Weekly Thing 301 / TinyTroupe, Monarch, Leaving
Weekly Thing 301 arriving in your inbox fresh off the keys with the pixels still having that "new email" smell from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Good morning! 👋
We've been having the most lovely fall. The days have been cool and crisp but warm enough for just a vest. I wish I could bottle this up and have it for as long as I want. Cool enough to have a fire in the fireplace. But not so cold to really bite.
This week was a whirlwind of activity. You'll see that in the Journal section. Interesting stuff in AI continues to arrive at a fast pace. It was cool to see in the Straw Poll that so many of you, like me, are directly playing with this technology. 🧠
Have a great day and truly hope you are well. 😌
"In theory practice and theory are the same thing. In practice they are completely different." — Jan van de Snepscheut
Featured
TinyTroupe: LLM-powered multiagent persona simulation for imagination enhancement and business insights.
This is one of the AI capabilities that I have been wanting to see for a while. I have found it incredible to engage with AI as a thinking partner on various topics. My GTD Coach experiment worked far better than I could have imagined. But I've wanted to go further. I've wanted to explore a topic not with one thought partner but with many.
TinyTroupe is an experimental Python library that allows the simulation of people with specific personalities, interests, and goals. These artificial agents - TinyPersons - can listen to us and one another, reply back, and go about their lives in simulated TinyWorld environments.
The packages documentation highlights a number of interesting use cases.
- Advertisement: TinyTroupe can evaluate digital ads (e.g., Bing Ads) offline with a simulated audience before spending money on them!
- Product and project management: TinyTroupe can read project or product proposalsand give feedback from the perspective of specific personas (e.g., physicians, lawyers, and knowledge workers in general).
- Brainstorming: TinyTroupe can simulate focus groups and deliver great product feedback at a fraction of the cost!
Where do I want to take this?
I love the idea of a personal board of directors. I have some folks that I engage with this way. But how incredible would it be to design your specific group of agents to engage with and have each represent a different facet of your life, or an alternative vision of what you think success looks like. I could imagine starting a conversation on an important decision and seeing a rich dialog evaluating the question in hand from many different perspectives.
Solo projects could become much less solo. I publish the Weekly Thing entirely on my own. But if I could have a team of agents: marketer, editor, researcher, etc… And when I’m working on the Weekly Thing bring that "troupe" up to explore facets I simply never look at today.
This group dynamic or ability to create more complicated social simulations could be incredible.
Lake Harriet Bandshell with downtown Minneapolis in the background.
Nov 16, 2024
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Notable
5 Stoic & Zen Practices That I Believe In - zen habits
Babauta shares what he sees as five overlapping concepts between Stoicism and Zen Buddhism.
- What We Control
- Reminder of Death
- Loving What Is
- Contemplate Misfortune
- A Higher Perspective
Not a long article. The concepts are covered in simple and plain language. I truly believe if we could do all five of these on a regular basis — we will be happier. Personally I struggle with all of them. I do reasonably good contemplating what I control. Death terrifies me and "last time" meditations are about as close as I can get to that right now.
Clear ice | Seth's Blog
I absolutely love the idea of thinking about sleep as a Zamboni machine for your brain. Next time you can’t fall asleep, just visualize a Zamboni lumbering over the ice leaving that crisp and clear sheet behind it. 😴
How to Tame Sequoia’s Window Tiling - TidBITS
I’ve used Moom as a window manager on macOS for a while. Now Sequoia has a very simple window manager built-in. I've left it turned on and actually find it useful because it is always there. However, I also think a lot of people could get really confused by it. This article is a good overview.
Everything I've learned so far about running local LLMs
Wellon's shares expansive feedback about his experience with many different LLM models that he has personally worked with. The whole read is interesting. I liked his conclusion that is based on what he sees LLMs best at right now.
So then, what can I do with LLMs? A list is apt because LLMs love lists:
- Proofreading has been most useful for me. I give it a document such as an email or this article (~8,000 tokens), tell it to look over grammar, call out passive voice, and so on, and suggest changes. I accept or reject its suggestions and move on. Most suggestions will be poor, and this very article was long enough that even ~70B models suggested changes to hallucinated sentences. Regardless, there's signal in the noise, and it fits within the limitations outlined above. I'm still trying to apply this technique ("find bugs, please") to code review, but so far success is elusive.
