The Daily Index — Friday, July 28, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

CODE: FLASHLIGHT, SHORTCUTS, VOICE MEMOS, AND MORE

Apple has released the fourth beta of iOS 17 to developers. There are new code snippets contained within the beta that hint at functionality for the rumored Action button on the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max's Action button will reportedly replace the Ring/Silent switch and allow users to quickly access various functions and settings without unlocking the device or navigating to an app. There will likely be nine options for features that users can customer and assign to different actions - these are listed in the article.

macrumors.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

CONSISTENCY PATTERNS

A system design tutorial on 3 consistency patterns used in distributed systems. Strong consistency ensures that all servers always retrieve the latest data, but it can reduce service availability and increase latency. Eventual consistency, which favors high availability and performance over consistency, ensures that the system will eventually converge to the same state, but it may return stale data in the interim. Weak consistency, which prioritizes high availability and low latency, may or may not return the latest data. The choice of consistency pattern depends on the system requirements and use cases.

systemdesign.one · 10 min

TLDR Crypto

CRUNCH

Sequoia is scaling back two of its funds as it, along with everyone else, continues to adjust to a challenging environment for crypto. The firm's crypto fund is shrinking from $585 million to $200 million, while its ecosystem fund, a fund of funds, will be pared down from $900 million to $450 million. This reallocation is part of Sequoia's continued response to the tectonic shifts in the market over the past year or so. It is also another example of the dire state of the venture and startup scene in light of interest rate hikes and concerns about the economy.

archive.ph · 2 min

TLDR Founders

EVERYTHING IS CYCLICAL

In the dog days of Summer, you can’t help but take stock of things and look back. History has a way of repeating itself and everything is cyclical. We’re in another rerun of a disruptive tech cycle. Now is your chance to maximize.

collabfund.com · 5 min

TLDR

AN EPILOGUE TO MY TIME WORKING AT TWITTER

This article from Esther Crawford talks about her time working at Twitter. Crawford sold her startup to Twitter in 2020. She describes the experience as both amazing and terrible. The company often felt siloed and bureaucratic and engineers had to act as politicians instead of just building. The article covers topics such as what it is like to work/interact with Elon Musk and the dangers of living in an echo chamber.

esthercrawford.medium.com · 10 min

TLDR

BUILD’

Intel's CEO was very bullish on AI during the company's Q2 2023 earnings call. The company plans to ship its first consumer chip with a built-in neural processor for machine learning tasks later this year. It plans to eventually integrate AI into everything it sells. Integrating AI into consumer chips will allow AI processing to happen at the edge rather than on the cloud, improving latency, bandwidth, and costs.

theverge.com · 3 min

TLDR

FOR CHEAPER LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES, JUST ADD SALT

The cost of lithium has increased tenfold since 2020. Scientists from Arizona State University have proposed diluting lithium with sodium as a solution to cutting the cost of batteries. The team found that a lithium solution with up to 20 percent sodium mixed could remain stable. However, the resulting structure did not possess the properties necessary to create a viable battery.

spectrum.ieee.org · 3 min

TLDR

ANNOUNCING OVERFLOWAI

Overflow AI is Stack Overflow's new plan to integrate generative AI into its platform. It includes adding new search capabilities, the ability to curate and build a knowledge base in minutes, Slack integration, a Visual Studio Code extension, and a dedicated location for AI resources and responses from experts. Developers interested in helping Stack Overflow test its new AI-powered features can register to help on the Stack Overflow Labs page. Stack Overflow aims to keep its developer community at the center and ensure that the people who contribute their knowledge are recognized for their efforts.

stackoverflow.blog · 6 min

TLDR

PREFECTURE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Every prefecture in Japan posted a population drop in 2022. Japan's total population dropped by more than 800,000 last year. Other countries are likely set to follow Japan's lead. Japan's prime minister has called the trend a crisis, but national policies have so far failed to put a dent in population decline.

theguardian.com · 2 min