Parse notes
Tesla has started releasing its Full Self-Driving v12 update to employees. The biggest difference with the update is how vehicle controls will be taken over by neural nets rather than being hardcoded by engineers. Tesla may be able to push the update to customers by the end of the year. Elon Musk has previously said that he believes that Tesla will achieve true self-driving capability by the end of the year.
Google will start deleting inactive Google accounts from December 1. Accounts are deemed inactive if the user hasn't logged on for at least two years. Gmail addresses for deleted accounts cannot be used again when creating a new Google account. Users just need to sign into their accounts to preserve them.
SpaceX plans to test Starship for the third time in December. There are now three ships in final production. SpaceX launched the second Starship test on November 18. The ship successfully performed a hot-stage separation, but it exploded after it completed a flap and boostback burn.
Researchers used an algorithm to sort through millions of genomes to find new rare types of CRISPR systems that could eventually be adopted into genome-editing tools. Single-celled bacteria and archaea use CRISPR systems to defend themselves against bacteriophages. The algorithm helped scientists identify the code for an entirely unknown CRISPR system that targets RNA. Researchers will be able to use the algorithm to look for other types of protein across species.
Developers should always use a Cryptographically Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator (CSPRNG) when choosing a Pseudorandom Number Generator. While people typically say to only use CSPRNGs when doing cryptography and need security against adversarial attackers, they are really the only thing that makes sense to use. This article talks about why developers should only use CSPRNGs by comparing them with other random number generation methods. CSPRNGs are better by definition as given the first n bits, there is no efficient algorithm that will predict the next bit with a success rate non-negligibly better than 50%.
RAGs is a Streamlit app that lets users create RAG pipelines from data sources using natural language. Users just have to describe the tasks and parameters they want from their RAG systems. The RAG can be queried and it will answer questions over the data.
It's difficult to commodify technical work. Despite the crazy infrastructure that allows us to mass produce things, in many cases, individual people make the machine run. Society runs on commodification, but anyone who thinks that it can run on pure commodification, without any understanding of the human complexities of the people around them, is wrong.
Binance and its CEO recently pleaded guilty to operating the world's largest criminal conspiracy to launder money and paid more than $4 billion in fines. This article looks at the history of Binance to see what led to this outcome. The ruling settles a long-running investigation involving the DOJ, CFTC, FinCEN, and assorted other parts of the US regulatory state. However, it importantly doesn't resolve the SEC's parallel action, which includes charges of operating an unregistered exchange, misrepresenting trading controls, and the unregistered offer and sale of securities.
The US government and Intel have started training a one trillion parameter model called ScienceGPT.
The traditional strategy of mastering a single tool may no longer be optimal - in the world of AI, it is better to embrace new tools and discard old ones and focus on things that are stable around the rapidly shifting software foundation.
AI helps developers skip steps in the workflow.
Users should be able to build projects without installing any extra tools or content - if it's something the build needs, then it belongs in version control.
There is less competition and teams are more motivated.
This thread contains a lot of information and resources for older tech workers who want more comfortable jobs.