- Writing short fiction. Hallucinations are not a problem; they're a feature! Context lengths are the limiting factor, though perhaps you can stretch it by supplying chapter summaries, also written by LLM. I'm still exploring this. If you're feeling lazy, tell it to offer you three possible story branches at each turn, and you pick the most interesting. Or even tell it to combine two of them! LLMs are clever and will figure it out. Some genres work better than others, and concrete works better than abstract. (I wonder if professional writers judge its writing as poor as I judge its programming.)
- Generative fun. Have an argument with Benjamin Franklin (note: this probably violates the Acceptable Use Policy of some models), hang out with a character from your favorite book, or generate a new scene of Falstaff's blustering antics. Talking to historical figures has been educational: The character says something unexpected, I look it up the old-fashioned way to see what it's about, then learn something new.
- Language translation. I've been browsing foreign language subreddits through Gemma-2-2B translation, and it's been insightful. (I had no idea German speakers were so distrustful of artificial sweeteners.)
Despite the short list of useful applications, this is the most excited I've been about a new technology in years!
That last sentence — even with the limitations he highlights — most excited in years. I think we are still at the very early beginnings of all this. via Simon Willison.
With AI, the Future of Augmented Reality is in Your Ears
Scott Galloway has talked about the idea of bringing AI to people via AirPods for a while. Dennis Crowley is actually working on this. HIs view of this being a different from of augmented reality seems spot on.
The big idea here is that the AR layer can be beyond the visual layer. Essentially, augmented reality doesn't have to be just through glasses; it can be in the ear. If you went back to the blog post that we wrote at Foursquare about Marsbot, one of the headlines was about using audio as the poor man's augmented reality. I'm not waiting for the glasses. I'm going to make something today.
Having an AirPods in and getting a regular feed of information to and from an AI assistant seems very "here and now".
The CVM Algorithm
Easy-to-read breakdown of an algorithm for efficiently counting the unique elements in a stream of data. This is a problem that can be very tricky and a brute force method is incredibly expensive. This technique with sampling is a fast and low effort way to get "close enough".
Deanna Dikeman - Leaving and Waving
This is an incredible collection of photos. It tells a story, multiple stories, in simply capturing a photo as you leave. Such a simple, but profound thing. Love this.
'FYI. A Warrant Isn’t Needed': Secret Service Says You Agreed To Be Tracked With Location Data
Having location information in apps on your phone is very helpful. I use it regularly, but I also make sure to only give as much information as is truly needed. Hide exact information, and only allow it while the app is running. I allow very few applications to access location in the background.
And those apps along with their unreadable terms of service?
One reason was that Babel Street’s data is “opt in” only. “Users have to affirmatively agree for its collection and dissemination. It’s not passively collected without user knowledge,” the email read. “FYI. A warrant isn’t needed because the user gives consent. It happens when you agree to the terms of service,” another email reads.
This falls in the category of why we need privacy legislation. It is absurd to me that some app given the right to track your location can then be fed directly to law enforcement or government entities. Regardless of what that terms of service said.
Why you're bad at giving feedback - PostHog
Giving critical feedback is one of the hardest things in management. This article has seven common mistakes that happen while giving feedback with suggestions on how to avoid these pitfalls.
Where’s the Value in AI?
The full report is a PDF with a lot in it. This overview of what they identified leading companies doing was interesting.
Leaders differentiate themselves from other companies in six ways:
- They focus on core business processes and support functions, seeking to deploy AI for productivity, to reshape processes and functions, and to invent new revenue streams.
- They are more ambitious, setting big targets ($1 billion in productivity improvements at a financial institution, for example, or $1 billion in combined revenue increases and cost reductions at a biopharma firm) and investing in AI and workforce enablement.
- They invest strategically in a few high-priority opportunities to scale and maximize AI's value.
- They integrate AI in both cost reduction and revenue generation efforts.
- They focus their efforts on people and processes over technology and algorithms.
- They have moved quickly to focus on GenAI, which opens opportunities in content creation, qualitative reasoning, and connecting other tools and platforms.
🤔
M4 Mac mini's efficiency is incredible | Jeff Geerling
Apples M-series chips get a lot of coverage but I still don't think enough credit is given to the incredible efficiency. The M4 chip has gotten even better. 3-4 watts at idle is incredible. And at load 6.74 gigaflops/watt? Fewer watts means less heat, which is a huge deal.
