Rami's Readings #29
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #29 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
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🤖 AI Reads
Notes: If you must read one article this week, this is the one.
Llama 2 Released! Available for free for research and commercial use
Notes: Meta released an upgraded version of the most consequential open-source LLM model in multiple sizes (7B, 13B, 70B). Now also available for free for research and commercial use.
Stability AI releases Stable Doodle, a sketch-to-image tool
Notes: Neat!
A Survey of Large Language Models
Notes: This comprehensive survey was recently updated! Great read.
AI Startup Anthropic Releases Claude 2
💼 Business Reads
Argentina’s Future Is With the Dollar
Notes: Tyler Cowen from Marginal Revolution for Bloomberg. From my experience in Lebanon, dollarization is hard and impacts sectors differently. Granted, Lebanon is implicitly dollarizing, so it is not the same as Milei’s proposal. Either way, someone should start importing Hitachi banknote counters to Argentina. Hitachi importers seemed to be the only economic winners I saw in Beirut.
Zhongzhi Is Facing a Liquidity Crisis
Notes: Keep an eye out. I am curious to hear from my China-based readers about their perspectives.
✈️ Travel Reads
‘Let Maui heal’: Grieving Hawaii residents want tourists to go home
Notes: Please stop traveling to Maui and consider donating to Hawai‘i Community Foundation, Maui Fire Relief Fund, and American Red Cross.
As Michelin Expands, Black Chefs Continue to Miss Out on Stars
Notes: Disappointing. Thankfully, we do not have a Michelin Guide for Seattle. In my conversations with restaurateurs, a star can be a blight or a blessing. Some cooks, chefs, waitstaff, etc., in Seattle, left their previous employers in other cities because of the intense pressure a restaurant gets with a star. The Michelin guide is helpful in classical foodie cities like NYC, where I tend to be biased towards Michelin restaurants. I found their selection paltry outside of Manhattan. There is so much great food in Flushing! The selection in Vancouver (a new Michelin city) needs to be revised.
My favorite restaurants in Seattle are Black-owned:
🛡️ CyberSecurity Reads
Major U.S. energy org targeted in QR code phishing attack
Notes: Be careful what you scan, especially with zero-day hacks out there.
That is all for this week. Signing off from Redmond.