- Cash Nut
- Posts
- Sam Altman returns to OpenAI
Sam Altman returns to OpenAI
Plus: A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android’s app store fees
Cash Nut
November 22, 2023
In Today’s Edition
NYC Will Soon Be Home to 15 Robot-Run Vegetarian Restaurants From Chipotle’s Founder
Binance CEO steps down; crypto platform hit with record $4.3 billion in damages
A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android’s app store fees
A guide to LLM inference and performance
‘Electrocaloric’ heat pump could transform air conditioning
Scientists 3D print a robotic hand with human-like bones and tendons
🚀Startups Nuts
Kernel, a new endeavor from the founder of Chipotle, is a vegetarian fast-casual restaurant that will be operated mostly by robots. There are plans to open at least 15 locations with the first opening by early 2024. The remainder will be on track for New York City in the next two years. Each location will employ three workers who will receive more pay and better benefits than people working at other chains.
Changpeng Zhao will step down as the CEO of Binance after the company pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and other charges. Binance will pay more than $4.3 billion to settle the charges. Zhao also agreed to a $50 million fine as part of the settlement. Richard Teng, Binance's head of regional markets, will take over as CEO. Zhao will remain as a shareholder. There were no allegations related to the misuse of customer funds or market manipulation.
🏭Business Nuts
Sam Altman is returning to OpenAI as CEO. There will be a new initial board with Bret Taylor as Chair. The other members will be Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo.
Spotify doesn't pay any commission fees when it uses its own payment processor on Android. It only pays a 4% fee when users choose to use Google as their payment processor. Google fought to keep the terms of its deal with Spotify secret during its antitrust trial as it could damage negotiations with other app developers who might want more generous fees. Spotify's unprecedented popularity was enough to justify a bespoke deal.
📱Tech Nuts
Using the full power of the GPU during LLM inference requires knowing if the inference is compute-bound or memory-bound. Calculating the operations per byte possible on a given GPU and comparing it to the arithmetic of a model's attention layers reveals where the bottleneck is. This information can be used to pick an appropriate GPU for model inference and use techniques like batching to better utilize GPU resources.
A new type of heat pump developed by materials scientists at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology in Belvaux uses electric fields and a special ceramic to warm or cool air. The technology combines a number of existing techniques and could be potentially competitive with heat pumps without the need for refrigerants in a smaller space. It still needs to be refined further before it is ready for commercialization.
🎁Miscellaneous
One of the reasons robots seem to move differently from living creatures is due to their lack of bones and flexible tissues. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and US-based startup Inkbit have figured out how to 3D print a robotic hand with an internal structure composed of human-like bones, ligaments, and tendons. The technique can create robots that outperform hard robots in terms of flexibility and overcome the design and scale-related issues faced by soft robots. A picture of the 3D-printed robot hand is available in the article.
💡What else are we reading and seeing?
OpenAI’s Misalignment and Microsoft’s Gain
Here is how far we are to achieving AGI, according to DeepMind
Nvidia’s revenue triples as AI chip boom continues
IMF says central bank digital currencies can replace cash: ‘This is not the time to turn back’
Meme stocks are back on the move again
Las Vegas sets its sights on sports domination
10 signs you’re genuinely smart according to psychology
Why perseverance is the key to success
😎Fun Fact
The world's first recorded financial crisis was the "Tulip Mania" in the Netherlands in the 17th century, where tulip bulbs became extremely expensive and then collapsed in value
🔥 Hot Book of the Day
When Bill Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over.
As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime.
As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of America’s top lawyers and politicians to bring him down.
Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, Browder’s campaign to expose Putin’s corruption was a factor behind Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US presidential election.
At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is “mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the tactics of modern autocracy.”
“For the first time, it all made sense: one of the main reasons Putin had interfered in the US election was because of the Magnitsky Act.”
🐦Joke of the Day
Offers
AI Tool Report - Link
Constant Contact - Link
ELEVATOR - Link
Hal9 - Link
The Arora Report - Link
Enjoy The Cash Nut? Consider forwarding it to a co-worker, colleague, classmate, or whoever you think might be interested.
Advertise With us - Link
Keep an Eye on our Weekly newsletter, where we gonna share resources like Financial Models, AI tools, and much more.
That’s it from our side for today.