NYTimes: “For more than 50 years, designers of computer chips mainly used one tactic to boost performance: They shrank electronic components to pack more power onto each piece of silicon. Then more than a decade ago, engineers at the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices began toying with a radical idea. Instead of designing one big microprocessor with vast numbers of tiny transistors, they conceived of creating one from smaller chips that would be packaged tightly together to work like one electronic brain. The concept, sometimes called chiplets, caught on in a big way, with AMD, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, IBM and Intel introducing such products. Chiplets rapidly gained traction because smaller chips are cheaper to make, while bundles of them can top the performance of any single slice of silicon. The strategy, based on advanced packaging technology, has since become an essential tool to enabling progress in semiconductors.”
Economist: “Soft skills matter to employers. Writing in the Harvard Business Review last year, Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School and her co-authors analysed almost 5,000 job descriptions that Russell Reynolds, a headhunter, had developed for a variety of C-suite roles between 2000 and 2017. Their work showed that companies have shifted away from emphasising financial and operational skills towards social skills—an ability to listen, reflect, communicate and empathise. Other research has reached similar conclusions about jobs lower down the pay scale: being able to work well with people is seen not as some fluffy bonus but as a vital attribute. The trouble is that soft skills are hard to measure. Worse still, the conventional process for recruiting people is often better at picking up on other qualities.”
Hugh Howey in his Silo series: “”This is not the end, of course. Every story we read, every film we watch, continues on in our imaginations if we allow it. Characters live another day. They grow old and die. New ones are born. Challenges crop up and are dealt with. There is sadness, joy, triumph, and failure. Where a story ends is nothing more than a snapshot in time, a brief flash of emotion, a pause. How and if it continues is up to us….What do you see?””
WSJ: “Could the government help end intergenerational poverty with $3,500 for each child?…A new investment program being tested in some states makes the case: what if the poorest children started life with some money in the bank…The idea is for the government to deposit a few thousand dollars into a trust account for each infant born to parents below a designated income level. As adults, the beneficiaries can use the money—plus investment returns—to help pay for education or a home…Connecticut’s baby bonds program was meant to fund the creation of $3,500 investment accounts per child for 12 years. At 18, beneficiaries who completed a financial literacy course could use the money to start or invest in a Connecticut business, buy a home in the state, pay for higher education or save for retirement.”
