What We Lose When We Gamify Reading by Marissa Levien

But even if we’re reading more, all this quantifying is forcing readers into harmful patterns. First and most obvious, when we read to hit a goal rather than simply for pleasure, everybody reads as fast as possible to hike up their numbers. It’s like the entire reading public is a high school freshman trying to cram To Kill a Mockingbird at midnight the day before the assignment is due. We technically finish the book, but we retain nothing. Ask someone what they thought of A Guardian and a Thief, they’ll say, “Who knows? That was ten books ago.” More worrisome, when we read fast, we experience nothing. The book does not have a chance to burrow into our heart.

I have felt this once or twice - not often, but enough like reading The secret of secrets at 1.5x. That was driven more by the duration of time I had the book borrowed from library for (14 days).

The second problem is: it’s less and less likely that A Guardian and a Thief is even on a person’s list if they’re shooting for a tally of, say, one hundred books a year. If we’re trying to read fast, the best strategy is to pick books that read easy. Generally this means books that are prose-light, plot-forward, and propulsive. It means we’ll forego a Moby Dick or a Middlemarch in favor of five declensions of A Court of Thorns and Roses. (Before the pitchforks and torches emerge, I should mention that I adore fun, propulsive books. We need these kinds of stories in our life, for the joyous escape of it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m saying you shouldn’t only read it.)

Again, not faced this problem, but I can see it happening. I usually chose what to read next thanks to lists. What I add to the list is dependent on a bunch of factors - but mostly is it interesting?

I don’t have a goal though. I am happy with whatever I end up reading. Like I read more books in January because I had time to read. There are more important things in life than reading.

Console exclusives might be making a comeback by Andrew Webster

The near future of game consoles could look a lot like the past. Once a hallmark of the industry, over the last few years console-exclusive games have steadily become rare, as the likes of Sony and Microsoft experimented with offering titles on multiple platforms. Heck, who knows what an Xbox even is anymore? But it seems that the experiments haven't paid off. Signs are pointing to the return of exclusives, as companies lean on other ways to entice new audiences.

I was happy when Microsoft started offering their games on PS5. I was looking forward to play Starfield on PS5.

I never cared for Sony games on PC, because I have a PS5.

I think games should be like Podcasts, play wherever you play your games. Consoles will have a future in such a world. They provide excellent value for those who don’t care about tinkering with their gaming systems. It’s plug and play. That has a ton of value.

Say hello to MacBook Neo - Apple

Apple’s all-new MacBook features a durable aluminum design, a stunning 13-inch Liquid Retina display, the power of Apple silicon, and all-day battery life — all for the breakthrough starting price of just $599

The Neo does not appeal to me. For one, the display has huge bezels. The RAM is fixed at 8GB, the storage started at 256 GB, goes up to 512GB. The price was a surprise to me, in a pleasant way.

But I loved the announcement video and I think it is meant for the students - those who would pick up a Chromebook perhaps.

This may be an excellent device for schools. A good device against the chromebooks. I want a Pro. Maybe the next one with touch. I may get that. We shall see. I don’t have any reason to. My M1 runs fine.

Apple gives in to temptation and renames its CPU cores

Apple announced its new Fusion Architecture today as well, which allows the company to mix and match different “chiplets” in a single package. This is another esoteric chip thing (is there any other kind?) but it has real ramifications for the future of Apple’s chip designs. It means that Apple can be a bit more modular with its designs, building a standard CPU set (for the M5 Max and Pro) while offering two different GPU variants with 20 (Pro) and 40 (Max) cores. I’m also curious what this means for a future Ultra chip, assuming there will be one whenever the M5 Mac Studio is announced.

I had the same thought. This is the same architecture we were hearing rumours about, some years back. Maybe memory upgrades won’t cost that much now.

Giving LLMs a personality is just good engineering by Sean

In other words, human-like personalities are not imposed on AI tools as some kind of marketing ploy or philosophical mistake. Those personalities are the medium via which the language model can become useful at all. This is why it’s surprisingly tricky to “just” change a language model’s personality or opinions: because you’re navigating through the near-infinite manifold of the base model. You may be able to control which direction you go, but you can’t control what you find there3.