The Daily Index — Friday, January 19, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

MARK ZUCKERBERG’S NEW GOAL IS CREATING ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE

Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). While he doesn't have a timeline for when AGI will be reached or an exact definition for it, he has moved Meta's AI research group FAIR to the same part of the company building generative AI products across its apps. The move aims to allow Meta's AI breakthroughs to more directly reach its users. Meta plans to own more than 340,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs by the end of the year.

theverge.com · 5 min

TLDR AI

OPENAI ANNOUNCES FIRST PARTNERSHIP WITH A UNIVERSITY

OpenAI has announced its first partnership with a higher education institution, Arizona State University, which will gain full access to ChatGPT Enterprise for coursework, tutoring, research, and more, including building a personalized AI tutor and creative AI avatars for students.

cnbc.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW WE MIGRATED OUR POSTGRESQL DATABASE WITH 11 SECONDS DOWNTIME

The migration of the GOV.UK Notify service's PostgreSQL database to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account involved only 11 seconds of downtime. The migration was necessitated by the retirement of the GOV.UK’s original database platform. The upgrade was facilitated with the AWS Database Migration Service and a custom Python script.

gds.blog.gov.uk · 9 min

TLDR InfoSec

RANSOMWARE GROUP TARGETS FOXCONN SUBSIDIARY FOXSEMICON

Foxsemicon, a subsidiary of Foxconn, was recently targeted by the ransomware group LockBit. The hackers defaced Foxsemicon's website, claimed to steal 5TB of data, and are threatening to leak sensitive customer/employee info unless their ransom demand is paid.

securityweek.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

SEC DELAYS FIDELITY’S ETHEREUM SPOT ETF, BUT DECISIONS ARE STILL EXPECTED IN MAY

The SEC has postponed its decision on Fidelity's proposed Ethereum ETF. Originally, the agency had to approve or reject the ETF by January 20, but a provision allowed the regulator to extend the deadline to March 5. While this deadline is only for Fidelity’s ETF application, analysts predict that the SEC will make decisions concerning all Ethereum ETFs by late May.

cryptoslate.com · 2 min

TLDR

THE NEXT IOS UPDATE WILL MAKE IT HARDER TO BREAK INTO YOUR IPHONE

Apple's newest security feature, Stolen Device Protection, makes it far harder for thieves to hijack Apple IDs and any financial information stored on the device. It will require users to use Face ID or Touch ID and certain changes may take up to an hour to take effect. The feature addresses a key vulnerability where thieves can lock victims out of their Apple IDs by resetting the password using their passcodes. Stolen Device Protection will be included in the iOS 17.3 release expected next week.

theverge.com · 2 min

TLDR

FIGURE'S HUMANOID ROBOTS ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE WORKFORCE AT BMW

Figure is sending its general-purpose humanoid robots to start real-world work at BMW's manufacturing plant in South Carolina. The deal may be one of the first-ever commercial deals involving humanoid robots. While the two companies have yet to announce exactly what Figure's robots will be doing on the factory floor, training has already begun in the company's labs for the first tasks. The partnership is milestone-based, so Figure will have to prove its robots can do useful work before it scales its operations.

newatlas.com · 4 min

TLDR

FLYING KITES DELIVER CONTAINER-SIZE POWER GENERATION

Airborne wind energy is a new field that uses kites instead of turbines to generate energy from wind. Kites are nimbler than turbines and can deliver a more constant energy supply. Netherlands-based company Kitepower has developed a system called Hawk that flies out in 'pumping' cycles - it flies out while pulling at a tether, generating electricity on the ground, and when the tether reaches its maximum length, the ground station winches the kite back in, using only a fraction of the energy it produced. The system fits into a standard shipping container and assembly at a new site takes less than 24 hours.

spectrum.ieee.org · 4 min

TLDR

WHAT'S NEW WITH ML IN PRODUCTION

Most machine learning in production is still not related to large language models or generative AI, which make up less than 10% of the market at most. At their core, machine learning models are algorithms that perform compression on a corpus of data. A lot has changed in leading-edge machine learning applications over the past year as the industry has moved from smaller, business-specific models that perform specific tasks to very large generalist models that complete text. The pendulum is again shifting to smaller models that people are starting to fine-tune and run on their own. The industry still focuses on compression, but it is changing where and how much it is controlled.

vickiboykis.com · 27 min