Plutonic Rainbows

Plutonic Rainbows

DeepSeek

December 29, 2024

Chinese startup DeepSeek has released DeepSeek-V3. According to the benchmarks they shared, this is now the most capable open-source large language model currently available. It even achieves performance comparable to leading closed-source models even though it was trained on a budget of just $5.6 million — a fraction of what major tech companies typically spend.

  • DeepSeek-V3 was trained using just 2.8 million GPU hours, costing approximately $5.6 million — significantly less than competitors.

  • The model achieves performance comparable to GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 on various benchmarks, particularly excelling in mathematics and coding tasks.

  • The model's efficiency comes from innovative architecture and training techniques, including a novel approach to training called auxiliary-loss-free load balancing.

Nosferatu (2024)

December 26, 2024

I managed to catch this new movie on Boxing Day. I’ve always been a huge admirer of this story — especially Werner Herzog’s 1979 adaptation. Keeping that film as my benchmark, I was pleasantly surprised by how excellent Robert Eggers’s new version turned out to be.

Matt Zoller Seitz at Roger Ebert.

Technically and logistically, this movie is an awesome achievement. The wind, the rain, and the darkness seem to do Nosferatu’s bidding. The force of the monster’s unknowable malevolence seems to distort the movie itself, making it shudder and break down. It’s made with the most modern filmmaking technology but feels like an artifact from another century, like one of those inscribed tablets that adventurers find in a tomb and insist on translating aloud even though there’s a drawing of a terrifying demon on it.

ChatGPT o3

December 21, 2024

Many predictions suggest that AGI is approaching rapidly. OpenAI has announced that its upcoming model will be the first of its kind, with a planned release scheduled for the end of January 2025.

Albums 2024

December 08, 2024

In no order, I found something of interest in all of these.

  • Seefeel - Everything Squared

  • Propaganda - Propaganda

  • Actress - Statik

  • mark s. williamson - folklore, facts & fables 1: seabirds

  • Bibio - PHANTOM BRICKWORKS II

  • Sarah Davachi and Dicky Bahto - Music For A Bellowing Room

  • Wewrkbund - Skalpafloi

  • Milan W. - Leave Another Day

  • Chris & Cosey - Elemental 7

  • Elizabeth Parker - Future Perfect

  • Fennesz - Mosaic

ChatGPT o1

December 05, 2024

This model, which has been in preview for a few months, is now finally available to users on a Plus subscription. Additionally, there is a new $200-per-month tier that offers unlimited requests, as well as access to GPT o1 Pro.