The U.S. Surgeon General identified an epidemic of loneliness in an advisory last year. Connections across generations can help both parties. kn1/iStockphoto/Getty Images When Andrea Levitt, 82, first

SummaryCompanies AI companies face delays and challenges with training new large language modelsSome researchers are focusing on more time for inference in new modelsShift could impact AI arms race fo

A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, in what is believed to be Canada’s first human case of bird flu. “This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underl

The newly elected premier of New Brunswick has called on Canada’s federal government to aid in a “full, open scientific investigation” into the mysterious brain illness that has plagued the province f

Welcome back to the Abstract! This week, let’s get our minds as far away from Earth as possible by visiting an ancient law-breaking black hole that is consuming everything around it at an incomprehens

I went to the UX Brighton conference yesterday. The quality of the presentations was really good this year, probably the best yet. Usually there are one or two stand-out speakers (like Tom Kerwin last

Researchers have shown that it's possible to abuse OpenAI's real-time voice API for ChatGPT-4o, an advanced LLM chatbot, to conduct financial scams with low to moderate success rates. ChatGPT-4o is Op

The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said. It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster t

Hundreds of early ballots cast for the US presidential election have been burned in two suspected attacks in Washington and Oregon, exacerbating tensions ahead of next Tuesday’s knife-edge contest. Po

London-based distributor Neal's Yard Dairy announced on Instagram that it was "the victim of a sophisticated fraud" involving high-value cheddar cheese. They are working with law enforcement to track

“We take pride in the fact that we are expanding the market by welcoming new investors into the financial system.” - Robinhood’s S-1 Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge US citizens can gamble on t

How X users can earn thousands from US election misinformation and AI images 12 hours ago Marianna SpringSocial media investigations correspondent BBC Some users on X who spend their days sharing cont

Japan’s Mount Fuji remained snowless on Tuesday, marking the latest date that its slopes have been bare since records began 130 years ago, the country’s weather agency said. The volcano’s snowcap begi

At least 64 people are feared to have died after torrential rains hit southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday, bringing flash floods that raged through towns and cut off roads and railway lines. As the

TL;DR Oligo’s research team recently uncovered 6 vulnerabilities in Ollama, one of the leading open-source frameworks for running AI models. Four of the flaws received CVEs and were patched in a recen

The death toll from floods in Spain’s Valencia region has topped 200. A huge clean-up is under way amid desperate conditions, with severe weather warnings still in place. The storms which caused this

Lisa Schnirring October 28, 2024 Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) NIAID/Flickr cc In experiments designed to learn more about the threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus spreading from cows to people, research

A pig in Oregon has tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday. It's the first time the virus has been detected in swine in the United States. Test results

Subscribe Join the newsletter to get the latest updates. By now, if you have spent any amount of time reading about the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, it is likely that you have seen the AI-

A superb new article on LLMs from six AI researchers at Apple who were brave enough to challenge the dominant paradigm has just come out. Everyone actively working with AI should read it, or at least

My founder friends constantly think about growth. They think about how to measure their business growth and how to get to the next order of magnitude scale. If they’re making $1M ARR today, they think

Weekly writing about how technology and people intersect. By day, I’m building Daybreak to partner with early-stage founders. By night, I’m writing Digital Native about market trends and startup oppor

Artificial intelligence (AI) is curating your social media feed and giving you directions to the train station. It’s also throwing the fossil fuel industry a lifeline. Three of the biggest tech compan

There's no limit to what it can steal from you. Those are the words of Natalie, a Covid survivor who went hiking on her wedding day. Now she spends her life in a darkened bedroom. If you want to see w

It started on farms in Kansas. At first, it was severe. Then it wasn't. During the winter of 1917, a mystery flu started making locals sicker than doctors had ever seen. One of the doctors tried to so

Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”. Sperm counts in men have

Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported In that report —

An evolutionary biologist and a science fiction writer walk into a bar... and mull over survival. By: Peter Watts BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently. I’ve kno

Note: In my last newsletter, I said that my next post would be the second part of my Facebook autopsy. Don’t worry, that’s still coming, but given the recent drama between Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Scar

Forty percent of cyber teams have not reported a cyber incident out of fear of losing their jobs, a new report has shown. This signifies a serious underreporting of cyber breaches globally, cybersecur

The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continui

Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to short-term increases in unemployment, a rise in carbon emissions and leave regulators trailing in the wake of technological advances, according t

A former senior employee at OpenAI has said the company behind ChatGPT is prioritising “shiny products” over safety, revealing that he quit after a disagreement over key aims reached “breaking point”.

The thing is, any feed or search result is “algorithmic.” “Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order” is an algorithm. “Just show me products that have this SKU”

The restorative effect of a good night’s rest is widely recognised and the popular scientific explanation has been that the brain washes out toxins during sleep. However, new findings suggest this the

Dear readers, First off, hello from Substack! I am writing from andrewchen.substack.com where you’ll find me from now on. After 15+ years of writing via wordpress on andrewchen.com (and its predecesso