The Daily Index — Monday, September 25, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

TESLA’S OPTIMUS ROBOT CAN NOW SORT OBJECTS AUTONOMOUSLY

Tesla's Optimus robot can now sort objects on its own using its end-to-end trained neural network. The company shared a video showing the robot self-calibrating and physically sorting colored blocks into trays. The robot is able to adapt and adjust to its environment dynamically. Tesla is encouraging people to come and work with the company to help develop Optimus. The video is available in the article.

teslarati.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

A NEW MODEL FOR GENERATING REALISTIC BODY SHAPES AND POSES

This paper proposes a model that can create super-realistic virtual humans in any pose you can think of. This is the first model of its kind trained only on fake data, but it can still make highly accurate human shapes that could be useful for science and video games.

arxiv.org · 16 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW FACEBOOK HANDLED BILLIONS OF REQUESTS PER SECOND EFFICIENTLY

Facebook receives billions of requests per second and stores trillions of items in its databases. Traditional web architectures couldn’t keep up with its demands, so the team used a simple key-value store called Memcached. The team scaled Facebook efficiently to become the largest Memcached installation in the world. This article describes how Facebook scaled Memcached across servers, clusters, and regions worldwide in a simple manner.

engineercodex.substack.com · 8 min

TLDR InfoSec

NEW VULNERABILITY IN GCC STACK SMASHING PROTECTION ON ARM64

A new vulnerability was found in which GCC’s stack smashing protection has no effect on variable length arrays or buffers allocated with alloca(). The vulnerability targeted 64-bit ARM architecture. This article includes details about the vulnerability, a demonstration of the vulnerability, and a discussion of the response. A fix is available on the GCC mailing list.

rtx.meta.security · 16 min

TLDR Crypto

OVERSEAS DERIVATIVES BUSINESS

Coinbase apparently mulled over the idea of purchasing FTX's European arm after FTX’s fall last year. While the talks did not progress extensively, the move highlighted the importance of derivatives in Coinbase's global strategy. As spot trading volumes have declined during the bear market, derivative volumes have risen, particularly in Asia. Coinbase's interest also brought about questions regarding the future of crypto derivatives in Europe, as FTX Europe was the only company offering a type of crypto derivative called perpetual futures.

archive.ph · 3 min

TLDR

VIDEO

A promo video released by Google shows off the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro from all angles. The devices are set to launch on October 4. The Pixel 8 line seems to focus on new camera features. The Pixel 8 Pro will have new camera features, including Pro controls, Real Tone, Night Sight, Astrophotography, Super Res Zoom, and the ability to swap faces in an image. A list of the complete camera specifications for both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro is available in the article.

91mobiles.com · 4 min

TLDR

HERE’S WHY IT MATTERS

A capsule containing material from an asteroid was released from a passing spacecraft and retrieved by NASA this morning. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected several hundred grams of asteroid material. The capsule will be processed to prevent any contamination before it can be opened. NASA hopes to investigate the asteroid material to discover whether the basic building blocks of life were formed on ancient asteroid bodies and delivered to Earth from outer space.

theverge.com · 10 min

TLDR

IDENTIFIED

A creature discovered off the coast of Okinawa, Japan in 2018 left biologists baffled as it wasn't like anything else they've seen before. The creature has now been determined to be a type of parasitic flatworm. It is made up of two forms of the parasite that cooperate together. This article tells the story of how scientists identified the creature. Pictures of the flatworm are available.

science.org · 4 min

TLDR

SOLVING THE ENGINEERING STRATEGY CRISIS

This article discusses a unified theory of Engineering strategy. It focuses on how individuals can drive strategy even if they are not the company's CTO. The article discusses what engineering strategies are, why some strategies are more effective than others, why written strategy is powerful, and how to drive engineering strategy as an individual. Solving the engineering strategy crisis only requires two straightforward steps: write down the existing strategy and then improve the quality of the strategy.

lethain.com · 16 min