Sceileile

  • Friday links — 6/13/2025

    Some reading from this past week.

    Energy

    Ireland’s Energy Transition Looks Dead In The Water

    AI

    In Brazil’s Amazon, AI is making healthcare safer – Rest of World

    Ethan Mollick talk to Nicolai Tangen

    The Gentle Singularity

    ongoing by Tim Bray · AI Angst

    Fish Food: Episode 646 – Using GenAI in Strategy

    June 13, 2025
  • Reading — 6/5/2025

    A few pieces that have caught my eye this week.

    Social

    Colour me surprised.

    Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers

    AI

    Some insightful pieces below.

    Why I have slightly longer timelines than some of my guests

    Tips on prompting ChatGPT for UK technology secretary Peter Kyle

    The recent history of AI in 32 otters – by Ethan Mollick

    Media

    It took me too long to understand this but YouTube is one of most important distribution channels today.

    Why the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox employees

    eCommerce

    Anyone involved in ecommerce in any way should read this.  As we move to agentic ecommerce, who controls the interface between you and your customers and what does this mean for the future?

    It’s The Interface (Part 2)

    June 5, 2025
  • Friday links — 5/16/2025

    Some reading I’ve been doing this past week.

    AI

    Remarks on AI from NZ – by Neal Stephenson – Graphomane

    The first-ever UX Study of Google’s AI Overviews: The Data We’ve All Been Waiting For

    EV’s

    Tesla (TSLA) Chinese deliveries dropped to a scary low level | Electrek

    Search

    John Battelle’s Search Blog Is AI the “Big Bang” or Merely a “Turning Point”? Much Depends on the Answer

    The World’s Largest Search Engine Doesn’t Want You to Search

    May 16, 2025
  • Reading List — 4/25/2025

    eCommerce

    TikTok Shopping Trends and Statistics by PartnerCentric

    A recent survey found that 37% of Americans under 60 have bought from TikTok Shop, spending around $59 per purchase. The most popular items purchased are personal accessories, household items, and fashion. Influencers play a significant role in driving purchases on the platform. Read more »

    AI

    Real-world gen AI use cases from the world’s leading organizations | Google Cloud Blog

    The advancements showcased at Google Cloud Next 25 in Las Vegas include predictive tools enhancing operations for companies like Wendy’s, Uber, and Samsung. The increasing momentum and potential in AI innovation across industries are evident, with 280 new entries on the list marked with an asterisk denoting their inclusion. Read more »

    Vending-Bench: Testing long-term coherence in agents | Andon Labs

    Agents in a simulated vending machine business must handle ordering, pricing, and inventory over long periods to make profit. Results varied among AI models. Interact with a shorter version to engage with the environment and better understand the AI’s challenges. Read more »

    On Jagged AGI: o3, Gemini 2.5, and everything after

    In the midst of the AI advancements today, understanding the intelligence and capabilities of these systems remains a challenge. Recent findings reveal that even measuring AI’s abilities through tests can be inconsistent and subjective. The concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is complex and lacks a clear definition, stirring ongoing debates in the AI community. Read more »

    Tech

    Apple and the Ghosts of Companies Past – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

    Apple faced potential challenges due to tariffs and under-delivering on AI promises, but the temporary tariff reprieve helps for now. While Apple is not doomed there is some cause for concern. Read more »
    April 25, 2025
  • Using Ai to research health insurance plans in Ireland

    It’s that dreaded time of year again when our health insurance is up for renewal. What do we need? What are the key differences between the hundreds of available plans. Is our current plan still the most suitable? This year, on a whim I decided to try something different.

    It’s a really difficult and complex topic to research as the plans are not particularly clear, there are too many of them, they are too complex (excesses, procedures not covered, differences between hospital types etc. ) and the plan that best suits you will depend on your own particular circumstances at a moment in time.

    Today, as an experiment, I gave Gemini Advanced Deep Research with 2.5 Pro a custom prompt, gave it some general information about our ages, health status, specific issues that may be important to us and our current plan. I then asked it to evaluate this against other plans from the providers in the market.

    Less than 5 minutes later it produced a pretty detailed report (that would have taken me hours to do) comparing our current plan to others in the market, the advantages and disadvantages of each and points to consider when making a choice.

    You always have to be extremely careful when using an Ai model for research like this and double check everything, but I was seriously impressed by the results. It was a very good first pass that at the very least will save some time.

    I’m sure that this could be improved if a private (perhaps State regulated) model had deeper access to our health data, but I feel like I have seen a glimpse of the future. Try it yourself. You may be surprised by the results.

    April 16, 2025
  • Gemini

    I’ve been trying out the various models for some time now. I swapped from a ChatGPT subscription to Claude.  In the last week, Gemini Advanced 2.5 Pro strikes me as being very very good and now thinking about switching my sub to Gemini for a while. An interesting experiment is to ask both the same question, then provide the answers of each to the other and ask each to evaluate which is the better answer and why.

    April 14, 2025
  • Chaos Revisited

    I started reading Weimar Germany, Promise and Tragedy, by Eric D. Weitz. If I had to summarise what I’ve read so far in one word, that word would be chaos.

    Seem familiar?

    April 9, 2025
  • Finished Reading

    Finished reading Working by Robert Caro. Once I started I couldn’t put it down. Fascinating read. Recommended.

    March 26, 2025
  • Crazy

    It’s a crazy world we live in.

    March 26, 2025