The Daily Index — Thursday, October 12, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

SPACEX DEBUTS NEW WEBSITE FOR CELLULAR STARLINK SERVICE

SpaceX's upcoming Starlink for mobile phones will give customers access to LTE text, voice, and data across the globe. It will be able to service unmodified smartphones. SpaceX was originally hoping to launch with T-Mobile, but the companies have been silent about the deal since its announcement. The new Starlink for mobile website indicates that SpaceX plans to launch the voice and text service in 2025.

pcmag.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

BIG TECH STRUGGLES TO TURN AI HYPE INTO PROFITS

Tech giants are investing in costly generative AI tools, leading to pricier software upgrades. Firms are exploring ways to balance innovation with profitability while anticipating future cost reductions.

archive.ph · 8 min

TLDR Web Dev

GOING FASTER BY DUPLICATING CODE

There’s a unique programming technique to optimize code by introducing conditional branches based on runtime values. This author provides multiple examples of the technique in practice, showing how it can improve code performance. This technique works because compilers are able to perform better optimizations based on expected runtime values, which isn’t possible with traditional constant-based optimizations.

voidstar.tech · 9 min

TLDR Crypto

DEFI PROTOCOL BARNBRIDGE PREPARES FOR SEC ACTION, FINES

DeFi protocol BarnBridge is facing legal issues with the SEC. It is conducting a token-holder vote on how to respond. The vote is on whether the founders should comply with SEC orders, which might result in a potential shutdown. Though unclear what law has been breached, there are hints that BarnBridge was potentially breaching regulations around offering securities to US citizens.

coindesk.com · 2 min

TLDR Marketing

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

The European Union has extended a warning about illegal content and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas conflict to Meta. The EU's internal market commissioner urged Meta to ensure compliance with Digital Services Act rules, emphasizing the need for effective measures against the dissemination of illegal content and disinformation.

techcrunch.com · 4 min

TLDR

OPENAI PLANS MAJOR UPDATES TO LURE DEVELOPERS WITH LOWER COSTS

OpenAI plans to introduce major updates to its API next month, including memory storage and vision capabilities. The new features are expected to be rolled out at the company's first-ever developer conference on November 6. They are designed to attract more developers to pay for access to OpenAI's models. OpenAI is aiming to hit $1 billion in revenue by 2024.

channelnewsasia.com · 5 min

TLDR

FIRST-EVER GENE THERAPY TRIAL TO CURE FORM OF DEAFNESS BEGINS

Up to 18 children from the UK, Spain, and the US are being recruited for the world's first trial of a gene therapy to cure auditory neuropathy, a condition caused by the disruption of nerve impulses traveling from the inner ear to the brain. The condition can be caused by a variation in a single gene that produces a protein that allows inner hair cells in the ear to communicate with the hearing nerve. The study aims to deliver a working copy of the gene using a modified non-pathogenic virus. Participants will be monitored for five years to gauge whether the treatment works.

arstechnica.com · 4 min

TLDR

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM IEDM 2023 THIS DECEMBER

The 69th Annual IEEE International Electron Device Meeting is set to start on December 9. This article presents a teaser of some of the technologies that will be presented at the conference. Chip companies can no longer keep on increasing transistor density by scaling down chip features in two dimensions, so they are now stacking chips on top of each other and building transistors on top of each other within chips. Many of these technologies will likely serve machine learning, an application with an ever-growing need for more processing power.

spectrum.ieee.org · 5 min

TLDR

CSS RELATIVE COLOR SYNTAX

Relative color syntax is a powerful color feature from CSS Color Level 4 in Chrome 119. It creates a smooth path for color manipulation within CSS and offers ways to lighten, darken, saturate, desaturate, and more. Relative color syntax can be used to create a brand color with any color space or syntax and create half opacity variants with much less code. It makes it easy to read the intent of styles and systems. This post helps readers learn the syntax by demonstrating common color manipulations.

developer.chrome.com · 17 min