Help a journalist out? I'm looking to talk to researchers, engineers, students or entrepreneurs who are considering leaving the U.S. because they lost funding or are worried about visas or anything like that. I'm at mimsical.94 on Signal
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Christopher Mims
@mimsical@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06tech columnist @ wsj, here to make friends & chew bubblegum (& I'm all out of gum)
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Joined October 28, 2022
Weekly tech column, WSJ:
moar links:
hey y'all I'm back
after realizing that algorithmic feeds are just totally incompatible with my particular brain, gonna make a go again of being more deliberate about using Mastodon
Tesla has the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands, report shows
* Fatal accidents per billion miles driven by all vehicles was 2.8 -- Teslas had a rate of 5.6
* Unclear why the disconnect with high vehicle safety ratings, but issue could be autopilot
Thanks to Steve Jobs and Gorilla Glass, factories in America are now ramping up to make affordable windows, made from panes thinner than a credit card, that can:
* save Americans $25 billion / year
* withstand a 2x4 shot out of a cannon
(gift link)
Barbie demonstrates, once again, that "go woke, go broke" is the opposite of a real thing
good stuff from @parkermolloy@masto.ai
"Up to 70% of residents between North Carolina and Florida, and a trillion dollars in property, could be impacted by the end of the century with just over three feet of sea rise," thanks to the "hidden threat" of climate change -- rising *groundwater*
via @dogzilla@masto.deluma.biz
https://www.wlrn.org/environment/2024-11-27/climate-change-rising-groundwater-study
What if there were a way to eliminate China's rare earths leverage over the rest of the world -- which allows it to handicap everything from EV to defense production -- by making a new kind of cheap motor that simply doesn't need those elements?
It's happening.
We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All
Maybe you've heard that AIs are "black boxes"
But a growing body of research keeps arriving at the same conclusion: Today's AIs all work in surprisingly similar -- and simplistic -- ways
(gift link)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-ai-thinks-356969f8?st=yow5Ga&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Today something launched I've worked long and hard on -- a new podcast series for the WSJ.
It's free!
We're asking hard questions of the people who aren't just making the news - they *are* the news.
First up, the Tesla refugee trying to beat Musk at his own game.
This is a huge problem in the media:
Uncritical coverage of AI contributes to public misunderstanding and distracts from its *actual* harms.
Well-documented and well-argued, by @sayashk@mastodon.social and Arvind Narayanan:
https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/people-keep-anthropomorphizing-ai
In the long run, the energy transition to fully electrified everything is happening, no matter who is in charge.
But we can't endlessly rip metals out of the earth forever. This ex-Tesla battery guy is betting we will eventually recycle 100% of them.
Here's episode 3 of my new podcast with co-host Tim Higgins:
turns out OpenAI funded the math benchmark that its "reasoning" model subsequently did really well on
This week on my new podcast Bold Names, we interviewed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who came out swinging on the subject of Microsoft's AI strategy:
📎 Copilot is "the new Clippy"
😈 "Microsoft has deceived our customers"
12 years after after Amazon promised it was just around the corner, widespread commercial drone delivery is finally coming to the U.S.
The technological enablers here are fascinating -- it turns out it was a design problem as much as anything.
(gift link)
Challenge: name a song that more perfectly embodies the way a track can feel like total cringe a decade after it comes out but subsequently proves to be a near-perfect piece of pop perfection (impossible)
Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy (Official Music Video)
Replying to
@L_howes@mastodon.social A CEO of a competing AI company recently told me that when people ask ChatGPT about good AI companies, his company's name is one it spits out, which has been driving inbound interest from potential job candidates.
Just an odd detail.
@mergy@self.social good lord... what model is this??
Replying to
@kashhill@mastodon.social @sayashk@mastodon.social Thanks for flagging! Google searches for Arvind's mastodon handle didn't turn this up.
Didnt realize a book was coming; looking forward to that.
@chrisggarrod you should!