I wonder if this article got inspired by the recent movie Project Hail Mary?
Another thing related to this subject is the frequency in watch making. I own a manual winding watch that I wear everyday. It is certainly an engineering marvel. These watches are ticking by the hair spring and its frequencies are targeted to 2.5Hz to 4Hz (5 times per second, or 8 times per second). I don't know the rationale behind these numbers. I guess that they must have been a combination of engineering constraints and finding a good balance to keep every second accurate.
2.5 Hz was the standard in big pocket watches, with a big balance wheel. 4 Hz is the standard for wristwatches, with a smaller balance wheel.
You are right that it is an engineering compromise. Higher frequencies mean a greater acceleration of the balance wheel. The inertia of the balance wheel is itself a compromise with the strength of the main spring. You want to have a large oscillation amplitude, but also that the watch can self-start, and not too much pressure on the escapement's contact points.
5 Hz is, surprisingly, a big engineering gap especially with regards to lubrication: only dry lubricants work, and it was figured out (at scale) only in 1969 by Zenith with their "El Primero" movement (which is still in production and is a major milestone in watchmaking for many reasons, on top of having a crazy history).
But when Rolex decided to use El Primero movements in their second version of the Cosmograph Daytona, they reverted it back to 4 Hz to avoid having to retrain all the watchmakers in their vast service network.
Reading this article, I just realized that it is something I didn't appreciate enough when I was living in France. In Korea, my home country, you can find a lot of signs for local temples, though. But they do not have identities like French ones. There are some signs too but they are mostly commercial restaurants, local farms, and so on. And they are usually ugly with big letters with saturated colors; red and yellow.
Indeed. I also had this weird feeling while reading through the article. It got hooked up in the beginning. And then at some point, my brain just noticed that it was LLM-generated. I wonder how this article was written. Did the author accidentally find about Voyager 1's tiny memory and its primitive tape technology while reading something else, or did he just ask LLMs to write something interesting that he could publish with a few prompts.
One question. Sonnet for tool use? I am just guessing here that you may have a lot of MCPs to call and for that Sonnet is more reliable. How many MCPs are you running and what kinds?
Nice article. I saw someone depicting the future of web search with AI. The conclusion was not the bright future. Simply put, ads will never go away. Either AI providers will get paid for whitelisting ads, or even worse these AI will directly promote advertised products.
People could collectively decide to start paying for stuff and most of our gripes could at least switch to providers not accommodating their customers.
To which I'd say to the advertiser, "Good luck paying off the AI adblocker running in my closet at home."
Then again, let's not be too hasty here. Let's see what you're willing to offer. I can sell you the eyeballs of the AI ad-watcher running in my closet for $10/impression. Or, for $1000/impression, you can bring your message to the attention of myself, an actual human. A bargain at any price!
I like the analogy to woodwork and hammer. It fits perfectly to what happens when they do not pay enough attention to the end result. They are not showing the actual product because it is not as shiny as their new agentic hammer.
Another thing related to this subject is the frequency in watch making. I own a manual winding watch that I wear everyday. It is certainly an engineering marvel. These watches are ticking by the hair spring and its frequencies are targeted to 2.5Hz to 4Hz (5 times per second, or 8 times per second). I don't know the rationale behind these numbers. I guess that they must have been a combination of engineering constraints and finding a good balance to keep every second accurate.
reply