I Work On A 5 Year Time Frame. Anything Less Is A Loss.
I’m kind of like this too…
I have a rule: I don’t start anything I’m not willing to commit five years of my life to. No projects I’m going to get bored with after six months, no half-hearted schemes for a quick cash grab. If I can’t see myself grinding away at it for 5–7 years, minimum, I don’t even bother. I believe in the long game.
My friend Garrick and I would refer to "Decade Projects". Things you fully plan to pursue for a decade. Sure part of it was similar to Westenberg to identify things that are worth doing. But we also liked the idea of removing urgency where we didn’t want it. Let things develop on their own time scale.
Straw Poll
So how often are people using AI tools? It turns out a lot! 77.1% of the folks that responded are using it "Every day" or "A few times a week". Only 9.6% are "Almost never" or "Not at all". That is an impressive rate of adoption for something that is still relatively new. 🤔
Journal
MISRC Digital Leadership Conference
Nov 8, 2024 at 4:00 PM
I attended this mornings MISRC Digital Leadership Conference: Charting the AI Journey and also spoke on a panel with Jean Machart and Elwin Loomis about strategy around AI.
Cris Ross from Mayo Clinic shared how they are using AI and that he believes AI will impact healthcare more than the Internet and Smartphone did. Ross also shared this good list of “Seven Technological Challenges” regarding AI.
- Data for building and validating AI
- Data for running AI
- Building AI
- Buying AI
- Implementation in workflow
- Change management with clinicians and patients
- Monitoring and managing
Listening to him present it seemed to me that it will only be a matter of time before exam rooms are all equipped with microphones where AI can transcribe the conversation between Doctor and Patient, removing the need for note taking and allowing the Doctor to be more completely engaged. This would also allow for AI to consider diagnoses that could be missed.
Jake Krings and Melissa Ludack from Target showed how they are using AI both in the store for the team experience and in their app to help with gift ideas.
I have scheduled Weekly Thing 300 to go out tomorrow morning! This project that I started in June 2017 cause I wanted to play with a newsletter is now the most widely read thing I create. 🤯
I’m continuing to experiment by announcing a membership program to support a digital non-profit. 😊
The business of social media is the business of addiction.
These are the tobacco companies of our time.
At some point in the future…
We’ll learn how they knew all along their product was bad for us.
Eventually society will shun it as a bad habit.
This morning Weekly Thing 300 went out and a couple hours later my cellphone rang. It was Rajiv Pant calling out of the blue to congratulate me on the milestone. That was so great. Not a text. Not an email. A real telephone call from someone I haven’t talked to in many years. Thanks Rajiv! 🙏
First time playing Upwords. Sort of like Scrabble with stacking tiles. Fun but got hard and took a long time to play. Tammy was the winner by a long ways. Mazie and I traded places due to unplayed tiles.
Tammy: 235 → 225
Jamie: 141 → 136
Mazie: 147 → 132
Tyler: 130 → 120
Waited until it was cold enough before swapping this light out. New light should prohibit access by hornets attempting to build nests again.
Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser Results
Nov 10, 2024 at 5:42 PM
We completed our annual candle sale raising $7,010 for the four organizations we picked! That is a 21.8% increase from 2023, double the growth of previous years at 9.7% and 10.3%. A huge thank you to the 78 folks from this community who made this possible by purchasing a wooden wick candle made with love!
As in previous years, we asked people which organizations they would like to support. People could pick any or all of the organizations. We even have some folks request specific allocations versus dividing it equally. We also donated $260.25 for Mount Olivet as a portion of all sales that were made at the Holiday Boutique on Saturday.
Tyler and Mazie enjoy a friendly competition trying to get their organization the most. 🤩
A little more about each organization…
SynGAP Research Fund supported by Tyler
I was first introduced to this condition by one of my favorite YouTubers UFDTech. His son has SynGAP1 which is a rare genetic disorder caused by a variant on the SynGAP1 gene. His son experiences a wide range of symptoms including Epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, Autism, Ataxia, and has about 100 seizures a day. My non-profit researchers this condition and is committed to giving support systems to make the lives of these patients and families easier.
