The Daily Index — Monday, September 18, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

WHY THE NEXT MICROGRIDS WILL BE WELL CONNECTED

Microgrids are miniaturized versions of power grids - connecting them together would increase their resiliency and facilitate the integration of more renewable energy.

spectrum.ieee.org · 13 min

TLDR AI

GET PRICING PLANS

Adobe's Firefly generative AI models, previously in beta, are now available in Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, and Adobe Experience Cloud. Users will be charged via "generative credits" based on model interaction. Paid Adobe plans come with various credit amounts. Firefly will still work (but run slower) once credits run out.

techcrunch.com · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW SMALL SOFTWARE TEAMS OUTPERFORM THE COMPETITION

Small software teams are more common in 2023 due to tech layoffs. However, there are five common factors that allow these teams to outperform their competition, such as keeping things simple, reusing code liberally, and having a clear vision in mind. This article uses ChatGPT, Bun, and indie hackers as clear examples. It also delves into actionable takeaways for software engineers, who can benefit from the lessons learned from small teams shipping fast.

engineercodex.substack.com · 6 min

TLDR InfoSec

COLLECTION AT HIGH-VALUE TARGETS

Microsoft has reported that an Iranian cyber espionage group, tracked as Peach Sandstorm but known otherwise as Holmium, APT33, or Elfin, targeted organizations in the satellite, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors. The group compromised dozens of entities, exfiltrated data from a subset, and gained access using password spray attacks. The campaign began in February and targeted thousands of organizations.

microsoft.com · 8 min

TLDR Crypto

‘MISLEADING AT BEST’

Gemini has expressed opposition to Genesis' bankruptcy recovery plan, calling it misleading. Genesis, along with parent company DCG, proposed the remuneration deal, but Gemini is arguing that creditors, including Gemini Earn users, will be wildly under-compensated under DCG and Genesis’ jointly proposed plan. DCG reportedly owes over $1.65 billion to Genesis, which in turn owes about $1.2 billion to Gemini.

coindesk.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

COULD TARGET WORLD HUNGER

Industry heavyweights like Musk, Gates, and Zuckerberg debated AI regulation in a private session, discussing concerns about open-source misuse and job threats. A consensus emerged on the need for government oversight.

archive.ph · 7 min

TLDR AI

IBM THROWS HAT IN LANGUAGE MODEL ARENA WITH OPEN SOURCE MOE MODELS

Mixture-of-Experts models are sparse models, which means they save on computation while not sacrificing accuracy. They're tricky to train. IBM has released several along with their architecture and some code.

github.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY ON AI COPYRIGHT ISSUES

This recently updated work dives into the many angles of AI copyright. AI copyright can broadly be classified into Input and Output legal challenges. The paper doesn’t present any opinions - it is merely a summary of many of the common issues.

papers.ssrn.com · 90 min

TLDR AI

MAKING ONE AUDIO MODEL WORK FOR SPEECH, MUSIC, AND SOUNDS

Researchers have developed a method called EncodecMAE that borrows ideas from text-based models to make a universal audio model. This new approach works well for different kinds of audio tasks like understanding speech, identifying music, or recognizing sounds in the environment.

arxiv.org · 4 min