TLDR 2024-01-02

AMAZON'S SILENT SACKING

Many teams at Amazon have been in a hiring freeze for over a year and the employees that were left after the layoffs in 2023 are now leaving. The changes in the organization will likely result in a major AWS outage in 2024. There has already been an increase in large-scale events throughout Amazon. While Amazon is operationally strong, these operational practices depend on people, and when people are eliminated to increase stock prices, operational practices suffer.

MICROSOFT’S COPILOT APP IS NOW AVAILABLE ON IOS

THESE MOLECULAR JACKHAMMERS TAKE ON CANCER CELLS IN THE LAB, KILLS 99%

Scientists have discovered a way to combat cancer cells using vibrating molecules. The molecules vibrate synchronously to rupture the membranes of cancer cells. They are activated with near-infrared light, which allows for deeper penetration into the body than visible light. The technique demonstrated 99% efficacy in destroying cultured cancer cells in laboratory tests. When tested on mice models, half of the animals became cancer-free.

WE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENE THERAPY

The first CRISPR-based gene therapies were approved in the UK and the US late last year. While gene therapies promise to tackle both rare and common diseases, they will come with side effects like exorbitant prices, barriers to access, and ethical concerns. This article looks at how the field promises to bring better editing with more targets and equitable therapies for all in 2024 and beyond.

GITHUB MAKES COPILOT CHAT GENERALLY AVAILABLE, LETTING DEVS ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT CODE

GitHub is launching Copilot Chat in general availability for all users. It is free for verified teachers, students, and maintainers of certain open source projects and $10 per month for other users. Copilot Chat allows developers to ask for real time guidance with natural language. Powered by GPT-4, it is the most widely adopted AI developer tool in history. A list of Copilot competitors is available at the end of the article.

LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL COURSE

This course on large language models covers fundamental knowledge about mathematics, Python, and neural networks. It focuses on teaching students how to build and deploy the best possible LLMs using the latest techniques. The repository contains a list of notebooks and articles related to LLMs and resources for further learning.

STUFF WE FIGURED OUT ABOUT AI IN 2023

This article attempts to round up the highlights in AI development over 2023. It covers how to run LLMs on personal devices, fine-tuning models, the problem of gullibility, LLM applications, and more. LLMs can provide people who use them effectively with a significant boost to their quality of life. They're actually quite easy to build, but there's still a lot unknown about them and they're still unreliable for many applications. There are still many legal and ethical problems to overcome in the space.

A RECAP OF CONSUMER AI IN 2023

This thread provides a recap of AI products and trends that hit the mainstream in 2023. It goes through product launches month by month, providing user numbers and other relevant metrics. Highlights include ChatGPT reaching 100 million monthly active users in January, Balenciaga Pope going viral with 28 million views in March, AI covers taking off in June, users getting roasted by TikTok's AI memes in August, and X's Grok launching in December.

SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS STILL WANT TO MAKE FOLDABLES A THING

Every large smartphone manufacturer except Apple is betting on foldable phones reviving a lackluster mobile market despite a lack of interest from mainstream consumers.

ADVENTURES WITH COMPRESSION

This blog post discusses several approaches to making files smaller.

AI-CREATED “VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS” ARE STEALING BUSINESS FROM HUMANS

Companies are hiring virtual influencers and reporting significant results and decreases in costs.

JUST HOW BIG CAN A SNOWFLAKE GET? IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY 'SNOWFLAKE'

The Guinness World Record for the largest snowflake, for which there is no photographic evidence, may be a bit misleading - the largest photographed snow crystals are much smaller than the supposed record.

BEEP BEEP

Beeper has been playing and losing the cat and mouse game with Apple - its current solution requires users to have access to an old jailbroken iPhone.

GIT THINGS

It's usually useful to merge pull requests into the main branch and make small and frequent changes.

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