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THE DAILY INDEX

Technology, AI, software, security, crypto and business

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

HOW LAYOUT POSITION IMPACTS THREE BIG WEB PERFORMANCE LEVERS

Shopify published a blog post to explain the three biggest performance problems on their sites that impact Core Web Vitals metrics. The three issues are lazy loading of images visible on the first visit, asynchronous loading of CSS of elements visible upon the first visit, and not prioritizing the fetch of the largest image, affecting Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) load times. LCP is a factor in Core Web Vitals metrics, and this can affect how a website ranks on search engines like Google. This blog post explains how Shopify is combating these problems, providing code examples along the way.

EXPERTS FEAR CROOKS ARE CRACKING STOLEN LASTPASS KEYS

A steady trickle of cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious tech professionals has led some to believe that LastPass Vaults that were involved in the November 2022 breach were cracked. Taylor Monahan, lead product manager of MetaMask, documented the heists on X and notes that the victims of the cryptocurrency schemes are unique in that they have not suffered from any of the attacks (such as email compromise) that tend to predate these attacks. More details and interviews are presented in the article.

ROBOTAXIS WITHOUT STEERING WHEELS

Cruise, a company backed by GM, is set to soon begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle, pending regulatory approval. The vehicle will not have a steering wheel or pedals. Its lack of traditional human controls means that Cruise requires an exemption from the federal government's motor vehicle safety standards. The government body responsible for processing the exemption is expected to make a decision on the matter soon, maybe even before the end of the month.

SCIENTISTS GROW WHOLE MODEL OF HUMAN EMBRYO, WITHOUT SPERM OR EGG

Scientists from the Weizmann Institute have grown embryo models that resemble real early human embryos without using sperm, eggs, or a womb. The embryo models look like a textbook example of a real 14-day-old embryo. They release hormones that turn pregnancy tests positive in the lab. Realistic embryo models could provide an ethical way for scientists to study the earliest moments of life. The scientists claim that it would be impossible to achieve a real pregnancy using their embryo models.

HUMANISED KIDNEYS GROWN INSIDE PIGS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Researchers have created human-pig chimeric embryos that, when transferred to surrogate pig mothers, were shown to have kidneys that contained mostly human cells. This is the first time that scientists have grown a solid humanised organ inside another animal. The kidneys are not able to be used for transplantation in their current form as they are not entirely human. There are still plenty of legal and ethical challenges to overcome before this work will see any clinical applications.

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