocurrencies…” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886923003057
“Humans have an inbuilt, anti-capitalist tendency to fundamentally dismiss trading relationships as a form of scam where the seller profits disproportionately.” https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1749482187798249925
“Emigration from Sweden was disproportionately by more individualistic people and the areas they left have more trade unions and support for left-wing parties today.” https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1750619997162913990
Politics:
The remarkable story of an intelligence officer with a brilliant memory who was captured by Syria, told that Israel had fallen & persuaded to give up everything he knew on Israeli intelligence. https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/man-who-most-damaged-israel-gives-first-interview-h0xxy8z3
Congress wants to ban China's largest genomics firm from the U.S. Here's why: China is grabbing U.S. genetic info that could be used to create targeted bioweapons that would work against one group and not another. https://nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/congress-wants-ban-china-genomics-firm-bgi-from-us-rcna13569
“At a bare minimum, these Iranian support ships should all have been sunk by now. The Biden admin won't touch them because they have a pathological fear of "escalation".” https://twitter.com/RealCynicalFox/status/1751271927430144442
Trump: “We’re paying for NATO, and we don’t get so much out of it… if we ever needed there help, let’s say we were attacked, I don’t believe they’d be there.” This is like the Roman Empire complaining that its provinces wouldn't come to its defense. So? Either you protect your provinces, or you will soon be begging Beijing and Moscow for permission to do business. Or do you think Venezuela would allow Exxon to do business in Guyana? https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1751408416860352764
Ukraine:
Avdiivka offensive equipment loss numbers as of 26 January 2024. In summary: 574 RU losses vs. 44 UA losses https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VIyACYHfnJi8cUMWjXAXDhS419l9IHcIhGJaK1RWMFQ/
The identifiable losses from just yesterday would wreck many countries in short order. https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1751492354584797461
“Even the Russian military reporters are admitting major losses of their combat equipment. How sustainable is this is unclear.” https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1751200566699499647
SIX Russian 122mm BM-21 «Grad» MLRS were destroyed by Ukrainian «Black Forest» Brigade in the east of Ukraine https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1751184660804030608
“So far this year, Ukrainian drones have struck at least four Russian oil and gas terminals across the country. The attacks are part of a growing asymmetrical campaign by Kyiv to cripple the industry” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/ukraine-levels-up-the-fight-with-drone-strikes-deep-into-russia
Our man in Brussels: The Insider has unmasked the GRU officer helping the Kremlin evade sanctions from his base in the heart of Europe https://theins.press/en/politics/268669
“By abandoning Ukraine in a fit of political incompetence, Americans will consent to the deaths of more Ukrainians…We will send a message to Russia and China too, reinforcing their belief that the U.S. is a degenerate, dying power.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/us-congress-support-ukraine-war/677256/ [https://archive.is/Pa9Dy]
On Politics 3 - escalation would mean war, one that Iran would lose. The US may prefer the (irritating, expensive, unstable) status quo to a failed state of 88 million people, with loose fissile material. Its a similar situation to the Houthis - they could be knocked over with a breath, but their "deterrence" is the fact that the force that did so would own the humanitarian crisis their misrule has created.