1. On Creativity by Isaac Asimov at Technology Review. Back in 1959, Assimov penned an essay on creativity, exploring the conditions that foster creative results. New ideas require both the mixing of different knowledge areas and the confidence to pursue something (seemingly) foolish.
  2. The Great Unbundling by Ben Evans. A graph-packed presentation on the trends in tech and how the pandemic accelerated them. “20 trillion dollars of retail, brands, TV and advertising is being overturned, and software is remaking everything from cars to pharma.”
  3. Google Trained A Trillion-Parameter AI Model by Kyle Wiggers at Venture Beat. Google is using the highest number of parameters to date (1.6 trillion compared to Open AI GPT-3’s 175 bn or Microsoft’s 176 bn). To reduce computational needs, they built a Switch Transformer which uses a gating network to access specialized models within the larger model.
  4. /r/WallStreetBets Is Trying Something Unprecedented In History by Eliezer Yudkowsky. When the price of GameStop and other struggling companies caught the attention of the media, most saw the event as a dumb action by some reddit nerds. What barely anyone mentioned was an unprecedented game theoretical play, where redditors had all to gain from defecting — and yet seemingly didn’t (status: 28.01.21).
  5. The Relentless Jeff Bezos by Ben Thompson at Stratechery. Bezos built three incredible businesses (Amazon.com, AWS, the Amazon platform) with a unique combination of strategic thinking, boldness, and resilience.
  6. TikTok Owner Bytedance Launches Mobile Payments in China by Arjun Kharpal at CNBC. WeChat and Alipay dominate the Chinese payments market, but Bytedance is entering the field with Douyin Pay and its acquisition of the third-party platform UIPay.
  7. Once We Can See Them, It’s Too Late by Scott Aaronson at Shtetl-Optimized. Robin Hanson takes on the Fermi paradox – a civilisation wipes itself out, reaches a quiet steady-state, or spreads at nearly the speed of light. Full paper here.
  8. Ottawa Biophysicist Hopes Asparagus May One Day Help Repair Spinal Cords by Hallie Cotnam at CBC. Researchers implanted the fibrous tissue of asparagus  in rats with severe spinal cord injury. With the help of the asparagus structure, new neural pathways were able to form and the rats went from paralyzed to being able to move their legs again.
  9. Thread on Twitter’s Cultural Revolution by Matthew Ball. Ball argues that the recent changes in Twitter’s performance lead back to a change in culture. Their shift to more (and faster) product innovation and focus on content creators is an indicator to be bullish.
  10. Octopuses Find New Hunting Buddies by Brandon Keim for Nautilus. In another feat of cephalopod intelligence, octopuses have been shown to cooperate fish in their hunt. Researchers believe this is a recent adaption due to dying reefs and (subsequently) harder hunting conditions.