Water to Thrive supported by Mazie
A cool glass of water is something that I take for granted almost every day, without considering that 48% of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to this privilege. Women and children walk up to 6 hours each day just to get water, only to have children dying of waterborne disease every 90 seconds. Water to Thrive is a nonprofit that works directly with organizers and communities in sub-Saharan Africa to build wells that have ensured clean, safe water for over 900,000 people since their founding. The educational, economic, and health benefits of even a single well are vast, and Water to Thrive is careful to respect the unique needs and desires of every community they work with. With your donation, we have the potential to fund a well that could serve over 500 people for 20 years! Let's make water a right, not a privilege!
Sprint to Cité Soleil supported by Tammy
Sprint to Cité Soleil is a non-profit in Haiti that inspires and empowers kids through basketball, mentorship, and a meal. Cité Soleil, Haiti is known for extreme poverty and gang violence, but community leaders know that this can change over time with sustainable, long term programs that build community and peace. This is where Sprint to Cité Soleil comes in, providing a weekly basketball program for over 150 kids. Harnessing the knowledge and wisdom of local people to fuel change in their community, they also employ 10 local Haitians as coaches and 4 as cooks. Sprint to Cité Soleil was founded in 2016 by a teenager in our neighborhood and his friend after they visited Haiti, where his brother is from, and witnessed the needs first hand.
World Central Kitchen supported by Jamie
I first heard of this organization when they were bringing meals to people in Ukraine after Russia's attacks started. They also are on the ground in Palestine helping people. Most recently they were one of the first organizations after hurricanes hit helping people here in the US. I've been very impressed with Chef José Andrés and the impact World Central Kitchen is having.
Also see 2024 Fall Fundraiser Insights for more details from this year. Additionally see results from 2023, 2022, and 2021.
Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser Insights
Nov 10, 2024 at 9:34 PM
We had a great time hosting our 4th annual Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser. We raised $7,010 in donations for our four non-profits. I also like to take a look at the data from the sale to learn more for next year.
We made 252 candles in preparation for the sale. We had 72 Winter Wonderland, 36 Old Fashioned, and 24 of the other six scents. We really had no idea what to do for inventory since this was the first year we sold to the public at the Mt. Olivet Holiday Boutique.
We had 78 candle purchases which is a huge 42% jump from last year. On average people purchased 3 candles, down from 4 last year. However averages don’t tell the story. Most people got one candle, and there are a smaller number of people that get a large number -- usually as gifts for the holidays. We had 5 transactions for more than 8 candles, accounting for a whopping 76 candles, 30% of our inventory.
This year we had eight different scents, the exact same as last year. We renamed Plain Jane to Just Crackle, and it was similarly popular for folks wanting an unscented candle. We did fine tune the scents though and increased the scent load on some of them. Here is a look at rolling inventory as sales were happening.
Some observations:
- You can see the early inventory trend drops quick which is a reflection of preorders that folk sent in.
- True North was the first scent to sell out and sold just as fast as Winter Wonderland until they were all gone.
- Just Crackle was popular with people buying many candles as gifts.
- Old Fashioned had more than other scents but still sold out quickly.
- Apple of My Eye underperformed and was the least popular scent until the end when there wasn’t as many options.
- Winter Wonderland seems to sell faster when it is on display and people can see there are so many of them. On Saturday we kept 5 of each candle on the table and added more as they were sold. The rate of sales were slower. On Sunday there were 30+ of them on the table. Do people buy more when they see there are so many?
- We sold out! Inventory went negative? Indeed we ran out of candles and I sent an email to let folks know if they were still planning to come. We did have a few people show up after we were out and I realized I had a couple dozen candles downstairs I had poured for myself. I brought them up and we kept raising more money for our causes!
We offer folks a number of ways to donate and again Venmo was by far the most popular method, 3.5 times more popular than cash. More people knew what Zelle was this year. I continue to be surprised at how few people have Apple Pay setup. Three checks! I did not offer a method to pay via crypto this year. We’ve only ever had one candle sale in all the years we’ve done it using Bitcoin Lightning.
We are already keeping notes for things we want to do to make next year’s Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser even better. Send us an email if you have any suggestions!
Also see 2024 Fall Fundraiser Results.
