2 minutes estimated reading time
Nightmare of The Wolf
Netflix are doubling down on The Witcher franchise with their Witcher: Nightmare of The Wolf anime. The approach is very similar to the approach that Netflix took with Altered Carbon. Looking at how well that anime turned out, I have high hopes that Nightmare of the Wolf will live up to the trailer that Netflix has dropped.
OpenAI Codex demo
OpenAI demo-ed the use of AI to code from normal human language a web interface design. It’s a smaller move forward than you would think it is, but it has programmers worried. Secondly, its hard enough to work out what something does if it is coded by a human who doesn’t document as it goes. A machine learning based coder represents an even greater level of opaqueness, which poses challenges for when code would need to be updated. You can learn more about OpenAI Codex here.
Mercedes Benz 300SL
The 1950s saw Germany rebuilding after the war and its companies coming back after the war. Before the space race, there was the jet age and there was motor racing. Mercedes Benz looked to make a statement about its position in the motor industry and the way to do that was through motor racing. Stirling Moss driving a Mercedes 300SLR put the company back on the map. Two years later Mercedes released a two door version of Moss’ car to the public called the 300SL. It was light, expensive, exciting and had jet age vibes with its aerodynamic styling and gull wing doors. Something that still looked futuristic almost 30 years later on the DeLorean.
But the 300SL could also kill the unwary driver due to its rear swing axles. The car could go into sudden oversteer mid-corner if you stabbed the brakes or take the foot off the throttle in the bend. I know this, not because I had driven one, but because I was an avid reader of Car magazine from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s.
Car magazine was in a golden age, when motor journalism was as much literature as product information. Journalists wrote up to the intellect that they wanted their readers to have rather than writing to a lowest common denominator. Something that I have tried to do with this blog over time, but not nearly as well. Back to the killer handling: and the expensive coupe.
Mercedes replaced the gull wing coupe with a roadster body shape and took the opportunity to change the handling.
Tyler Hoover of Hoovies Garage had a chance to drive one of the roaders.
Tyler Cowen interview
I have been following Tyler Cowen’s economics blog Marginal Revolution for years and posted links to it here. Ashish Kulkarni interviewed Cowen about some of his blog posts, the philosophy of economics and the challenges facing universities and their students. Cowen’s day job is a professor at George Mason University in Washington DC.