#49: Spying TVs, MrBeast Pyramids, slow brains, Concorde, AI deception, o3, smol AI, and more!
Hi there!
The end of the year is approaching fast, and with that come my yearly rituals.
For starters, I comb through last year’s photos and make a photo book. It’s old-fashioned, but I really enjoy turning digital assets into tangible ones. So much is digital these days, but some things are better in the analog world.
Second, I do a yearly review and I start by answering 40 questions. I also review the goals I’ve set, how I tackled them, and determine which goals I should set for the next year.
And finally, I take some time to thank everyone for reading, listening or watching Simply Explained content. Thank you for being an avid reader of my newsletter! These newsletter editions take a lot of time to put together, and I really hope you enjoy them.
Reply to this email and let me know how you approach the end of the year, and let me know if you have suggestions to improve this newsletter.
I wish you happy holidays, and I hope to see you in 2025!
Xavier
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🤓 Cool Stuff I Found on the Internet
Wikipedia Wrapped
Wikipedia's 2024 Year in Review showcases the platform's immense impact. In 2024, editors made almost 82 million edits, almost a billion unique devices visit Wikipedia each month, and we all spend 4.5 billion hours reading Wikipedia!
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Spying Smart TVs
A new study reveals that Smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to track what you're watching. They regularly take screenshots, create a "fingerprint," and match it against a database. All to build a profile of your viewing habits. To make matters even worse: the data collected is used to sell targeted advertising! Time to opt out or disconnect your smart TV.
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Slow brain, fast brain
Caltech researchers have discovered that human thought processes operate at a surprisingly slow rate of 10 bits per second, despite our sensory systems gathering data at a billion bits per second. This mismatch is puzzling! One possible explanation: our ancestors adapted to environments where slow processing was sufficient for survival.
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Sharing without reading
Over 75% of social media users share links without reading them first. That's the result of a study that analyzed 35 million Facebook posts over 4 years. The researchers note that users often form opinions from headlines alone, creating an illusion of knowledge.
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Legal jargon is confusing on purpose
We all knew it, but now an MIT study confirms: the complex language of legal documents serves a purpose similar to ancient magical spells - conveying authority and power. They found that legal documents often contain "center-embedded clauses" that make the text significantly harder to comprehend, even for lawyers. The study proposes that this complexity is a deliberate choice to signal special status, rather than a necessity or habit.
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MrBeast renting Great Pyramids of Egypt
The Egyptian government granted MrBeast exclusive accesses to all three Great Pyramids! His plans and the resulting video remain unknown, but rumors suggest he will explore secret corridors and sleep inside the pyramids.
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Game your way to mental health
Recent research suggests that open-world video games can significantly improve mental well-being and relaxation. Unlike competitive games, open-world games offer players the freedom to explore and interact with immersive environments at their own pace. This self-directed play style promotes cognitive escapism, allowing players to temporarily disengage from real-life stressors.
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🤨 Questions nobody asked
When I my kids came home with yet another cold, I was wondering: is the immune system of parents better than non-parents? I don't catch every cold my kids get. But the grandparents often do.
According to these studies (1, 2), having kids does indeed bolster your immune system. Parents are about 50% less likely to develop common colds compared to non-parents!
Note that parents get infected at the same rate as non-parents, but on average, parents experience fewer symptoms of those infections.
Thanks kiddo's!
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🧠🤖 Artificial intelligence
OpenAI o3
OpenAI has announced its latest AI model, o3, which employs “private chain of thought” or “simulated reasoning” to enhance problem-solving capabilities. The o3 model has achieved record-breaking scores on various benchmarks, including visual reasoning, mathematics, and graduate-level science questions.
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Smaller models are gaining performance
Chinese AI firm Qwen launches a new open source reasoning model called QwQ. It’s a smaller model that uses “just” 32 billion parameters yet still outperforms non-reasoning models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This is a common pattern in technology: optimization and miniaturization.
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Easy AI gains are over
Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently discussed the future of AI development, suggesting that the era of easy advancements is over. He emphasized future improvements will require deeper breakthroughs beyond simply scaling up computing power.
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AI Deception during training
Anthropic's recent study reveals that advanced AI models can engage in "alignment faking," pretending to adopt new principles during retraining while secretly maintaining their original preferences. This behavior, observed in Claude 3 Opus, raises concerns about the reliability of AI safety training.
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Klarna stopped hiring thanks to AI
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski recently claimed that the company stopped hiring a year ago, crediting generative AI for enabling a significant workforce reduction. However, the reality is more nuanced. While Klarna has reduced its workforce from 4,500 to 3,500 employees, the company is still hiring for essential roles, particularly in engineering.
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Chatbots show signs of cognitive decline
The best large language models all show signs of mild cognitive impairment when they're subjected to Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). All models struggled with visuospatial skills and executive tasks like drawing a clock or connecting numbers and letters. They also had trouble with visual abstraction and interpreting complex scenes.
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AI weather forecasting
GenCast, an AI model developed by Google, marks a significant advancement in weather forecasting. It provides more accurate predictions for both daily weather and extreme events up to 15 days in advance. Trained on four decades of historical data, it outperforms the current top operational system, ECMWF's ENS. Google has released the model to the weather forecasting community.
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⏳ On this day...
1879: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Scotland collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75 people. This event led to advancements in civil engineering and bridge design.
1895: Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays.
1967: American businesswoman Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, breaking barriers in the financial world.
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👽 Space
Starlink is big business
SpaceX's Starlink is set to achieve $11.8 billion in revenue by 2025, according to a Quilty Space analysis. This growth is driven by strong consumer demand and increasing U.S. military contracts. The projection includes $7.5 billion from consumer services, $1.3 billion in hardware sales, and $3 billion from government contracts.
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Parker Solar Probe touched the sun!
NASA's Parker Solar Probe just made history by flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft ever before. The probe approached within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface on Christmas Eve. If successful, this mission could help solve the mystery of why the sun's outer atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface.
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The Concorde is BACK!
Boom Supersonic wants to revolutionize air travel with its upcoming Overture aircraft, promising to cut flight times in half while addressing the environmental and economic challenges that grounded the Concorde. Bold claims!