Faisal’s Web Site
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy
Noah Smith: “… most of the ‘new-graduate gap’ appeared before the invention of generative AI. In fact, since ChatGPT came out in 2022, the new-graduate gap has been lower than at its peak in 2021 … the recent rise in college graduate unemployment is entirely concentrated among men; women are doing just as well as ever.”
Sunday, 24 August 2025
New type of supernova ‘looks like nothing anyone has ever seen before,’ astronomer says
Ashley Strickland, CNN: “The discovery provides direct evidence of the long-theorized, but difficult to observe, internal structure of massive stars. It is also challenging the conventional ways in which astronomers understand stellar evolution.”
Saturday, 23 August 2025
Tinted sunscreen does something regular sun protection can’t
Andrea Muraskin, NPR: “A survey of U.S. dermatologists found that while over 90% of providers said that they counseled their patients about visible light protection, only about 10% made evidence-based recommendations.”
Also – Laura Baisas, Popular Science: Sunscreen may have kept ancient humans alive during a polar reversal
Tuesday, 19 August 2025
What Happens If AI Hits An Energy Wall?
Paul Krugman: “Side question: Why were tech industry ads so much better back in 1999?”
Saturday, 9 August 2025
Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97
Don Babwin, AP: “This is what I do. Yes, there’s risk involved. I measure risk.”
“A.I.”
the brain that can see a face in a wall outlet was always doomed to hear the voice of God in a markov chain
— Cohen is a Ghost (@skullmandible.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 3:05 AM
Friday, 8 August 2025
Congress wants to cut the smartest investment taxpayers ever made
David Patterson: “Every American taxpayer is a silent shareholder in that success. If we walk away now, we lose not just future breakthroughs but also what we have already earned.”
Sunday, 3 August 2025
Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog
Peter Gutmann, Stephan Neuhaus: “We anticipate that, as with current sleight-of-hand factorisations, researchers will in the future construct more sophisticated sleight-of-hand manipulations to allow even these rules to be bypassed. We therefore expect that updates to these rules will need to be made in the future as they are penetration-tested by quantum factorisers.”
Monday, 21 July 2025
In the Shadow of Silicon Valley
Rebecca Solnit, London Review of Books: “I thought of this place in terms of liberation and protection; we were where the environmental movement was born; we were the land of experimental poetry and anti-war marches, of Harvey Milk and gay rights, of the occupation of Alcatraz Island that galvanised a nationwide Indigenous rights movement as well as Cesar Chavez’s farmworkers’ movement in San Jose and the Black Panthers in Oakland. We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We’re still that lab, but we’re no longer an edge; we’re a global power centre, and what issues from here – including a new super-elite – shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways.”
Saturday, 12 July 2025
Accidental find in planetarium show could shift scientists’ understanding of our solar system
Jacopo Prisco, CNN: “The problem with trying to imagine what the Oort Cloud looks like is that scientists have never seen it, even though we are technically surrounded by it.”