The Daily Index — Monday, March 18, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

OPEN RELEASE OF GROK-1

xAI has released the weights and architecture for Grok-1. Grok-1 is a Mixture-of-Experts model with 314 billion parameters. The released model is a raw base model checkpoint from the Grok-1 pretraining phase, which means that it is not fine-tuned for any specific application. It was trained from scratch by xAI using a custom training stack.

x.ai · 1 min

TLDR AI

DID OPENAI JUST ACCIDENTALLY LEAK THE NEXT BIG CHATGPT UPGRADE?

OpenAI appears to have accidentally published a blog post that was indexed by Bing and DuckDuckGo before it was quickly taken down. The post was an announcement for GPT-4.5 Turbo, a new model that surpasses GPT-4 Turbo in speed, accuracy, and scalability. The cached description mentions a knowledge cutoff date of June 2024 and a 256k context window. OpenAI has not commented on the leak.

androidauthority.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW WEB BLOAT IMPACTS USERS WITH SLOW DEVICES

The web has seen an increase in complexity, slowing it down significantly for users with low-end devices or slow internet connections. Modern web apps are CPU-hungry. Even with fast internet, websites like Threads and Patreon take a long time to load on low-end phones because of CPU demands. Most developers believe that hardware will get faster and solve performance issues, but hardware improvements slow down over time. Instead, deliberate optimization to reduce CPU impact is crucial in making the web usable for everyone as web bloat locks people from countries with slower internet speeds out.

danluu.com · 21 min

TLDR InfoSec

STOPCRYPT: MOST WIDELY DISTRIBUTED RANSOMWARE EVOLVES TO EVADE DETECTION

StopCrypt is an incredibly prolific ransomware that targets individuals with smaller ransomware payments as opposed to targeting businesses for larger payments. A newer variant has been found that uses advanced techniques like dynamically constructed API calls and process hollowing to evade detection.

bleepingcomputer.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

SOLANA'S MEMECOIN MANIA PUSHES ON-CHAIN VOLUMES AND FEES TO NEW HIGHS

The memecoin frenzy that has been brewing on Solana has boosted on-chain volumes to new records, exceeding $3.79 billion in volume per day. The success of coins like dogwifhat and the Book of Meme presale helped drive these volumes to new heights. This trend has helped Solana pass Ethereum in on-chain DEX volumes and has pushed the price of Solana to over $200.

theblock.co · 2 min

TLDR

TWO NEW AIRPODS 4 MODELS EXPECTED TO LAUNCH IN SEPTEMBER OR OCTOBER

The fourth generation of AirPods is set to begin production in May. They will likely be released in September or October. The upcoming AirPods are expected to feature a new design with better fit, improved sound quality, and an updated charging case with a USB-C port. The higher-end models will also feature active noise cancellation and a speaker in the charging case for Find My location tracking. New AirPods Pros are not expected to launch until next year at the earliest, but current models may get a new hearing aid mode with iOS 18.

macrumors.com · 1 min

TLDR

VR HEADSETS ARE APPROACHING THE EYE’S RESOLUTION LIMITS

Extremely high pixel density is key for the next generation of augmented, mixed, and virtual reality headsets. More pixels means more life-like visuals and smaller, more compact displays. Building displays at this scale leads to unique technical hurdles that the industry is still learning to leap. This article looks at technological developments in the space, the specific challenges the industry is trying to overcome, and current solutions for these challenges.

spectrum.ieee.org · 5 min

TLDR

TICK-KILLING PILL SHOWS PROMISING RESULTS IN HUMAN TRIAL

Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing a pill that could provide protection against Lyme disease for several weeks at a time. An early-stage trial has shown that it can kill ticks on people for up to 30 days after 24 hours of ingestion. The drug only kills the ticks, rather than the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. It may also protect against other tick-borne diseases.

arstechnica.com · 5 min

TLDR

ASK HN: IF YOU'VE USED GPT-4-TURBO AND CLAUDE OPUS, WHICH DO YOU PREFER? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

This Hacker News thread compares GPT-4-Turbo, the default model in ChatGPT Plus, to Claude Opus, Anthropic's competing model. Most developers seem to prefer Claude as it is apparently better at coding and engineering work. Its writing style also seems to be preferred, but part of that is due to the recognizability of GPT-4-Turbo's style. OpenAI's app functionalities, like its code interpreter and ability to search the internet, are still big reasons to continue using ChatGPT Plus.

news.ycombinator.com