The Daily Index — Wednesday, October 11, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

HOW DISNEY PACKED BIG EMOTION INTO A LITTLE ROBOT

A Disney Research team recently presented a brand new robotic character during a keynote address. The robot packs an enormous amount of expression into its child-size body, emoting in a way that makes it seem uniquely alive. It uses a system that leverages reinforcement learning to convert an animator's vision into expressive motions. This article discusses how it was developed and the technology behind it - a video of the robot is available.

spectrum.ieee.org · 5 min

TLDR AI

ADOBE BEEFS UP PHOTOSHOP WITH AI TOOLS

Adobe has released the official web version of Photoshop, equipped with AI tools powered by Firefly.

techcrunch.com · 1 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW AIRBNB SCALED BY MOVING AWAY FROM A MONOLITH

Airbnb used to be a Ruby on Rails monolith but it migrated away due to scaling issues. In doing so, it learned four key lessons: invest in shared infrastructure early, simplify service dependencies, centralize data hydration (fetching and transformation), and separate UI logic from the backend logic. This article breaks down what Airbnb did to achieve each point and compares Airbnb’s decisions with those of other large tech companies, like Google, Uber, and DoorDash.

engineercodex.substack.com · 5 min

TLDR InfoSec

BADBOX, PEACHPIT, AND THE FRAUDULENT DEVICE IN YOUR DELIVERY BOX

The PEACHPIT ad fraud botnet infected hundreds of thousands of Android/iOS devices via 39 apps with over 15 million installs. Part of the China-based BADBOX operation includes backdoored off-brand mobile devices. At its peak, it had 121K Android and 159K iOS bots across 227 countries generating illicit revenue.

humansecurity.com · 8 min

TLDR Crypto

TO HACK VICTIMS

Bitfinex's parent iFinex Inc. is considering a $150 million share buyback that would allow it to exert more control amid increasing regulatory oversight. iFinex’s owners also own Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer. The purchase would be done through an all-cash injection from a subsidiary and open to those who bought iFinex shares via a 2016 investment platform swap deal.

finance.yahoo.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES NEW AI TOOLS TO ASSIST DOCTORS

Microsoft introduced new AI tools in Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI to help healthcare organizations consolidate and interpret vast medical data.

cnbc.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

US WARNS EU’S LANDMARK AI POLICY WILL ONLY BENEFIT BIG TECH

The US warns the EU that its proposed AI regulations could favor well-resourced companies and hurt smaller ones. Washington's analysis criticizes the EU's focus on AI model development rather than the risk of model use, suggesting it could deter investment and AI R&D in the EU. The debate continues, aiming for alignment and shared AI objectives.

archive.ph · 6 min

TLDR AI

LEVERAGE LLMS FOR ENHANCED VIDEO UNDERSTANDING

Researchers have introduced FAVOR, a new approach that allows large language models to understand videos by finely blending audio and visual details at the frame level.

arxiv.org · 18 min

TLDR AI

BOOSTING MATHEMATICAL REASONING OF LLMS

Researchers investigate the impact of data augmentation techniques on improving the math reasoning capabilities of large language models. They create a new dataset, AugGSM8K, by enhancing queries from an existing dataset and developing a model named MuggleMath.

arxiv.org · 17 min