The Daily Index — Friday, August 18, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR AI

FORMER GOOGLE BRAIN AND STABILITY HEAD OF RESEARCH LAUNCHES AI COMPANY

Tokyo-based Sakana is a new AI research lab founded to discover novel foundation models based on nature. It’s not yet clear if they have raised funding, but the team and website are exciting.

sakana.ai · 1 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW WE REDUCED THE SIZE OF OUR JAVASCRIPT BUNDLES BY 33%

Dropbox faced performance issues due to large JavaScript bundles and decided to replace its outdated module bundler during the migration to a new web serving stack. It chose Rollup as the new bundler, which offered features like automatic code-splitting and tree shaking. Despite initial challenges, including resource-intensive builds and bugs in Rollup’s tree-shaking algorithm, the migration was successful. After the rollout, Dropbox observed a 33% reduction in JavaScript bundle sizes, a 15% reduction in total JavaScript script count, and modest improvements in page load times. This change also significantly improved front-end development velocity and reduced maintenance burden.

dropbox.tech · 6 min

TLDR Crypto

SEC SET TO GREENLIGHT ETHER-FUTURES ETFS IN WIN FOR CRYPTO INDUSTRY

The SEC is reportedly preparing to approve the first Ether futures-based ETFs. Several firms, including Volatility Shares, Bitwise, Roundhill, and ProShares, have filed to launch such ETFs. The SEC approved a Bitcoin futures ETF in 2021 after Bitcoin futures trading was allowed on the CME, so it would make sense for them to also approve an Ether futures ETF. This comes at the same time many companies are vying to launch ETFs based on spot Bitcoin itself, which has been a slower approval process.

archive.ph · 2 min

TLDR Founders

UK LAUNCHES £1BILLION FINTECH FUND TO COMPETE WITH SILICON VALLEY

The UK has historically had a funding gap at the late stage. Large companies often shoot to the US to breach $500m values and IPO. The UK’s new fund, which is backed by Mastercard, Barclays, and the London Stock Exchange Group, aims to address the issue of fintech companies struggling to reach scale and pursue public listings.

cnbc.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

META’S AI AGENTS LEARN TO MOVE BY COPYING TODDLERS

Meta AI has developed a platform called MyoSuite that can simulate the human body's musculoskeletal system and train AI agents to control simulated arms and legs with human-level dexterity and agility.

spectrum.ieee.org · 4 min

TLDR AI

MAKING 3D PICTURES BETTER: A NEW WAY TO SPOT KEY POINTS

Keypoint detection is like finding specific dots in pictures to create a 3D image. This research, called DeDoDe, finds these dots in a new, better way, ensuring they match up in different views and improving 3D image creation.

arxiv.org · 14 min

TLDR AI

IMPROVING EYE IMAGE ANALYSIS: A NEW WAY TO CREATE RETINAL IMAGES

Experts use detailed pictures of the inside of the eye when studying eye diseases, but creating these images is hard and time-consuming. This paper presents a new method (DDPM) and a dataset (ReTree) that makes creating and analyzing these images easier and faster than before.

arxiv.org · 19 min

TLDR Web Dev

BUILDING A TWO-WAY DATA BINDING HOOK FOR FORM INPUTS IN REACT

Two-way form input binding is a popular feature offered by JavaScript frameworks like Vue and Svelte. This is an experiment to reproduce the feature in React. It’s also a real-life example of how a seasoned React developer would approach building complex functionality.

macarthur.me · 5 min

TLDR Web Dev

ADAPTING TYPOGRAPHY TO USER PREFERENCES WITH CSS

Bringing the user into the design process has been an exciting time for users, designers, and developers. Users can land on their experience and seamlessly begin consuming content with their preferences richly integrated into the design result. This blog post explores using CSS media queries with a variable font to tailor the reading experience even further.

web.dev · 7 min