The Daily Index — Monday, August 26, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

BOEING STARLINER RETURNING EMPTY AS NASA TURNS TO SPACEX TO BRING ASTRONAUTS BACK FROM ISS

Boeing will return its Starliner capsule without the NASA astronauts that it delivered to orbit. The two astronauts will return via SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on a mission launching on September 24. They will stay at the International Space Station for about six more months before flying home in February. The test was originally intended to last about nine days. This decision was made due to NASA's commitment to safety - Starliner's crew flight test faced problems, most notably with its propulsion system. NASA officials still support Boeing and Starliner will likely be able to launch with a crew again someday.

cnbc.com · 5 min

TLDR AI

MICROSOFT RELEASES POWERFUL NEW PHI-3.5 MODELS, BEATING GOOGLE, OPENAI, AND MORE

Microsoft launched three new models in its Phi series: Phi-3.5-mini-instruct, Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct, and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct, each addressing different AI tasks with impressive benchmark performances. These models are open source under the MIT License and available for developers on Hugging Face. Despite their smaller size compared to some counterparts, the Phi models have achieved near-state-of-the-art results, surpassing competitors like GPT-4o and Llama in certain benchmarks.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

POSTGRES AS A SEARCH ENGINE

PostgreSQL can be used as a search engine. Combining full-text search, semantic search with pgvector and fuzzy matching with pg_trgm makes PostgreSQL a good-enough search engine for a majority of use cases. This article goes into more advanced techniques to personalized search experiences, adjust for document length, debug rankings, and more.

anyblockers.com · 15 min

TLDR InfoSec

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orca.security

TLDR Crypto

TELEGRAM FOUNDER AND CEO PAVEL DUROV ARRESTED IN FRANCE BY NATIONAL ANTI-FRAUD OFFICE

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at an airport in France by the country's National Anti-Fraud Office. He was allegedly put into custody for offenses related to terrorism, drugs, fraud, money laundering, and other charges related to individuals' activity on the messaging app.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 2 min

TLDR

SHOCKER: FRENCH MAKE SURPRISE ARREST OF TELEGRAM FOUNDER AT PARIS AIRPORT

French authorities have detained Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app. They plan to hit him with charges related to abetting terrorism, fraud, money laundering, and crimes against children. There is a near-total lack of moderation on the platform, making it a top tool for organized crime. Durov's arrest has led to widespread panic in Russia - Telegram is used by Russian forces to communicate, and Western intelligence services may be able to obtain sensitive information about the Russian military if they gain access to it.

arstechnica.com · 2 min

TLDR

WORLD-FIRST LUNG CANCER VACCINE TRIALS LAUNCHED ACROSS SEVEN COUNTRIES

BioNTech has begun trials for BNT116, an mRNA lung cancer vaccine, in 34 research sites across the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Turkey. The vaccine works by presenting the immune system with tumor markers to prime the body to fight cancer cells expressing those markers. It aims to strengthen a person's immune response to cancer while leaving healthy cells untouched. The treatment is simple to deliver - patients receive a round of shots every week for six consecutive weeks and then every three weeks for 54 weeks.

theguardian.com · 5 min

TLDR

CHINA'S OWN TESLA OPTIMUS? BEIJING'S AMBITIONS IN HUMANOID ROBOTS IN FULL DISPLAY AT EXPO

Chinese technology companies unveiled more than two dozen humanoid robots at the five-day 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing last week. The show attracted 400 industry experts and academics and more than 160 domestic and overseas robotic firms. While there seems to be growing interest in robots from consumers, there are still several hurdles to overcome before their use can become widespread. These include a lack of sufficient data to train the AI used in the robots, limited use cases, and high prices.

scmp.com · 4 min

TLDR

WHY DOES GETTING A JOB IN TECH SUCK RIGHT NOW? (IS IT AI?!?)

A lot of new CS graduates are finding it really hard to get a job. There is a massive confluence of factors, both on the demand and supply side of the market, that are contributing to it being harder to land a job in tech. There are more CS graduates than ever and employers are hiring fewer software engineers. AI is not replacing engineers' jobs yet and it probably won't happen for an incredibly long time. This article looks at all these factors in detail.

ryxcommar.com · 29 min