Gemini is winning by David Pierce

In 2022, when ChatGPT launched, it was clear that Google had been caught flat-footed. But credit where it’s due: For a company not exactly known for its ability to focus on a coherent product strategy, Google managed to marshal its considerable resources in a single direction. Now, if chatbots are in fact the future — and most of the AI industry continues to bet that they are — there is simply no other company currently set up to truly compete with Google. Google has the models. It has the resources to improve them. It now has the distribution necessary to get people to use its bots, and the data required to make them uniquely personal and useful. At least for now, ChatGPT has the brand power, and the daily active users. But Google has almost everything else. Even the iPhone.

I think the deal with Apple is for the local model that would run on device. It was not clear in their announcement recently. But if some of the traffic goes to Google like the default search engine deal, then it would be a big bump in user numbers.

Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy | Cornell Chronicle

Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%. Among higher-income households, the drop is even steeper, at more than 8%. Spending at fast-food restaurants, coffee shops and other limited-service eateries falls by about 8%.[…]

Ultra-processed, calorie-dense foods – the kinds most closely associated with cravings – saw the sharpest declines. Spending on savory snacks dropped by about 10%, with similarly large decreases in sweets, baked goods and cookies. Even staples like bread, meat and eggs declined.

Only a handful of categories showed increases. Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks.

I have always felt a bit queasy about this. It feels like curing the symptom instead of the cause.

Helsinki sending kids free comics to spark love of reading

The gift subscription is part of a research project led by the University of Jyväskylä that examines how regular access to printed reading material at home affects children's motivation to read.

My love affair with reading was similarly forged over reading full comic book sets during the summer holiday months I was in my village in Bihar. That was the only source of entertainment for us.

We would get a full set of 10-12 comic books and be done in a day. This seems like a good initiative. Get the kids away from the dam screens.

First impressions of Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s general agent by Simon Willison

New from Anthropic today is Claude Cowork, a "research preview" that they describe as "Claude Code for the rest of your work". It's currently available only to Max subscribers ($100 or $200 per month plans) as part of the updated Claude Desktop macOS application. […]

The announcement video is cool too. I saw it on LinkedIn. This makes CC accessible to the masses. I like Anthropic’s product sensibilities. They are building things which are interesting to me - more in the automation space. OpenAI seems to be throwing everything against the wall and seeing what works.

I have not tried it yet.

Be Wary of Digital Deskilling - Cal Newport

In his 1974 book, ​Labor and Monopoly Capital​, the influential Marxist political economist Harry Braverman argued that the expanding “science-technical revolution” was being exploited by companies to increasingly “deskill” workers; to leave them in “ignorance, incapacity, and thus in fitness for machine servitude.” The more employees outsource skilled activity to machines, the more controllable they become. […]

Boris Cherny is a senior technical lead at Anthropic who manages a large team and likely owns a significant amount of stock options in the company. Of course, he’s excited about the idea of agents replacing programmers, but that doesn’t mean we have to share his enthusiasm.