The Daily Index — Thursday, December 5, 2024 · TLDR Index

Across today’s newsletters

Today’s Index

TLDR

SPOTIFY WRAPPED 2024: TAYLOR SWIFT IS MOST-STREAMED ARTIST, WOMEN DOMINATE GLOBAL TOP 10 ALBUMS CHART

Taylor Swift ranked as the top most-streamed artist globally in 2024 on Spotify, generating more than 26.6 billion streams on the platform this year. Women landed the top eight of the 20 most-stream albums worldwide on Spotify. Spotify's top podcasts of the year include The Joe Rogan Experience and Alex Cooper's 'Call Her Daddy'. Sarah J. Maas' 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' was the most streamed audiobook this year.

variety.com · 8 min

TLDR AI

OPENAI 12 DAYS OF SHIPMAS

OpenAI will be having 12 live streams over the next 12 days to ship new product and model features.

threadreaderapp.com · 1 min

TLDR Web Dev

HOW CHROME DOUBLED ITS SPEEDOMETER SCORES ON ANDROID

Chrome's Speedometer scores on Android have more than doubled since Chrome M112. These improvements came from build optimizations, including a 64-bit Arm build and profile-guided optimization, and enhancements to the V8 JavaScript and Blink rendering engines. There were also optimizations to Chrome's interaction with the operating system and hardware.

blog.chromium.org · 6 min

TLDR Crypto

FED CHAIR POWELL SAYS BITCOIN IS LIKE DIGITAL GOLD

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell compared Bitcoin to digital gold during The New York Times' DealBook Summit, noting its volatility and lack of use as a payment method, positioning it as a speculative asset rather than a competitor to USD. He acknowledged Bitcoin's “staying power” and highlighted its role as an alternative to gold while emphasizing the Fed's cautious approach to crypto's interaction with the banking system.

links.tldrnewsletter.com · 2 min

TLDR Design

APPLE ILLEGALLY SURVEILLED AND CENSORED WORKERS, EMPLOYEE LAWSUIT SAYS

A new lawsuit targets Apple, alleging invasive employee surveillance and restrictive policies that violate California labor laws. Filed by Amar Bhakta, the suit claims Apple monitors personal devices through mandatory electronic SIM cards or virtual private networks that grant broad data access. Bhakta also challenges restrictions on discussing work conditions, citing professional and personal harm.

gizmodo.com · 2 min

TLDR

AMAZON ROLLS OUT BUY WITH AWS BUTTON TO LET SOFTWARE VENDORS MORE EASILY SELL TO ITS CLOUD CUSTOMERS

Amazon Web Services has introduced a Buy with AWS button designed to make it easier for buyers to make purchases of third-party cloud software using their AWS credentials. The button was created to increase customer and partner loyalty and win rates. Software companies wanting to use the button must sell their products through the AWS Marketplace. It is free for software companies to embed.

cnbc.com · 4 min

TLDR

GOOGLE'S DEEPMIND TACKLES WEATHER FORECASTING, WITH GREAT PERFORMANCE

Google DeepMind claims that its GenCast system outperforms traditional computing methods of weather forecasting out to at least a week and often beyond. GenCast merges some computational approaches used by atmospheric scientists with a diffusion model, resulting in a system that maintains high resolution while cutting the computational costs significantly. It has relatively low computational requirements, so individual academic research teams will likely be able to experiment with it.

arstechnica.com · 5 min

TLDR

GPS-ALTERNATIVE TECH SWAPS SATELLITES FOR EARTH FINGERPRINTS

Australian firm Advanced Navigation and European missile manufacturer MBDA are developing a new navigation system for planes to replace GPS in situations where the system fails, such as when signals are intentionally jammed by enemy forces. Their system uses a downward-facing neuromorphic camera to read the terrain's 'fingerprint'. This data is cross-referenced against an existing database of fingerprints, allowing the aircraft to ascertain its exact geographical location. The system is reportedly simple enough that it doesn't use any AI. The companies have planned a real-world demonstration of its system later this year in Australia followed by a commercial rollout of the technology.

newatlas.com · 3 min

TLDR

A FIRST LOOK AT S3 (ICEBERG) TABLES

AWS' S3 Tables brings native support for Apache Iceberg to S3. This post takes a look at the new offering, which is an exciting development for the data analytics ecosystem. S3 has now launched three major features in 12 months, suggesting that something material has shifted in S3's development culture. The fact that AWS chose to call the new feature 'S3 Tables' and not 'S3 Iceberg' could mean that the company is open to supporting other table formats in the future.

meltware.com · 10 min