D-Squared Musings – Week 24

Inspired by “The Tao of Seneca”, I’ve decided to write 30 letters to Seneca as a daily writing and reflection practice. If you’re interested in following along, you can find all the letters here.

Tech

🪫 The Fusion Race

  • Packy @ Not Boring does an amazing job providing overviews of different industries and technology, this is no different. This article breaks down the history, current architectures, and startups within the fusion energy space. I enjoyed dedicating part of my weekend to this. Nuclear fission gets a bad wrap, so here’s a good article covering the misunderstandings around its safety. 

🧑‍🏫 The Narrated Transformer Language Model

  • Hands down the best explanation I’ve seen on how transformer models function. If you’re at all interested in understanding the inner working of the models we’re using today, this is a must-watch. Here’s a more detailed blog from the same creator. 

⚖️ Guanaco 65B: 99% ChatGPT Performance Using NEW QLorRA Tech

  • Honestly, I don’t understand the QLorRA concepts yet, but the implications of being about to fine-tune and run really big LLMs on smaller hardware are exciting. Here’s a useful video to set up LLMs on templated cloud computing.  

Education

🥑 Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer and You | Dr. Peter Attia | EP 360

  • Jordan Peterson’s ability to interview is inspiring. I’ve watched at least three interviews with Peter about his new book Outlive and this is by far the best. Jordan gets straight to the point, asking the most practical questions any listener wants to know.

🧠 Happiness – Naval

  • Over the past 2-weeks, I’ve stumbled down another rabbit hole, this time it’s on the topic of the mind, specifically how to adjust one’s perspective to be more content with where they’re at now. I really enjoyed listening to Naval’s perspective on this topic and his journey to it. Additionally, it was interesting to hear a conversation between Naval and one of his mentors on this subject – Kapil Gupta. There are definitely points throughout the conversation that I was lost listening to Kapil, but some of it stuck. 

Miscellaneous

📜 Ancient Therapy for Modern Problems: Stoic Philosophy Explained

  • This is the first time I’ve come across Philosophy Tube and this lady is pretty funny, equally important she’s pretty informative on this topic of philosophy as well. Glad I stumbled across this channel.