The Daily Index — Monday, May 27, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

GOOGLE SCRAMBLES TO MANUALLY REMOVE WEIRD AI ANSWERS IN SEARCH

There are many examples on social media of Google's new AI Overview product saying weird stuff. Google is now racing to manually disable AI Overviews for specific searches. The company has been testing AI Overviews for a year now, with over a billion queries served in that time. It says that examples seen on social media have been uncommon queries and that there were also examples that were doctored or unreproducible.

theverge.com · 3 min

TLDR AI

XAI AND META FIGHT TO PARTNER WITH CHARACTER.AI

Silicon Valley AI firms are fighting to partner with Character.ai, a fast-growing role-playing startup founded by AI pioneer Noam Shazeer. This comes as many large firms are pouring money into smaller companies.

ft.com · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

MEDIOCRE ENGINEER'S GUIDE TO HTTPS

The internet operates as a network of interconnected computer networks with a layered structure, where each layer provides specific functionalities. HTTP requests travel through these layers, starting with the sender's request and ending with content rendering on the client's screen. HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP that uses TLS for encryption and verification, where the TLS handshake process establishes a secure connection and generates session keys for encrypted communication between client and server.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 13 min

TLDR InfoSec

DATA OF NEARLY 2M DOTA 2 DEVELOPER FORUMS USERS LEAKED

Following a 2016 attack, a database containing information of nearly 2M DOTA 2 developer forum users was leaked. The database contains usernames, passwords, email addresses, user identifiers, and IP addresses. The passwords were salted and hashed using MD5. Over 80% of the passwords have been cracked.

news.softpedia.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF FIT21'S CRYPTO MARKET STRUCTURE BILL

Though FIT21 is a momentous step forward for legitimizing the crypto industry, issues with its current form must be addressed in Senate negotiations. The bill's bifurcation of cryptocurrencies into “restricted digital assets” and “digital commodities” ignores tokens' global and fungible nature, leading to fragmentation and regulatory arbitrage. Lawmakers should refine the bill to unify spot markets for tokens that are not otherwise securities.

coindesk.com · 5 min

TLDR

ELON MUSK PLANS XAI SUPERCOMPUTER

xAI is planning to build a supercomputer to power the next version of its Grok AI chatbot. Elon Musk says he wants to get the proposed supercomputer running by the fall of 2025. xAI could be partnering with Oracle for the project. When completed, the supercomputer will be at least four times the size of the biggest GPU clusters that exist today. Musk estimates that running the Grok 3 model and beyond will require 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips.

cnbc.com · 1 min

TLDR

SPACEX SETS DATE FOR NEXT STARSHIP FLIGHT, EXPLAINS WHAT WENT WRONG THE LAST TIME

SpaceX is targeting June 5 for its next Starship test flight. The highly anticipated flight seeks to demonstrate the Super Heavy stage's ability to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico. It also aims for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry through the Earth's atmosphere before falling into the Indian Ocean. The Super Heavy first stage failed to make a soft landing in previous attempts due to a blockage in a filter in the Raptor engines. The Starship upper stage lost the ability to control its altitude during its coast phase in space due to clogged valves used by its reaction control thrusters.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

'ABSOLUTE MIRACLE' BREAKTHROUGH PROVIDES RECIPE FOR ZERO-CARBON CEMENT

Old concrete can be recycled in steel-processing furnaces to purify iron, producing 'reactivated cement' as a byproduct. The process produces completely carbon-zero cement if renewable energy is used. The resulting concrete has similar performance to the original material. The technique doesn't add major costs to either concrete or steel production and it significantly reduces CO2 emissions compared to the usual methods of making both. Industrial-scale trials of the technology are set to begin soon.

newatlas.com · 3 min

TLDR

ESSAYS ON PROGRAMMING I THINK ABOUT A LOT

This page contains an index of programming essays along with summaries of what they're about. The essays cover topics like approaches to software development, how to make technical decisions, how to succeed as an engineer at a startup, and more. Each entry in the list includes a bit about the lessons learned from the essay along with an excerpt. Commenters on the post have also linked additional essays to read.

benkuhn.net · 13 min