Fri Jun 30 2023

Wagner Group Rebellion:

• Yevgeny Prigozhin led the rebellion in Russia
• Speculation on whether it was staged or a genuine mutiny against Putin's regime
• Implications for the conflict in Ukraine and Russian society

Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action:

• Cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina
• Personal experiences and perspectives on affirmative action and its impact on diversity and equality in education
• Potential alternatives to affirmative action, such as improving early childhood education and addressing systemic inequalities at an earlier stage
• Role of unions in public education and their impact on educational quality and opportunity
• Criteria for college admissions, including academics, creativity, athletics, geography, etc.
• Debate over legacy admissions and meritocracy
• Discussion about government intervention vs market competition in regulating private institutions' admissions processes

AI infrastructure companies and Databricks' acquisition of MosaicML:

• MosaicML offers open source models for AI training
• Term sheet from Emergence Capital for series B funding round at $400 million valuation
• Importance of maximizing GPU efficiency in AI model training due to GPU shortage
• Acquisition supports the trend of AI infrastructure companies building end-to-end tool chains
• Similar acquisitions by other companies like Snowflake acquiring Niva

IRL shutting down after faking 95% of users, Byju's seeking emergency funding:

• IRL raised $170 million Series C with SoftBank Vision Fund leading the investment
• Byju's valued at $22 billion facing financial turmoil with shareholders seeking to dilute founder control
• Lack of diligence by investors contributing to these situations

Science Corner: Understanding the NANOGrav findings: -NANOGrav consortium using instruments to measure pulsars to observe waves in space-time caused by gravitational events around the universe -Supports Einstein's general theory of relativity that gravity warps space-time itself -Potential implications for understanding the structure of the universe and applications in space travel or time travel