The Daily Index — Thursday, April 4, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

APPLE EXPLORING 'MOBILE ROBOT' THAT 'FOLLOWS USERS AROUND THEIR HOMES'

Apple is reportedly exploring various personal robotics projects in an effort to create its next big thing. These include a mobile robot that follows people around their homes and a tabletop device that uses robotics to move a display around. The projects are said to be in the very early stages of research and it is unclear if any of them will ever be released. Apple apparently considered developing robots that can handle chores but decided against it for now due to extraordinarily difficult engineering challenges.

macrumors.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

STABLE AUDIO 2.0

Stability AI has announced the next generation of its music generation model. Trained on properly licensed music, the model can generate up to 3 minutes of high-quality music. It also has audio-to-audio generation.

stability.ai · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE OF PALIA

The MMO Palia has a complex architecture, using Unreal Engine for its game engine and a microservice approach with services for specific player features. The game uses ScyllaDB (column store) for its main database along with PostgreSQL for specific use cases where a relational model is necessary. This article goes into deep detail about the architecture of the MMO and the reasoning behind each decision.

singularity6.com · 28 min

TLDR Crypto

EU REGULATIONS MAY REQUIRE LICENSES FOR DEFI FRONTENDS

According to MakerDAO founder Rune, EU financial regulators may require all DeFi frontends to hold a MiCA license. This would effectively block frontends from operating in Europe and require either KYC-enabled or locally-hosted solutions. If implemented, the rule would be in effect starting in 2025.

twitter.com · 1 min

TLDR Design

KEY SAFARI DESIGNER DEPARTS APPLE TO JOIN ‘THE BROWSER COMPANY’

The Browser Company, which owns the popular Arc web browser, has hired Charlie Deets, one of Apple's top designers for Safari. Deets previously worked at Meta as a Lead Product Designer for Facebook and WhatsApp.

9to5mac.com · 2 min

TLDR

DALL-E NOW LETS YOU EDIT IMAGES IN CHATGPT

OpenAI's DALL-E now offers image editing tools both on the web and on mobile. There are preset style suggestions to help inspire image creation. The image generation platform has been integrated with ChatGPT - users can now edit DALL-E images in ChatGPT across web, iOS, and Android. Videos from OpenAI showing off the new features are available in the article.

theverge.com · 2 min

TLDR

EUROPE’S SPACE AGENCY PREPARES TO BLOT OUT THE SUN

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to use two separate spacecraft to create its own solar eclipse to study the Sun's corona. The spacecraft will fly 150 meters apart, aligned so that one satellite blocks out all but of corona from the other satellite. They will have to fly in precise formation down to millimeter accuracy. Studying the Sun's corona will reveal details about its role in our solar system's weather. The ESA hopes to launch the mission in September.

theverge.com · 3 min

TLDR

‘MINI LIVER’ WILL GROW IN PERSON’S OWN LYMPH NODE IN BOLD NEW TRIAL

A new experimental treatment developed by biotechnology firm LyGenesis may lead to patients growing an additional miniature liver. The approach involves injecting healthy liver cells into a lymph node in the upper abdomen of a patient with liver failure. The cells multiply and take over the lymph node to form a structure that can perform a liver's blood-filtering duties. The first person who received the treatment (on March 25) is recovering well, but they will need to be closely monitored for a while to see if the treatment is both safe and effective. The treatment has worked so far in mice, dogs, and pigs.

nature.com · 3 min

TLDR

THE MANY, CONFUSING FILE SYSTEM APIS

Googling 'File System API' will bring up a lot of similarly named APIs. This can get confusing as there are multiple standards and names, but there are actually fewer than it seems at first and many build on each other, adding layers of functionality. This article gives a tour of the different file system APIs. Interacting with file systems is complex - the different APIs handle different actions and security concerns.

cloudfour.com · 14 min