> Out of curiosity, she compiled a database of 2026 releases and combed through them, analyzing their protagonists. Umesi found[1] a surprising disparity: Girl protagonists outnumbered boys by a ratio of 2 to 1. Some categories, such as realistic fiction and mystery, were especially lopsided, she told me, with ratios of more than 3 to 1. “Girls are taking over!” she said, with a laugh.
> Umesi’s survey offers just one snapshot of the publishing landscape. But others I spoke with in the children’s-book business shared the perception that today’s protagonists are predominantly female. The dearth of male protagonists, some told me, has made it harder to get boys in this age bracket interested in reading.
> The idea that boys might prefer stories about boys sounds awkwardly retrograde, even to the boys themselves. Kids rarely state such preferences outright, Melissa LaSalle, the children’s-book buyer at Old Town Books, in Alexandria, Virginia, told me. Their parents sometimes will, albeit “in a slightly embarrassed way.” Of course, individuals might not connect to a book for any number of reasons: sense of humor, narrative stakes, cover art. “But the unifying theme that I hear resoundingly from parents of boy readers,” LaSalle said, “is, at the end of the day, there are not enough boy protagonists.”
> A font is a small program
> We think of a font as a set of drawings. It’s also a set of rules. Each time text appears, a piece of your system called a shaper reads the font’s rules and may swap one glyph for another. It’s how a font joins f and i into a ligature.
> Nothing says a rule has to be about typography.
It does. Even looking at cases where a both a better and a worse model accomplish a given goal the difference between a solution and a good solution is important. And will save you time by not having to iterate as much with it.
For this model in particular, even if it didn’t get stronger and it simply thought less that is a big win on its own. DS4 can be served at a hit tok/s, but it takes a while because it thinks for so long.
A bit tangential but allow me to share an interesting anecdote.
My MSc dissertation was on accounting for aeroplane fuel emission... during research I discovered an interesting fact; because of how the EU ETS (airline emissions regulations) works, (fuel consumption acts as a proxy for emissions) you can technically end up with less ETS penalty by adding a stop just before entering the EU.
You see the penalty applies for the entire flight and not the portion over EU airspace... so you just have to condense the flight instead. So add a stop just before adding EU, and now you have two flights instead of one, and that second flight has lower 'emission' even though the entire trip was longer, and more importantly the extra stops's landing and take off increases fuel expenditure and thus emissions!
Gives you some perspective on how legislation to reduce fuel usage and emissions can act counter to its stated goals.
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> https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jate/vol2/iss2/3/
> Another way to reduce the EU ETS charges is to change the route so that the last leg of the flight into or out of the EU is shorter than the current non-stop route. Changing routes to include an additional stop reduces the amount of fuel used for flight segments into and out of the EU, and therefore reduces EU ETS charges because the charges are based on fuel consumption during the entire flight, not just the portion over EU. A major US-based cargo carrier, UPS Airlines, considered adding stops to reduce the EU ETS charges (Cameron & Michaels, 2011). Instead of flying non-stop from between hubs in Hong Kong and Cologne, Germany, the route would be changed by adding a stop in Mumbai, India. While UPS estimates that the route change reduces the ETS charge by 25%, UPS also estimates that the emissions are increased by 33% due to the longer route and added takeoff and landing.
> SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028
Curious to learn how they deal with bitflip from cosmic rays and cooling. I’m so convinced the idea of compute in space is absolute nonsense, but that will still be interesting to see how they try to tackle the various issues
> Heat radiates freely into the vacuum of space. Without the need for energy-intensive chillers, cooling towers, fans, or dry coolers necessary in terrestrial data centers, SpaceX’s AI satellites reduce cooling power overhead by an order of magnitude.
I'm in Pakistan, and the amount of spam I receive from the govt is absurd... random patriotic slogans ('We will never forget Kashmiri struggle!'), generic welfare messages('Let's work together for a Polio free Pakistan!'), vague warning messages('Don't use antibiotics without doctor's approval!')...it runs the whole gamut.
The latest message I'm being bombarded with it a reminder not to use Whatsapp without a 'valid' sim... like wtf? Is there something should know? Whatsapp is a private org, why is govt asking me about that? But all I get is the random sms bombardment and more questions than answers.
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