The Daily Index — Thursday, February 1, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

GOOGLE SAYS YOU'LL NEED A SUBSCRIPTION TO USE BARD ADVANCED

Bard Advanced, which will be powered by the Gemini Ultra architecture, will be available to users as a subscription. Google has yet to reveal how much the subscription will cost or when it will be released. It will likely be available to early testers before being widely rolled out. Alphabet recently revealed that the company earned more than $15 billion in 2023 from subscription revenue.

androidauthority.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

MICROSOFT LASERS AWAY LLM INACCURACIES

Dipendra Misra presented Layer-Selective Rank Reduction (LASER), a technique that improves large language model (LLM) accuracy by replacing a weight matrix with a smaller approximation, at the January Microsoft Research Forum.

theverge.com · 1 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW GITHUB’S DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE TEAM IMPROVED INNERLOOP DEVELOPMENT

Integration testing in distributed or microservice systems with multiple teams working on different services can be very challenging. GitHub addresses this with Hubber Codespace (HCS), a tool that allows developers to locally set up GitHub's entire distributed ecosystem with a few lines of config change or a query call. This post details how GitHub arrived at HCS as a solution over other possible solutions and presents a first-hand look at how GitHub's developer-first mindset helped it deliver the best tool for devs to ship code quickly and safely in a distributed environment.

github.blog · 9 min

TLDR Crypto

FTX EXPECTS TO REPAY CRYPTO CUSTOMERS IN FULL

The estate of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX announced that it believes it can fully repay customers whose funds were caught up in the implosion of the exchange in 2022. This repayment option emerged as the best path forward after plans to relaunch the platform were abandoned due to a lack of interested buyers. The news brings hope to thousands of investors who filed claims, with the total reportedly reaching $16 billion.

watcher.guru · 2 min

TLDR Design

ADOBE THROWS XD OVERBOARD AFTER LOSING OUT ON $20BN FIGMA DEAL

In the fallout of a deal that saw the company placed under the microscope of competition authorities in Europe and the US, Adobe has confirmed it has “no plans to further invest” in its UI/UX web design software. Support will continue for existing users. Adobe remains open to new product design partners.

bloomberg.com · 2 min

TLDR

MISTRAL CEO CONFIRMS ‘LEAK’ OF NEW OPEN SOURCE AI MODEL NEARING GPT-4 PERFORMANCE

Files for a quantized version of Mistral were leaked on HuggingFace on around January 28. Quantization is a technique that makes it possible to run certain AI models on less powerful computers and chips. The model surpasses every other LLM in the world except GPT-4 on EQ-Bench. Mistral appears to still be working on the model, so the final version may be even more capable.

venturebeat.com · 4 min

TLDR

ADD BACTERIA TO THE LIST OF THINGS THAT CAN RUN DOOM

An MIT biotechnology PhD student has created a rudimentary screen capable of displaying Doom using a simulation of E. coli bacteria. It takes roughly 70 minutes to display a single frame of Doom on the bioluminescent bacteria. A full reset takes eight hours and 20 minutes. A video about the project is available in the article.

theregister.com · 1 min

TLDR

REINVENTING THE EEL: FIRST LAB-GROWN EEL MEAT REVEALED

Forsea Foods in Israel is the first company to produce lab-grown freshwater eel meat. It aims to have its product on sale in about two years. The company's goal is to match the price of wild-caught eel. Forsea Foods' strategy is to target species at risk of extinction that also command high prices in restaurants and shops. It has raised $5.2 million in investments, with more expected to be announced soon.

theguardian.com · 3 min

TLDR

THE PERFORMANCE INEQUALITY GAP, 2024

Performance is a deep and nuanced domain. There's a lot that can go wrong and how sites manage resources after-load can have huge impacts on perceived performance. Global baselines matter as many teams have low performance management maturity and many popular frameworks fail to ward against catastrophic results. This article looks at current web technologies to provide an up-to-date understanding for working web developers. It looks at what's changed since last year and what technologies new projects should consider.

infrequently.org · 35 min