The perfect soundtrack to our current digital moment dropped last month. Was it a Bard remix of the latest AI Drake track? No. It was an entire album of flute songs written by André 3000 of Outkast.
For his first album in 17 years, the rapper swapped beats for an instrument he just picked up. “That’s one of the coolest things,” he said in an interview. “I'm actually listening to myself be a baby...at this new machine.”
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Back in the tech world, “new machines” like LLMs and AI image generators have sparked a new age of experimentation. Every day, people are using these new technologies to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
And the best part—since everyone is a baby in this brave new world, anyone can start learning (and creating) from scratch. That’s music to our ears. |
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Want to get creative now?
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Our Creative Coding course lets you generate stunning visuals while learning the basics of code. |
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🗣 Communication breakdown. This short quiz reveals your “work age” based on how you communicate with coworkers.
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🦀 Simple minds. This article makes the case that, when it comes to studying consciousness, we shouldn’t overthink it. |
⛄️ Hacky holidays. Enjoy a month of programming puzzles with the advent of code. |
📸 Shake it like a... This documentary details the process of engineering the Polaroid I-2.
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Countdown to the holidays |
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Starting on the first day of autumn, leaves begin to fall. Suppose the probability that any given leaf falls starts at 1% per day and rises by 1% every day (so, on the first day it’s 1%, on the second 2%, and so on) until all the leaves have fallen.
If the tree starts with 1,000,000 leaves, on what day will the greatest number of leaves fall off the tree, and what will that number of leaves be?
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We’ll randomly choose one correct respondent for a shout-out in next month’s email. |
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Solution to November's puzzle |
This puzzle stumped everyone! Click the solution link below to see how it was solved.
Last month, we added our own twist to Sam Bankman-Fried’s hypothetical bet. Each Earth had probability x to double, and probability (1-x) to get wiped out. Further, once a year, the same bet would be taken for all resulting duplicated Earths.
We asked, how big would x have to be to have a 50% chance of everlasting life in the universe? The answer was x = 2/3, or approximately 0.67. The key was noticing the recursive structure of the bet.
Check out the full solution here.
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"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." |
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