AI achieves silver-medal standard solving International Mathematical Olympiad problems
Breakthrough models AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 solve advanced reasoning problems in mathematics
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Why Levittown Didn't Revolutionize Homebuilding
For decades, people have tried to bring mass production methods to housing: to build houses the way we build cars. While no one has succeeded, arguably the man that came closest to becoming “the Henry Ford of homebuilding” was William Levitt, with his company Levitt and Sons. Levitt is most famous for building “Levittowns,” developments of thousands of homes built rapidly in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. By optimizing the construction process with improvements like standardized products and reverse...
Dark oxygen made by deep sea 'batteries'
The discovery that lumps of metal on the seafloor produce oxygen raises questions over plans to mine the deep ocean.
Crashes and Competition
The recent Windows crashes are downstream from trying to encourage competition in areas Microsoft should have never made open to begin with, highlighting the challenge for regulators.
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- Hollywood & Entertainment
Bruce Springsteen Is Now A Billionaire
The Boss went from E Street to Easy Street by staying true to his humble roots—and rolling up his sleeves and going to work.
A closer look at the Secret Service.
And its controversial actions during the assassination attempt on former President Trump.
I Wrote Off Traveling with an Influencer. Then I Tried It.
New booking sites are connecting travel influencers with their followers to take trips all over the world. But should you go? I headed to Yosemite with an influencer and her fangirls to find out.
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The 7 Intellectual Forces Behind J.D. Vance
Post-liberals, “crunchy cons” and monarchists. Illustration by Jade Cuevas/POLITICO (source images via AP, Getty Images and iStock) By Ian Ward 07/18/2024 05:00…
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What Would It Take to Recreate Bell Labs?
For most of the 20th century, AT&T was almost entirely responsible for building and operating America’s telephone infrastructure. It manufactured the phones and electrical equipment, laid hundreds of millions of miles of wire across the country, and built and operated the switchboards and exchanges that made it possible for anyone with a phone to call anyone else.
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A Guide to Miyazaki’s Weird Little Guys
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Studio Ghibli After 12 films, it’s abundantly clear that there are certain things that Hayao Miyazaki really loves.…
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Horses, guns and swords: How cumbersome equipment gets to the Olympics
Athletes are responsible for getting their stuff to the Paris Games. For some sports, that’s more complicated than for others.
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Inside the cutthroat world of becoming a Wimbledon ball boy and ball girl
The first thing you should know about becoming a ball boy or ball girl at Wimbledon is that the process is no joke.
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Maya Rudolph Is Ready to Serve
Search Find anything you save across the site in your account The New Yorker Interview The actress and comedian on motherhood, studying the lives of…
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How Janet Yellen Became an Unlikely Culinary Diplomat
The Treasury secretary views food as a way to connect, and her dining decisions have become the subject of global intrigue.
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A.I. Helped Spot a Copper Bonanza. It Could Transform More Than Mining.
The deposit, in Zambia, could make billions for Silicon Valley, provide minerals for the energy transition and help the United States in its rivalry with China.
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My 25 (??) Favorite (??) Books of the 21st Century
Greetings from Read Max HQ! First, an important request of readers: For a piece I’m writing, I’m looking for stories of strange encounters with A.I. slop, usually defined as unwanted and unreviewed uses of generative A.I. In particular I’m interested in examples of slop found off of the big platforms, so not just
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Behold the $150,000 Dog
Photo: Ted Wells A few years ago, in Bozeman, Montana, a brain surgeon and his wife were walking through a farmers’ market when they came across a booth selling…
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Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
A Bitcoin mine moved to a small town in Texas. One by one, the residents fell ill.
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Building the Bell System
If someone was making a list of the most important American companies today, it’s unlikely AT&T would be anywhere near the top. It’s large, but not notably so: it came in 32nd in the 2024 Fortune 500 ranking, just above Comcast and below Verizon. Its offerings are not unique: it’s just one of many companies providing phone, internet, and other communication services. By market cap, AT&T is less than 10% of the value of Amazon, and around 4% of the value of Apple.
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Exorcising us of the Primer
July 2024. Part of “Letters from the Lab”, a series of essays on my research written for patrons. You can also listen to this essay (29 minutes). If you want to…
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When RAND Made Magic in Santa Monica—Asterisk
RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science and American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think tank?
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Monster 310-mile automated cargo conveyor will replace 25,000 trucks
The Japanese government is planning to connect major cities with automated zero-emissions logistics links that can quietly and efficiently shift millions of tons of cargo, while getting tens of thousands of trucks off the road.
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How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play
AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive.
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‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player
The long read: I was once Ireland’s No 1 player, and tried for years to climb the global ranks. But life at the bottom of the top can be brutal
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Will We Ever Get Fusion Power?
“Every one of the stars in the sky uses fusion to generate enormous amounts of energy. Why shouldn’t we?”
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He Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.
Few people are better than Trevor Rainbolt at identifying obscure locations online — but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them IRL.
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On Claude 3.5 Sonnet
There is a new clear best (non-tiny) LLM. If you want to converse with an LLM, the correct answer is Claude Sonnet 3.5. It is available for free on Claude.ai and the Claude iOS app, or you can subscribe for higher rate limits. The API cost is $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.
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A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500
This is kind of amazing: Calculating Empires is a project by Kate Crawford and Kate Crawford attempting to map how technology and
