Reading

Harvard is hosting a database with interesting biological measurements ranging from the duration of an eye blink to the mass of a fruit fly. via kottke.org

Simon Willison summarizes Andrej Karpathy's review of Meta's Llama 3, noting the increase in training tokens and tokenizer size but also the disappointingly small context length.

via @simonw

Wired's Steven Levy details how eight Google employees invented the "transformer" concept, leading to a recent tech breakthrough. via kottke.org

Alison Roman's recipe features a simple, flavorful dressing and roasted vegetables. via The source of this content is Alison Roman's website.

Authors Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon draw parallels between ecosystem monoculture and the internet's consolidation under a few tech giants, advocating for antitrust laws and interoperability mandates to "rewild" it. via Noema Magazine

Simon Willison quotes Molly White's argument that large language models may only offer small productivity gains because they're only somewhat useful for mundane tasks. via @simonw

Venkatesh Rao's essay, "The Extended Internet Universe," is featured in "The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet," a new book exploring the "dark forest" theory of the internet. via Ribbonfarm.

Cool Tools' tenth issue of "Books That Belong On Paper" reviews "A Beginner’s Guide to Immortality: From Alchemy to Avatars" and "Goldfish Ghost." via Cool Tools.

Space.com has an article listing the next seven total solar eclipses, including dates and where to view them. The article also provides resources for those interested in eclipse chasing.

Tyler Cowen argues in this simple model that AI social media digests will decrease time spent browsing due to the substitution effect, letting users prioritize enjoyment. via Marginal Revolution