Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

I tested a 5K monitor that’s over $1,000 less than Apple’s Studio Display: It’s good enough

Most people know at least two things about 5K monitors: they look great, and they're usually expensive. The Apple Studio Display is the most popular model, and it costs $1,599. But I've been testing one that's similar in some important ways and costs just $355 (!?) at its cheapest-ever price. Unsurprisingly, at a fraction of […]

Musicians are getting really tired of this AI clone ‘bullshit’

"Not ideal." "Completely unacceptable." "Shameless." "Predatory." "Some bullshit." "Total bullshit." This is how musicians, producers, and others in the industry are describing the relentless spread of AI clones. Of course, AI fakes aren't new, but as the scammers have gotten more brazen, artists are responding with increasing furor. We got a taste back in 2023 […]

Kindle app now answers questions about the book you’re reading

Amazon has launched a new AI feature in the Kindle app that gives spoiler-free answers to questions about the book you're reading and confirmed that authors can't opt out from the feature. The company calls Ask this Book an "expert reading assistant" in its announcement and says that it's capable of answering questions about "plot […]

Feeding the machine

When he was 19 years old, Brendan Foody started Mercor with two of his high school friends as a way for his other friends, who also had startups, to hire software engineers overseas. It launched in 2023 as essentially a staffing agency, albeit a highly automated one. Language models reviewed resumes and did the interviewing. […]

Starlink and Chinese satellites nearly collided last week

A collision in space was narrowly avoided last week when a newly deployed Chinese satellite came within a few hundred meters of one of the roughly 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit. SpaceX is laying the blame on the satellite operator for not sharing location data. "When satellite operators do not share […]