The Daily Index — Tuesday, January 23, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

VISION PRO SALES ESTIMATED AT 160K TO 180K OVER FIRST THREE DAYS

Analysts are estimating that Apple Vision Pro sales were between 160,000 to 180,000 units over the first three days. The estimate is over 40% of the 400,000 units Apple is expecting to sell in the first year. The estimate is based on pre-order inventory and shipping times. Apple likely didn't have enough stock on hand to meet initial demand, but demand and supply now appear to be balanced.

9to5mac.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

STABILITY AI UNVEILS SMALLER, MORE EFFICIENT 1.6B LANGUAGE MODEL

Stability AI's latest release, Stable LM 2 1.6B, is a compact yet powerful language model that supports seven languages. It is designed to outperform other models under 2 billion parameters, including its own previous 3B model. With its smaller size, it aims to lower barriers for developers, offering various versions including a unique "half-cooked" model for more customization flexibility.

venturebeat.com · 3 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW TO BUILD A SCALABLE NOTIFICATION SERVICE

Razorpay faced challenges like database bottlenecks and slow customer responses to webhooks when it scaled its notification service. To address these, it implemented prioritized queues, asynchronous database writes, and better quality of service for webhooks. The company prioritized notifications based on customer response times.

blog.quastor.org · 8 min

TLDR Crypto

FTX SOLD ABOUT $1B OF GRAYSCALE'S BITCOIN ETF, EXPLAINING MUCH OF OUTFLOW

Since converting to an ETF, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has had over $2 billion in outflows, with the FTX bankruptcy estate accounting for a significant portion of that. Additional outflows have partly been attributed to investors moving to lower-fee alternatives like BlackRock and Fidelity, which have attracted significant inflows. Many were calling for the ETFs to be a “sell the news” event, and it has turned out that way in the short term. However, the downward pressure could ease up now that the FTX estate has fully exited its GBTC positions.

coindesk.com · 3 min

TLDR Product

PILOT’S PATH TO PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

The journey of Pilot's founders, Jessica McKellar, Waseem Daher, and Jeff Arnold, highlights their strategic approach to achieving product-market fit and customer satisfaction. The founders focused on solving prevalent business problems, maintaining a customer-centric approach, and strategically expanding their product suite without compromising customer satisfaction.

review.firstround.com · 11 min

TLDR

WHY ELON MUSK NEEDS MRBEAST

MrBeast posted a video to X last week with the explicit goal of seeing how much ad revenue a video on the platform would make. The video made $260,000 with more than 150 million views. While the video performed well, MrBeast noted that advertisers bought ads to run specifically on his video, earning him a higher rate. There were also multiple reports that X was quietly boosting the video to viewers, artificially inflating the view count.

theverge.com · 4 min

TLDR

DISNEY OFFERS AN ELEGANT SOLUTION TO VR’S MOVEMENT PROBLEM

Disney's HoloTile is a system composed of hundreds of small round tiles, each serving as a kind of mini omnidirectional treadmill. The tiles work together to prevent users from walking off the HoloTile. Users can walk on the HoloTile in any direction they want and it will automatically do whatever it needs to keep them on the floor. It supports multiple people walking independently. The technology will likely become part of a Disney Parks VR experience. Video of the HoloTile in action is available in the article.

techcrunch.com · 3 min

TLDR

WORLD'S LARGEST NUCLEAR REACTOR, CAPABLE OF PROVIDING UNLIMITED FOREVER ENERGY, IN MAKING

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a fusion reactor that may one day provide the Earth with unlimited energy. The project started in 2005. Fusion reactions occur when two small particles collide, forming a heavier atom and producing a significant amount of energy without creating radioactive waste. If successful, ITER will be arguably the most complex machine ever designed.

thenews.com.pk · 1 min

TLDR

I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT GPT-4 COMPLETES MANY TASKS AT HUMAN-LEVEL PROFICIENCY

While GPT-4 is proficient in many tasks, it is also imperfect in odd ways. For example, it can speak all languages, but barely do math. As AI becomes more competent, the technology will have an increasingly large impact on the world. This post lists several ways AI could impact the world and asks some important questions about how these impacts will change the world. The areas affected by AI include markets, real estate, energy, data centers, nations, inflation, and geopolitics.

dcgross.com · 2 min