The Daily Index — Monday, November 6, 2023 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

OPENAI'S MASSIVE CHATGPT UPDATES LEAK AHEAD OF DEVELOPER CONFERENCE

OpenAI is holding a developer conference on November 6. It will be unveiling major updates to ChatGPT, including custom chatbots, a business subscription, and connections to Google and Microsoft. A complete list of upcoming features has been leaked on X. This article discusses these upcoming features, which include a new tool called Gizmo that can create and manage custom chatbots.

the-decoder.com · 4 min

TLDR AI

ELON MUSK'S XAI BEATS CHATGPT ON LLM BENCHMARKS

xAI trained an autoregressive language model at 34B params. It is quite performant and will power an AI system built into the X platform.

x.ai · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

SPEEDING UP THE JAVASCRIPT ECOSYSTEM - TAILWIND CSS

A developer attempted to rebuild Tailwind CSS with performance in mind in an effort to improve the performance of Tailwind CSS projects. They optimized the extraction of potential Tailwind class names using regex, reducing extraction time significantly. They also improved the parsing of class names and generated CSS rules efficiently. The new build time improved from 1.4 seconds to just 192ms, an almost 10x improvement.

marvinh.dev · 11 min

TLDR InfoSec

OKTA HIT BY ANOTHER BREACH

Okta is warning nearly 5,000 current and former employees that their personal information was exposed via Rightway Healthcare, a third-party healthcare vendor used by Okta. The exposed data includes full names, social security numbers, and medical plan numbers of affected employees.

bleepingcomputer.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

HONG KONG MULLS ALLOWING SPOT CRYPTO ETFS IN PURSUIT OF ASIA HUB

Hong Kong is considering the possibility of permitting ETFs that invest directly into cryptocurrencies. This move, which would be aimed at retail investors, comes as officials aim to make the city the main digital-asset hub in the Asia-Pacific region. Securities and Futures Commission CEO, Julia Leung, stated that proposals that utilize innovative tech to enhance efficiency and customer experience are welcome, provided new risks are adequately addressed.

finance.yahoo.com · 4 min

TLDR

ELON MUSK DEBUTS ‘GROK’ AI BOT TO RIVAL CHATGPT, OTHERS

xAI has launched an AI chatbot called Grok. The chatbot is able to answer questions that other AIs might dodge. Grok is still in an early beta phase as it has only had two months of training. It is available to a select number of users. A link to the waitlist to sign up for a chance to use the bot is available in the article. Grok will be a feature for X Premium+, which costs $16 per month.

cnbc.com · 2 min

TLDR

SYNTHETIC DIAMONDS AND ULTRAPURE GLASS MAY MAKE THE COOLEST, FASTEST CPUS YET

Diamond Foundry is producing synthetic diamond wafers for use with silicon microchips. Using synthetic diamond wafers allows silicon chips to run at least twice as fast as their rated speed. Intel is producing purified glass for substrates. The glass is being used to improve power efficiency and communication between chips. These types of new technologies may be the next great turn in the hardware manufacturing industry.

tomshardware.com · 2 min

TLDR

SCIENTISTS FIRE UP THE WORLD’S LARGEST FUSION REACTOR FOR THE FIRST TIME

Scientists working at the world's largest fusion reactor, Japan's JT-60SA experimental reactor, have achieved first plasma. The reactor was successfully switched on, but it is still a long way from being able to carry out any meaningful tests or produce any power. Lessons learned from operating JT-60SA will guide the development of ITER, the first fusion reactor expected to generate more power than it uses. JT-60SA is expected to reach full power in the next two years.

singularityhub.com · 3 min

TLDR

HABITS OF GREAT SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

While coding is a crucial part of the software development profession, it is just the tip of the iceberg - the software development role combines many different skills, mindsets, and disciplines. The difference between a developer and a great developer is the breadth and depth of their approach to delivering value. This article looks at what makes a great developer. Topics covered include focusing beyond the code, efficiency, the joy of tinkering, tech detox, and the art of approximation.

vadimkravcenko.com · 25 min