Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

Internet Traffic

  • “So if you look at just traffic from Google, 10 years ago, for every 2 pages, Google crawled, they send you 1 visitor. 6 months ago, that was up to 6:1. The call rate hadn’t changed. But what’s changed is now 75% of queries to Google, Google Answers on Google without sending you back to the original source. But even in the last 6 months, the rate has increased even further where now it’s up to 15:1, 15 crawls for every one visitor. And if you look at OpenAI, which is 25:1, Anthropic, which is 6,000:1. It’s putting a lot of pressure on the media companies that are there that are making money through either subscriptions or ads on their pages.” Cloudflare CEO.
  • Source.
Misc

Progress Speed

  • Moore’s law stands out for its speed against improvements in other industrial processes.
  • “The speed of intercontinental travel rose from about 35 kilometers per hour for large ocean liners in 1900 to 885 km/h for the Boeing 707 in 1958, an average rise of 5.6 percent a year. But that speed has remained essentially constant ever since—the Boeing 787 cruises just a few percent faster than the 707. Between 1973 and 2014, the fuel-conversion efficiency of new U.S. passenger cars (even after excluding monstrous SUVs and pickups) rose at an annual rate of just 2.5 percent, from 13.5 to 37 miles per gallon (that’s from 17.4 liters per 100 kilometers to 6.4 L/100 km). And finally, the energy cost of steel (coke, natural gas, electricity), our civilization’s most essential metal, was reduced from about 50 gigajoules to less than 20 per metric ton between 1950 and 2010—that is, an annual rate of about –1.7 percent.“

Misc

Oscar Speeches

  • Over the past century, the length of Oscar speeches has ballooned, peaking in the 2010s at almost 300 words per speech.
  • Screenwriters give the longest speeches, the shortest ever was by Joe Pesci.
  • Speeches now involve commentary, personal journeys and activism – more than ever.
  • Lots of great stats here.
Misc

We live at 10 bits/second

  • Fascinating paper on how fast humans throughput information, 10 bits/second, and how this is in stark contrast to our sensory system which does 10^9 bits/second.
  • Why this is and how is still not well understood.
  • “Based on the research reviewed here regarding the rate of human cognition, we predict that Musk’s brain will communicate with the computer at about 10 bits/s. Instead of the bundle of Neuralink electrodes, Musk could just use a telephone, whose data rate has been designed to match human language, which in turn is matched to the speed of perception and cognition.”
Misc

Explaining PE Exit Drought

  • “The exit environment overall is governed by both cyclical and secular factors. Cyclical factors get a lot of airtime. Often mentioned are supportive macro, LP allocations right-sizing, and “animal spirits”. But the incentives facing sponsors get a vote. And sponsors today seeking to maximize their probability of survival face an environment that incentivizes retaining assets, lengthening their liabilities, and avoiding replacement/origination costs. This is the New Exit Game.”
  • Source.
Misc

Short Selling Disclosure

  • The SEC introduced certain short-selling disclosure requirements including publication of those on EDGAR that went effective 2nd of January 2025 (full details here).
  • The first batch of form SHOs are to be submitted 14 days after the end of the calendar month and published at the end of February.
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