Links from January 2025: GPUs, continuity of care; prebunking; The Traitors
GPUs, continuity of care; prebunking; LLM roundup; The Traitors
What Every Developer Should Know About GPU Computing
I’ve never had to do any CUDA programming, but I’m interested in how it all hangs together. This post helps demystify it all.
The Traitors – a cultural, and psychological, phenomenon
The British Psychological Society
“The Traitors is a game of influence as much as anything else […] informational influence is often a key factor: although often the information players think they hold is questionable and flawed, if it seems authentic and importantly if it is agreed by others, it can have a powerful impact on the outcome of decisions.”
Why seeing the same doctor could save your life
“Why is continuity of care declining? There are numerous explanations […] But the real killer? Patients and administrators prefer to prioritise access over continuity.”
YouTube: how a team of scientists worked to inoculate a million users against misinformation
This article, from August 2020, introduced me to the phrase “prebunk”. The idea is to get ahead of disinformation by teaching the tricks and triggers that get used, so you recognise “fake news” or manipulative content before it invades your brain.
Cognitive load is what matters
An essay on software architecture. Seems sane. I still thing the most useful change to any chunk of functionality would be a big comment at the top of the file describing how you were thinking about the problem.
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
All the news from the year, with observations. “It’s become abundantly clear over the course of 2024 that writing good automated evals for LLM-powered systems is the skill that’s most needed to build useful applications on top of these models.”
How are Heat Pumps Over 100% Efficient?
The most approachable explanation of how these magic machines work: “That compressed refrigerant then passes through the expansion valve and decompresses. As it does so, it drops below the temperature of the outside air. This now very cold, low-pressure liquid goes through an outside radiator to collect heat from the air outside, with the help of a fan. It warms up, boils, becomes gas again, and is returned to the compressor.”