The Daily Index — Monday, April 1, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

OPENAI’S VOICE CLONING AI MODEL ONLY NEEDS A 15-SECOND SAMPLE TO WORK

OpenAI's Voice Engine can create synthetic voices based on a 15-second clip of someone's voice. The text-to-voice generation platform is currently in limited access. Developers testing the platform are required to get explicit and informed consent from speakers, not build ways for individual users to create their own voices, and disclose to listeners that the voices are AI-generated. Example clips generated by Voice Engine are available in the article.

theverge.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

GROK 1.5

xAI announced its next model, with 128k context length and improved reasoning capabilities. It excels at retrieval and programming.

x.ai · 3 min

TLDR Web Dev

RUNNING OCR AGAINST PDFS AND IMAGES DIRECTLY IN YOUR BROWSER

This article is a breakdown of a web app that combines PDF.js for PDF processing and Tesseract.js for OCR functionality, allowing users to drag and drop PDFs or images directly in their browser for text extraction. The project was built quickly with the help of Claude 3 Opus and ChatGPT for code generation. The end result is a program that is simple, runs locally without data uploads, and will work well without needing any updates in the future.

simonwillison.net · 6 min

TLDR InfoSec

BACKDOOR IN XZ/LIBLZMA LEADING TO SSH COMPROMISE

A backdoor was found in the xz/liblzma compression library, impacting Linux systems using specific OpenSSH builds. It was submitted by a core developer to the project with years of legitimate contributions. The backdoor was discovered by a user who noticed a new memory leak in the project.

sourcesmethods.com · 4 min

TLDR Crypto

WHY Q1 INVESTMENTS WERE SO HOT AND HOW IT COMPARES TO PREVIOUS BULL MARKETS

The crypto venture capital landscape saw a significant uptick in Q1 2024, with $2.52 billion raised across the sector. Competitiveness among VCs has created a founder-friendly environment, leading to higher valuations and more favorable terms for startups. While the market is expected to remain bullish throughout 2024, regulatory uncertainty and the absence of large deployers of capital from the previous bull market may prevent funding levels from reaching the heights seen in 2021 and 2022.

techcrunch.com · 3 min

TLDR

MICROSOFT REPORTEDLY BUILDING ‘STARGATE' TO TRANSPORT OPENAI INTO THE FUTURE

Microsoft is planning to build a $100 billion supercomputer called Stargate to power OpenAI's next generation of artificial intelligence systems. Stargate could take up several hundred acres of land and require up to 5 gigawatts of power. The facility could open as soon as 2028. Its creation is largely dependent on whether OpenAI can deliver its next major AI upgrade, which is reportedly due in early 2025.

gizmodo.com · 2 min

TLDR

SOUTH KOREAN ‘ARTIFICIAL SUN’ REACHES 7 TIMES THE SUN’S CORE TEMPERATURE

The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy’s (KFE) Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) fusion reactor has reached temperatures seven times that of the Sun’s core. The researchers managed to maintain temperatures of 212 degrees Fahrenheit for 48 seconds. They also maintained the reactor's high confinement mode for over 100 seconds. Creating technology that can maintain high-temperature and high-density plasmas for extended periods is crucial for fusion.

interestingengineering.com · 3 min

TLDR

SCIENTISTS PUT TARDIGRADE PROTEINS INTO HUMAN CELLS. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED

Tardigrades have an incredible ability to stay alive in extreme environments. Researchers from the University of Wyoming found that expressing key tardigrade proteins in human cells slowed metabolism. The research could eventually lead to treatments for slowing down aging or safe cell storage at cold temperatures. There is other research underway looking at whether tardigrade proteins can stabilize important blood products used to treat genetic diseases.

sciencealert.com · 3 min

TLDR

LINUX COULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT DOWN BY BACKDOOR FOUND IN WIDELY USED UTILITY

A supply-chain attack involving obfuscated malicious code in the xz package was discovered by a developer at Microsoft who noticed a small 600ms delay with SSH processes when doing some routine micro-benchmarking. The account that made the offending commits seemingly played the long game, slowly gaining the trust of xz's developer before injecting the attack. The attack allows for the interception and modification of data used with the library, allowing malicious actors to break sshd authentication and gain access to affected systems. The situation is developing and more vulnerabilities could be discovered.

techspot.com · 4 min