The Daily Index — Tuesday, September 12, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

URGENCY’ AT X, FORMERLY TWITTER

Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk is set to be published today. This article contains a story adapted from the book about how X moved its server farms from Sacramento to Portland. Musk's advisors told him that it would take many months to move the servers, but Musk decided that they were wrong and opted to move the servers using cheap contractors. They managed to move the servers in under a week, but the exercise destabilized X for the next two months. Musk later admitted that the rushed move was a mistake.

cnbc.com · 12 min

TLDR AI

PROJECT GUTENBERG RELEASES THOUSANDS OF AI AUDIOBOOKS

In collaboration with Microsoft, thousands of open-domain books have been transcribed with state-of-the-art text-to-speech. They're available on most streaming platforms. Information about the process is included in the link.

arxiv.org · 22 min

TLDR Web Dev

A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO DEBUGGING

This article presents a systematic approach to debugging that focuses on understanding first. The process it lays out for debugging starts with figuring out the symptoms and reproducing the bug. Then, by understanding the system, you can form and test a hypothesis about where the bug is. After fixing the bug, make sure to add checks to make sure similar bugs don’t occur again.

ntietz.com · 7 min

TLDR Crypto

FTX LOOKS TO OFFLOAD BILLIONS IN CRYPTO: HERE’S WHAT IT MEANS

The estate of the defunct crypto exchange FTX is looking to sell $3.4 billion in assets, pending approval from the Delaware Bankruptcy Court. Galaxy Digital, led by Mike Novogratz, is managing the sale. FTX's holdings include significant amounts of Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins. The potential sell pressure these liquidations could put on the market has been weighing heavily on the charts over the past week.

decrypt.co · 4 min

TLDR Design

NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP HAS A NEW PRESIDENT AND CEO

Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, the co-founders and owners of the Nielsen Norman Group, chose Kara Pernice as the person to lead NN/g into the future after 25 years of running it themselves.

nngroup.com · 1 min

TLDR

SCIENTISTS FIGURED OUT HOW TO WRITE IN WATER

A team of German physicists has figured out a method for writing on water. The method involves putting ink directly into water using a microbead made of an ion-exchange material as a pen. The bead writes by altering the local pH value of the water, attracting ink particles to those areas. The method is at a proof of concept stage - future iterations may be able to generate highly complex patterns in fluids. Examples of images drawn in water using the method are available in the article.

arstechnica.com · 5 min

TLDR

WI-FI CAN READ THROUGH WALLS

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara have developed a technique that can read letters through walls with Wi-Fi. The technique focuses on tracing the edges of objects. It is able to capture details not previously possible with other Wi-Fi imaging techniques. The approach may open up new directions for Wi-Fi imaging.

news.ucsb.edu · 5 min

TLDR

DOMAIN REGISTRARS WHICH DEVELOPERS RECOMMEND

Google Domains was one of the most popular domain registrars, with 10 million domains registered globally. Users who do nothing will be migrated to Squarespace. Domain names are easily transferable, so users have a choice of where to transfer their domains to. This article looks at which domain registrars other techies recommend. It provides an overview of each registrar with an analysis of their offerings.

blog.pragmaticengineer.com · 17 min

TLDR

7 SIMPLE HABITS OF THE TOP 1% OF ENGINEERS

This article looks at the habits of successful engineers and explains how these habits make those engineers more successful. Examples include sticking to a consistent standard and style of coding to make code easier to read and understand, deep domain knowledge in at least one field, and good self-marketing. The article delves deep into coding habits and how to write good code.

engineercodex.substack.com · 7 min