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LinkedIn, Lists, Looking Back, and Life

by Jay Cuthrell
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This week we take a look at thought leadership listicle prompts, advances in computing infrastructure, as well as a shot and chaser.

LinkedIn Listicles Oh My!

I have created and deleted my social networking profiles over the years. Re-hydrating a social network is far more rapid than it was before the growth of graph databases — all it takes is an email address, name, phone number, etc.

Twenty (20!) years ago, I used LinkedIn, friendster, orkut, etc… It was as if social networks were springing up everywhere back then.

The social networks themselves did not last with me. I rotated, repaved, and repatriated — when possible.

After two (2) years of use, I ended my use of Quora in 2012. I recently logged in again to see if there was anything that allows me to delete it permantently and there appears to be a “Delete or Deactivate Your Account” option now.

After ten (10) years, I ended my use of Twitter in 2017 well before any of whatever fresh mess the former bird site is up to these days. While I miss some of what I remember of Twitter, I’m pleased with Mastodon and Bluesky for now.

Most recently, I started over with my new profile on LinkedIn in 2018.

While my personal network on LinkedIn that I’m connected to is under 4000, there are over 4200 other profiles that follow mine. While I’m not a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION), I do have my profile set to Creator mode.

Recently, a “new” feature on LinkedIn has re-appeared and asked me to opine on a leadership blurb as part of a listicle… which long time LinkedIn users might remember as “Pulse”.

I submitted one.

Then I submitted another one.

I clicked around and learned there is a Collaborative articles FAQ

Apparently, if you make enough contributions, LinkedIn offers “💡 Earn a Community Top Voice badge”.

Part of me wonders if LinkedIn will re-create Quora or someday acqui-hire what remains as a training corpus for thought leadership listicles. I don’t plan to quit LinkedIn, yet. 🤷

Looking Back at a Series of Tubes

So begins a story of networking evolutions and perceptions in three parts as pictures with links.

The Pneumatic Tube Mail System in New York City
Source: The Pneumatic Tube Mail System in New York City

The Internet is a Series of Tubes
Source: Series of Tubes

"Introducing Falcon: Falcon enables an order-of-magnitude improvement over software-only transports. Today at the OCP Global Summit, Google is excited to open Falcon to the ecosystem through the Open Compute Project.
Source: Open Compute Project Global Summit: Google Falcon

Shot and Chaser

Regular readers will recall my shot and chaser format from prior issues. Essentially, the format is a callback to prior topics, links, etc. for an issue which is then compared to a more recent or current link for the week.

Shot

Around 2 years ago, I looked back at SxSW 2017:

Now, think about the implications of what IEEE roundtables from a few years ago where discussing in 2017.

Source: What’s a Server? (2021)

Description: “In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that the number of components in integrated circuits would grow exponentially. The impact of Moore’s Law is all around us, in the myriad of gadgets, computers, and networks that power modern life. But the winning streak can’t last forever and the value of Moore’s Law is already on the wane. To keep making computers better and better, researchers are turning to new technologies, including circuits modeled on the human brain, carbon nanotube computers, and processors that make do with approximate rather than exact answers. This video from SXSW 2017 talks to some of the leaders in this space: Tom Conte of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Tsu-Jae King Liu of the University of California at Berkeley, and Greg Yeric at ARM Research.”

Source: Going Beyond Moore’s Law: IEEE at SXSW 2017

Chaser

Eight (8!) years later…

🤯 (me in 2023)

A new prototype chip from IBM Research could potentially bring energy-efficient AI to the edge.
Source: IBM Research’s new NorthPole AI chip

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA and LEMONT, IL, October 17, 2023 -- Groq, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions company, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory announced today that Groq hardware is now available to researchers through the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility’s (ALCF) AI Testbed. The ALCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility that provides high-performance computing (HPC) resources and AI technologies for open science.
Source: Argonne deploys new Groq system to ALCF AI Testbed, providing AI accelerator access to researchers globally

In this AI startup’s new world, 5 trillion parameter models require just eight chips
Source: SambaNova’s New Chip Means GPTs for Everyone

Below is my annual letter, published today in our Annual Report 2023. Dear shareholders, colleagues, customers, and partners, We are living through a time of historic challenge and opportunity.
Source: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s annual letter

Life

My typing abilities are recovering well and I managed to type up most of this issue without pain. In fact, I have started to add frontmatter tags to past newsletter issues using rake-nltk:

I need to keep testing but might use a private LLM to get into the weeds a bit more.

Disclosure

I am linking to my disclosure.

Topics:

ai groq ibm ieee linkedin mastodon newsletter nvidia ocp sambanova shot-and-chaser social social-networks

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