Quarterly Cup 2024 Q3 Retrospective

The compass does not actually point to true north. This is because the magnetic north pole is not quite on the actual northernmost point of Earth – our slushy rock, and its magnetic field, are two separate things. The dynamics of spinning suggest that the magnetic field will be roughly aligned with the true north–south axis, but this is no guarantee.

I have 32 gb of working memory on my laptop, of which I make 28 gb available to the Linux vm I work in. It seems like ghc sometimes eats way too much of this (when building a very template-heavy module), causing the system to start thrashing and it’s not a pleasant experience.

I am convinced there exists something we can call statistical literacy. Unfortunately, I don’t yet know exactly what it is, so it is hard to write about.

In the summer of 2024 Metaculus reached out and invited me to participate in an ai Forecasting Benchmark Tournament.11 This is not about forecasting ai progress, to be clear, but about programming an ai to make forecasts. At the time, I didn’t build anything, because I had too much else going on. I did get around to it back in October, though, and I call the result the Basean Loom.

I recently published my acx book review contest 2024 submission on Savage Money. My 2023 submission last year was a review of War and Peace. The review did not nail the notes I wanted it to11 I’m still searching for that. but it turned out good anyway. Have a hot beverage, stake out some time for a long review, and Merry Christmas!