The Daily Index — Monday, May 20, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

APPLE NEEDS TO EVOLVE TO COMPETE IN THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ERA

Apple is unveiling new generative AI features at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10. While the company will still rely on the on-device approach, it's also planning to deliver services via the cloud. Apple will improve Siri's voice capabilities and add features like auto-summarizing notifications to help users with their day-to-day lives. Apple's generative AI technology isn't advanced enough for it to release its own chatbot, so it's teaming up with OpenAI to add the functionality to iOS 18.

bloomberg.com · 12 min

TLDR AI

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 Web Dev

JUST SAY NO TO MORE END-TO-END TESTS

A testing strategy that relies heavily on end-to-end tests can cause a lot of issues in reality. While end-to-end tests seem like a good idea in theory, they often lead to delays in bug identification and fixes, as well as flaky test results. Instead, a better approach is to focus on unit tests and integration tests, which are often faster and more reliable.

testing.googleblog.com · 9 min

TLDR InfoSec

AUSSIE COPS PROBE MEDISECURE'S 'LARGE-SCALE RANSOMWARE DATA BREACH'

MediSecure, an Australian e-prescription provider, has fallen victim to a ransomware attack that resulted in the suspected theft of patients' personal and health data. The company stated that the incident likely originated from a third-party vendor breach. MediSecure has notified regulators about the large-scale data breach, which impacted an unspecified number of individuals.

theregister.com · 3 min

TLDR Crypto

ARE NEW COINS STILL GOOD INVESTMENTS?

There are many complaints about new coins launching at the highest possible fully diluted valuation and immediately listing on a tier-1 CEX, providing exit liquidity for VCs. Over 80% of tokens listed on Binance in the past six months are down, with the only exceptions being two Solana ecosystem coins and two memecoins. The average FDV of a Binance listing is $4.2 billion. These projects have no organic community or positive retail sentiment, causing their tokens to perform poorly.

threadreaderapp.com · 2 min

TLDR

BLUE ORIGIN SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES ITS FIRST CREWED MISSION SINCE 2022

Blue Origin has resumed crewed flights for the first time in two years. The company recently successfully brought six tourist crew members to the edge of space and back on its New Shepard rocket and crew capsule. Blue Origin had paused launches after a mission experienced an anomaly that caused it to abort after liftoff in August 2022. The company has flown a total number of 37 human passengers to space so far.

techcrunch.com · 2 min

TLDR

TRIAL HIV VACCINE TRIGGERS ELUSIVE AND ESSENTIAL ANTIBODIES, POINTING THE WAY TOWARD A SUCCESSFUL VACCINE

The Duke Human Vaccine Institute has developed an HIV vaccine candidate that triggers low levels of a type of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies within weeks. It targets an area of the HIV-1 outer envelope that remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block infection by many different circulating strains of HIV. More work still needs to be done to create a more robust response - a successful HIV vaccine will likely have at least three components all aimed at distinct regions of the virus.

medicalxpress.com · 6 min

TLDR

FROZEN HUMAN BRAIN TISSUE WAS SUCCESSFULLY REVIVED FOR THE FIRST TIME

Scientists from China have found a way to thaw human brain tissue without damaging it. The scientists grew brain organoids from human embryonic stem cells and then tested various chemical compounds to determine which combinations could help keep frozen human brain tissue alive and enable growth after thawing. The most successful combination consisted of methylcellulose, ethylene glycol, DMSO, and Y27632. The researchers suspect it somehow interferes with a pathway that would otherwise initiate cell death, allowing for the issue to freeze and be thawed without incident.

bgr.com · 3 min

TLDR

SYSTEM TESTS HAVE FAILED

System tests are supposed to offer greater confidence that a machine is working as it ought to. Developers automate testing to get quick feedback on changes, to catch regressions, and to become confident that a system works. System testing isn't the best way to fulfill all of these goals - sometimes it's better to embrace the human element and drop the automation. Not only will this allow you to know that the system works, it also lets you know whether the user interface 'feels right'.

world.hey.com · 3 min