The Daily Index — Wednesday, November 6, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

OPENAI HIRES META'S FORMER ORION HEAD TO LEAD ITS ROBOTICS EFFORTS

Caitlin Kalinowski, the former head of Meta's Orion augmented reality glasses initiative, has joined OpenAI to lead its robotics and consumer hardware efforts. The hiring is part of OpenAI's efforts to move into building and selling hardware. Kalinowski was a hardware executive at Meta for nearly two and a half years and has worked for more than nine years on virtual reality headsets. She has also helped design MacBook Pro and Air models.

cnbc.com · 2 min

TLDR AI

AI FOR STARTUPS

Microsoft and a16z advocate for collaboration between Big Tech and Little Tech to foster AI innovation and competition. They support open-source AI and have proposed policy ideas to support startups and equalize opportunities in the AI economy. Their joint focus is on creating a robust, competitive ecosystem that leverages AI to drive economic growth and innovation.

blogs.microsoft.com · 8 min

TLDR Web Dev

FROM NAPTIME TO BIG SLEEP: USING LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS TO CATCH VULNERABILITIES IN REAL-WORLD CODE

Google's AI agent, Big Sleep, discovered an exploitable stack buffer underflow in SQLite. This marks the first publicly known instance of an AI agent finding a previously unknown exploitable memory-safety issue in widely used real-world software.

googleprojectzero.blogspot.com · 13 min

TLDR InfoSec

OKTA AD/LDAP DELEGATED AUTHENTICATION VULNERABILITY

Okta discovered a vulnerability in the DelAuth procedure for Okta AD/LDAP that allows users with usernames with a length equal to or greater than 52 characters to authenticate with only a username and a stored cache key of a previous authentication (no password needed). This issue was resolved in Okta's production systems on October 30. Okta recommends that customers review their logs from July 23 to October 30 for evidence of exploitation.

trust.okta.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

NEW GLOBAL DOLLAR STABLECOIN BACKED BY ROBINHOOD, KRAKEN, PAXOS, AND OTHER CRYPTO HEAVIES

Paxos has launched USDG, a new Singapore-based stablecoin backed by major crypto firms like Kraken, Robinhood, and Galaxy Digital. It distributes 97% of reserve yield to network participants who help drive the adoption of the “Global Dollar Network.” DBS Bank, the largest bank in Southeast Asia by assets, will be the primary banking partner.

coindesk.com · 2 min

TLDR

ANTHROPIC'S HAIKU 3.5 SURPRISES EXPERTS WITH AN “INTELLIGENCE” PRICE INCREASE

Anthropic launched the latest version of its smallest AI model, Claude 3.5 Haiku, with a 4x price increase on Monday. The company says that the price increase reflects the model's increase in intelligence. The new Haiku model costs users $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Anthropic's testing indicates that the new Haiku model surpasses Claude 3 Opus, which costs $15 per million input tokens and $75 per million output tokens.

arstechnica.com · 3 min

TLDR

WORLD'S 1ST CLONED FERRET GIVES BIRTH TO HEALTHY KITS IN A CONSERVATION MILESTONE

A cloned black-footed ferret has given birth to two healthy kits, a milestone that represents a significant step to securing the future of the endangered mammal. The cloned ferret was created from genetic material collected in 1988 and preserved at the San Diego Zoo's Frozen Zoo. The sample was unique in its genetic diversity, meaning its genes could strengthen the current population's health and resilience. All living black-footed ferrets, except for clones and the new kits, descend from seven wild ferrets. The limited gene pool makes the population highly vulnerable to diseases and less adaptable to environmental changes.

interestingengineering.com · 4 min

TLDR

WORLD'S FIRST WOODEN SATELLITE LAUNCHED INTO SPACE

Japanese researchers launched the world's first wooden satellite into space yesterday. The satellite is made of honoki, a kind of magnolia tree traditionally used to make sword sheaths. The researchers believe that the material can be used to build structures in space. They plan to collect data on the satellite for six months, and if the experiment is successful, pitch the idea of wooden satellites to SpaceX. Pictures of the wooden satellite are available in the article.

dw.com · 3 min

TLDR

NEW OPENAI FEATURE: PREDICTED OUTPUTS

The OpenAI API has a new feature called Predicted Outputs. It allows users to send content as a 'prediction' and have GPT-4o or GPT-4o mini use that content to accelerate the returned result. Any tokens provided in predictions that are not part of the final completion will be charged at completion token rates. This means the more an output differs from the prediction, the more it will cost. Using Predicted Outputs can reduce processing time.

simonwillison.net · 2 min