David Lidsky's Blog, page 244

Lunar New Year: Here’s what to know about the Year of the Snake

In the Chinese zodiac, 2025 is the Year of the Snake.

On Jan. 29, Asian American communities around the U.S. will ring in the Year of the Snake with community carnivals, family gatherings, parades, traditional food, fireworks and other festivities. In many Asian countries, it is a festival that is celebrated for several days. In diaspora communities, particularly in cultural enclaves, Lunar New Year is visibly and joyfully celebrated.

How DeepSeek answers questions on China differently than ChatGPT

DeepSeek appears to censor answers on sensitive Chinese topics, a practice commonly seen on China’s internet.

Chinese tech startup DeepSeek ’s new artificial intelligence chatbot has sparked discussions about the competition between China and the U.S. in AI development, with many users flocking to test the rival of OpenAI‘s ChatGPT.

DashCon, the infamous celebration of Tumblr fandom, is coming back. This time, organizers say it will be different

The original 2014 event suffered a string of disasters and sparked one of the era’s most enduring memes. Now, it wants to celebrate internet history.

Anyone well-versed in internet lore will be familiar with the image of a slightly deflated child’s ball pit on a hotel convention room floor.

Philadelphia Whole Foods workers just unionized—right as Trump made it harder for them to get a contract

Workers voted for a union—the first at the Amazon-owned grocery store. But actually negotiating a contract will be a long battle, especially now that Trump has gutted the National Labor Relations Board.

Whole Foods workers at a Philadelphia store voted this week to unionize, becoming the first store at the Amazon-owned grocery chain to do so. But then the Trump administration dealt a blow to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), ousting two officials in a move that labor experts say violates the law—and will hamper worker rights, including around bargaining union contracts. 

Medicaid, SBA loans, student loans, SNAP: What is and isn’t affected by Trump’s freeze on federal grants?

The Trump administration offered some clarification after issuing a freeze on federal grants and loans. But many programs remain in limbo.

Monday’s memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pausing federal grants and loans set off a scramble in Washington and across the nation as administrators and individuals tried to figure out how the order would affect funding, from the SBA to Medicaid to the Pell grant program. (It also drew a flurry of lawsuits.) An addendum issued Tuesday has offered a bit more information, but things are still hardly crystal clear.

U.S. policymakers should close the AI education gender divide

As the political leadership changes, we must push forward, encouraging and enabling female tech interest and growth.

The United States is no stranger to adapting its education system to address the challenges of the times. In 1957, the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik prompted the U.S. to implement programs like the National Defense Education Act, which emphasized science, math, and foreign language education. This resulted in the rapid growth in federal funding for K-12 and higher education STEM programs, and an increase in STEM graduates in the following decades.

How to deal with a manager who doesn’t manage

If you’re used to a micromanaging boss, it might seem like a dream to have a boss that leaves you alone. But too much of that can also be a bad thing.

No one enjoys working for a boss who is constantly checking up on them and micromanaging their every move. We’re motivated by a certain degree of autonomy to achieve goals based on intrinsic talent, not just external feedback and direction. But when your boss is regularly unengaged for long stretches of time, the joy of independence may soon shift to concern about their capacity and commitment to help you achieve your career goals. An absentee boss can lead to feelings of alienation, job dissatisfaction, and stress.

10 Ways to Induce a ‘Flow’ State and Unlock Painless Productivity

By cultivating a flow state, you can achieve ‘productive happiness’: a state in which you feel energized, motivated, and fulfilled by your work.

Peak performance is a state of consciousness where you’re in a rapt moment of attention, totally absorbed and focused on the task at hand. Everything else disappears, and time seems to pass quickly. Often called “flow” or “the zone,” it’s a state where your mental and physical performance goes through the roof.

AI and power requires give before take

Reframe data centers’ approach to the energy supply and demand imbalance.

When you ask ChatGPT a question, how does it come up with the answer? Most people don’t give much thought to what’s going on behind the screen or how graphics processing units (GPUs) make the AI magic happen in data centers across the country. 

How the U.S. chip bans led to a monster called DeepSeek

Barred from using powerful chips, researchers outside the U.S. were forced to find ways of training and operating AI models using less memory and computing power. 

The Chinese AI company DeepSeek has put the AI industry in an uproar. Denied the most powerful chips thought needed to create state-of-the-art AI models, DeepSeek pulled off some engineering master strokes that allowed the researchers to do more with less. The DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1 models the company recently released achieved state-of-the-art performance in benchmark tests and cost much less time and money to train and operate than comparable models.