The Daily Index — Tuesday, August 6, 2024 · TLDR Index

PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

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HOW I PROGRAM IN 2024

This article shares a developer's perspective on how to program durable things. The developer found that he ended up with much better programs by giving up tests and versions. Building durably for lots of people is hard - it's much better to focus on a core set of people and features. Overuse of the same tools creates technical debt, making programs unnecessarily complex, less durable, and harder to change when the context shifts.

akkartik.name · 7 min

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COOKIE BANNERS SHOW EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH THE EU

Billions of dollars have been spent on cookie banner compliance just to annoy users with no material improvement to their privacy. The EU has no mechanism for self-correcting legislative failures. Europe needs to rethink how it legislates tech as the amount of squandered potential is tragic. Very little innovation is happening in Europe and when it does, it's usually shipped to the US or elsewhere as soon as it's ready to make a real impact on the world.

world.hey.com · 2 min

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OPENAI TEMPERS EXPECTATIONS WITH LESS BOMBASTIC, GPT-5-LESS DEVDAY THIS FALL

OpenAI is changing the format of its DevDay conference to a series of on-the-road developer engagement sessions. It won't be releasing its next major flagship model during the event. The conference will focus on educating developers about what's available in showcasing dev community stories. The DevDay events will take place in San Francisco on October 1, London on October 30, and Singapore on November 21. Registration costs $450 - applications close on August 15.

techcrunch.com · 4 min

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LEAKED DOCUMENTS SHOW NVIDIA SCRAPING ‘A HUMAN LIFETIME' OF VIDEOS PER DAY TO TRAIN AI

Nvidia has been collecting a massive amount of video data, mostly from YouTube, to train a new video foundation model called Cosmos.

simonwillison.net · 1 min

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A NEW TYPE OF NEURAL NETWORK IS MORE INTERPRETABLE

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks are smaller, more interpretable, and more accurate than traditional neural networks.

spectrum.ieee.org · 4 min

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EVERY MICROSOFT EMPLOYEE IS NOW BEING JUDGED ON THEIR SECURITY WORK

Microsoft is now tying its security efforts to employee performance reviews - a lack of security focus for employees could impact promotions, merit-based salary increases, and bonuses.

theverge.com · 5 min

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TWITTER'S FUTURE IS A RETURN TO ELON MUSK'S PAST

Elon Musk's rebranding of Twitter to X was a revival of a long-held dream.

every.to · 37 min

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BIG TECH'S GUIDE TO "M&A" IN AI

Instead of buying companies outright, big tech has been using an 'acquihiring' strategy to avoid complications with antitrust regulators - this post describes the process.

tanayj.com · 7 min

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WEAK SOFT SKILLS: WHY YOU ARE STUCK AT THE SENIOR ENGINEER LEVEL

Mastery of soft skills is the most significant difference between a senior and staff engineer.

pathtostaff.substack.com · 7 min