Things 4 Good Four Year Impact
Nov 10, 2024 at 9:42 PM
We’ve now done our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser for four years. With the amazing support of this community we have raised $22,739 for non-profits! Thank you so much. ❤️
Opening the sale to the public via the Mt. Olivet Holiday Boutique was a great way to get to a lot of new people with a nearly 50% jump in candle sales this year!
Organizations that we’ve supported over these four years include Constellation Fund, Free Bikes 4 Kidz, Appetite for Change, Feed My Starving Children, United Help Ukraine, Agate Housing + Services, Save the Snakes, Free Guitars 4 Kids, American Prairie, Heart to Care Tanzania, Food Recovery Network, Oceanites, SynGAP Research Fund, Water to Thrive, Sprint to Cité Soleil, and World Central Kitchen.
We saw Tina Schlieske’s Birthday Show at The Dakota and it was incredible! She was joined by her sister Laura and they hit a ton of great songs and pulled in a bunch of covers too. It got so fired up by the end that people were standing up and dancing, at a jazz club, and she sang from a table! 🔥
Went out for a walk and claimed the Veterans Day Challenge badge in Apple Health.
Last night we finished watching Season 7 of Young Sheldon. We watched this show mostly as a family, except Mazie mostly being off to college. It didn’t warm to me right away, which is true for most TV shows. But over time I came to really like it. Will miss these characters!
Incredible morning building connections at SPS Growth Summit! Incredible keynote from Riaz Meghji! So much great energy and talent as we continue to grow the world's retail network.#TeamSPS
Wrapping up Growth Summit #TeamSPS did a Give Back event where we assembled 1,000 SolarBuddy lights. Impact 4 Good led the team through the exercise. The lights were pretty simple to assemble yet cool to see how they functioned.
This Melin hat may be one of my favorite new pieces of SPS swag. 🤩🧢
Dig the cool display design for the Minnesota Tekne Awards stage. Fun to see the displays in a non-traditional layout that is connected to the imagery.
We had a great group from #TeamSPS at the Minnesota Tekne Awards ceremony tonight!
Weekly Thing Forum 🆕
Join Patrick Hambek, Eric Walker, Jim Cuene, David O'Hara, Steve, and many other Weekly Thing readers in the Weekly Thing Forum. Recent topics include:
- Weekly Think #300
- Weekly Thing #299
- Membership soft launch?
- What are we all building?
- Thingelstad Blog
Briefly
I don't love the user experience of Hacker News but I do think it has some compelling information. Here is an interesting alternative way to engage with it. → Your Hacker News
Cool interface to create audio loops. Seems very similar to the concepts behind the drum machines used in EDM, but with a visual flare. → Draw.Audio
I learned the magic of launchers with Quicksilver back in the day, and have used LaunchBar for years. I've considered Alfred. This looks pretty great too. → Monarch - Spotlight Search with Superpowers
This seems like a key feature that was missing for AirTags. → Apple’s Find My enables sharing location of lost items with third parties - Apple
Brilliant use of the MIDI format to record huge volumes of piano. For musicians I would think it would be incredible to have a continuously running recording as you explore music. → Jamcorder | Automatic Piano Recorder
SPS Commerce is number 197! 🎉 → Forbes America's Best Companies To Work For & Invest In 2025 List
Nice display option for your Mac with the Vision Pro. The video gives a good overview. → Testing the Vision Pro With New Ultrawide Display Option in visionOS 2.2 - MacRumors
If you are looking for some great blogs to follow White's list is a great resource. → Blogroll - Molly White
It is incredible to find resources as thorough and valuable as this online for free. 👏 → Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
I love this addition from Signal. I need to start using this for personal video calls versus other platforms like Zoom. Having a simple link is a big unlock for this. → Improving Private Signal Calls: Call Links & More
Fortune
Here is your fortune…
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today. 🐘
Want to support the Weekly Thing?
You can become a supporting member of the Weekly Thing for $4 a month or $40 a year!
Here are some other things you can do as well…
- Share with others you know!
- Post about the Weekly Thing and let others know about it.
- Join the Weekly Thing Forum and connect with others.
- Email me comments, feedback, or just to say Hi!
This work by Jamie Thingelstad is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
My opinions are my own and not those of any affiliates. The content is non-malicious and ad-free, posted at my discretion. Source attribution is omitted due to potential errors. Your privacy is respected; no tracking is in place.