January 2023 News
January 2023 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO
January 2023’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, 2021 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
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Gwern.net:
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moved domains; image/doc hierarchy merged
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new Quote/Site/Annotation X-of-the-Day feature
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Links
AI
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“Scaling Laws for Generative Mixed-Modal Language Models”, et al 2023 (crossovers for unimodal vs multimodal models)
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“VALL-E: Neural Codec Language Models are Zero-Shot Text to Speech Synthesizers”, et al 2023
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“StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesis”, et al 2023 (1b-param n = 250m GAN competitive with GLIDE/Latent-Diffusion/Make-A-Scene—proving GANs work fine at scale)
Genetics
Everything Is Heritable:
Recent Evolution:
Engineering:
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“Diverse partial reprogramming strategies restore youthful gene expression and transiently suppress cell identity”, et al 2021; “Gene Therapy Mediated Partial Reprogramming Extends Lifespan and Reverses Age-Related Changes in Aged Mice”, et al 2023
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“DNA synthesis technologies to close the gene writing gap”, et al 2023 (review)
Statistics/Meta-Science
Politics/Religion
Psychology/Biology
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“Indoor Air Quality and Strategic Decision Making”, et al 2023 (zero effect of indoor CO2 on chess performance)
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“A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades”, et al 2023
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“Factors Contributing to the Facial Aging of Identical Twins”, et al 2009
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“Visual discrimination of species in dogs (Canis familiaris)”, Autier-Dérian et al 201311ya (dogs don’t know they’re dogs, but they can learn)
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First-in-cat study of longevity drug rapamycin is enrolling cats with chronic kidney disease at Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center
Technology
Economics
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“Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability”, Desrochers 200915ya (more cornucopian historical examples)
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“The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution”, et al 2022
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“Survey finds low office productivity linked to staffing imbalances”, Sassone 199232ya (has office automation & simultaneous reduction of support staffing been penny-wise-pound-foolish, and thrown away the productivity gains of computers?)
Philosophy
Fiction
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Julian Gough’s Minecraft “End Poem” is now public domain (CC-0); amusingly, this decision probably gifts Microsoft millions of dollars (bonus: Microsoft’s anti-Streisand-effect PR tactics); cf. Tolkien’s subcreation theory
Miscellaneous
Books
Nonfiction:
Fiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
Animated: