The Daily Index — Monday, January 8, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

WAVE OF APPLE GENERATIVE AI TOOLS ON TRACK FOR WWDC DEBUT

Apple reportedly plans to announce a series of new tools based on generative AI and WWDC as part of iOS 18. The new tools will include a revamped version of Siri, a new version of Xcode, and a tool in Apple Music for automatic playlist creation. The technology will also be used for troubleshooting problems with AppleCare. Apple's generative AI vision will likely take until 2025 to fully scale.

macrumors.com · 1 min

TLDR AI

NABLA RAISES $24M AI DOCTOR'S ASSISTANT

Nabla, an AI clinical notes assistant company, raised another round of funding to continue improving its technology and accelerate sales.

techcrunch.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

2023 JAVASCRIPT RISING STARS

The JavaScript Rising Stars is an annual report that highlights popular projects and trends in the JavaScript ecosystem. In 2023, projects like shadcn/ui, Bun, Excalidraw, and Next.js were very prominent. React continues to be the most-used front-end framework, while HTMX and Svelte are growing as popular alternatives. The report also covers developments in build tools, mobile development, styling/CSS in JS, testing, desktop applications, static sites, state management, and GraphQL.

risingstars.js.org · 14 min

TLDR InfoSec

LAW FIRM ORRICK REVEALS EXTENSIVE DATA BREACH, OVER HALF A MILLION AFFECTED

Law firm Orrick has disclosed a 2023 breach impacting over 600,000 individuals. Attackers accessed a file with client data between February 28 and March 13. Orrick found no further unauthorized activity after detecting the incident on March 13. Notification letters were sent starting June 2023. Exposed personal information included names, SSNs, passport numbers, and financial account details.

securityweek.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

BLACKROCK EXPECTS SPOT BITCOIN ETF APPROVAL ON WEDNESDAY

BlackRock, one of the many firms vying for a spot Bitcoin ETF, believes the SEC will approve its application on Wednesday. The highly anticipated approval could bring in billions in fresh funding into the cryptocurrency sector. Crypto skeptics claim that the approval would be a regulatory mistake of historic proportions as they say Bitcoin is too volatile and unregulated to support a healthy market.

theblock.co · 2 min

TLDR

ALPHABET’S ISOMORPHIC STACKS TWO NEW DEALS WITH LILLY, NOVARTIS WORTH NEARLY $3B AHEAD OF JPM

Alphabet's Isomorphic's latest deal will add significant weight to Google DeepMind's AlphaFold AI tech, which predicts protein structures to enable potentially faster target discovery and compound construction. The deals involve identifying small molecule therapies for use against undisclosed targets. The announcements are the first to emerge from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The conference will go on until January 11.

fiercebiotech.com · 2 min

TLDR

FIGURE 01 HAS LEARNED TO MAKE COFFEE ☕️

Figure 01 is a commercially viable autonomous humanoid robot. At 5'6" and 60kg, it can carry a payload of 20kg and move at a speed of 1.2m/s for around 5 hours of runtime. Its human form factor allows it to perform dexterous tasks and lend support across manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and retail. This thread contains a video showing Figure 01 making a coffee - it learned the task just by watching humans make coffee.

twitter.com · 1 min

TLDR

FIRST US MOON LANDER SINCE APOLLO PREPARES TO BLAST OFF ON MONDAY

Peregrine mission one aims to put a US lander on the moon on February 23. It is the first mission to fly under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPs) initiative. The mission will carry five NASA payloads and 15 others. It is bound for an ancient lava flow called Sinus Viscositatis, or the Bay of Stickiness. The next mission under the CLPs scheme is due to launch in mid-February and may touch down before Peregrine.

theguardian.com · 5 min

TLDR

WEIRD THINGS ENGINEERS BELIEVE ABOUT WEB DEVELOPMENT

Many web developers have ideas about browsers and the Web that can be a bit dubious. For example, they assume that web browser engineers, web developers, and the people who make Web specifications know the Web really well. Other dubious ideas include the myth that browsers aren't meant to run SPAs, that MPAs will replace SPAs, that all sites should work without JavaScript, that web development shouldn't need a build step, and that what they know is representative of web development at large. It's easy to assume what you know is representative of web development in general, but the field is much broader and deeper than most people know.

birtles.blog · 20 min