TLDR 2024-01-25

TESLA PLANS TO BUILD NEW ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN MID-2025

Tesla has told suppliers it wants to start production of a new electric vehicle in mid-2025. Codenamed 'Redwood', the next-generation vehicle is expected to drive a new wave of growth. Tesla has forecasted a weekly production volume of 10,000 vehicles. The new vehicle may be the entry-level $25,000 car that Elon Musk first promised to build in 2020. Tesla plans to make an inexpensive robotaxi based on the same vehicle architecture as the $25,000 electric car.

GOOGLE’S LATEST AI VIDEO GENERATOR CAN RENDER CUTE ANIMALS IN IMPLAUSIBLE SITUATIONS

Lumiere is an AI video generator that uses a space-time diffusion model for realistic video generation. The Space-Time U-Net architecture that it uses generates the entire temporal duration of a video at once with a single pass. It is designed to handle both where things are and how things move and change throughout a video. Lumiere can perform text-to-video generation, convert still images into videos, generate videos in specific styles using a reference image, apply consistent video editing using text-based prompts, create cinemagraphs, and inpaint videos. It excels in creating videos of cute animals in ridiculous scenarios - examples are available in the article.

CHINA'S NEW DARK MATTER LAB IS BIGGEST AND DEEPEST YET

The world's deepest and largest underground laboratory is around 2,400 meters below the Jinping Mountains in southwest China. The enormous space, with a sprawling capacity of 330,000 cubic meters, is home to scientists studying dark matter, a hypothetical substance thought to make up more than 80% of the mass in the Universe. It opened in 2010 but only became operational in December 2023. The layers of rock above the laboratory shield it from background noise such as cosmic rays.

CHILDREN WITH GENETIC DEAFNESS HAVE HEARING RESTORED WITH GENE THERAPY

Five children with a form of genetic deafness called DFNB9 regained their hearing thanks to a new type of gene therapy. The therapy involves the use of an inactive virus carrying a functioning version of the gene associated with the disease. The children, who were previously totally deaf, recovered their hearing and were able to conduct normal conversations. Further studies will enroll more patients and follow them for a longer period of time to ensure that the treatment works.

MAKING RUST BINARIES SMALLER BY DEFAULT

Cargo by default now uses `strip = 'debuginfo'` for the `release` profile unless debuginfo is explicitly requested for some dependency. This new default will be used for any profile that does not enable debuginfo anywhere in its dependency chain. This article looks at how a developer noticed that Rust binaries were unnecessarily large and then developed and submitted a fix for it.

PROMPTS ARE TINY PROGRAMS

Prompt engineering is just a subset of software engineering. Prompts are tiny programs written in natural language. Guessing the right 'function calls' with the clever use of vocabulary is a huge part of the game as the API isn't specified and varies between models. Thinking of prompts as code allows prompt engineers to generate model-aware syntax highlighters for favored keywords.

A LEAKED MEMO FROM GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR PICHAI COMES AMIDST EMPLOYEE DISCONTENT

A leaked memo from Google's CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company's seven goals for the year. This year, Google aims to deliver the world's most advanced, safe, and responsible AI; improve knowledge, learning, creativity, and productivity; build the most helpful personal computing platforms and devices; enable organizations and developers to innovate on Google Cloud; provide the world's most trusted products and platforms; build an extraordinary Google; improve company velocity, efficiency, and productivity; and deliver durable cost savings. The leak comes amid a wave of layoffs at the company, with more job cuts on the horizon.

SELF-DRIVING AS A CASE STUDY FOR AGI

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is commonly defined as an autonomous system that surpasses human capabilities in the majority of economically valuable work. Recent developments in autonomous driving present a good early case study of the societal dynamics of increasing automation. Driving is a difficult problem to automate and its automation will impact a large human workforce. The autonomous driving industry has created many new jobs that didn't exist before. Instead of destroying jobs, automation caused the industry to adapt and change.

SIDELOADING IN EUROPE WILL STILL INVOLVE APP REVIEW AND FEES

How much Apple plans to charge is still unknown, but the company currently charges a 27% commission on in-app purchases made through alternative payment systems in the Netherlands.

NETFLIX, HUNGRY FOR MORE GROWTH, SIGNALS MORE PRICE HIKES

Netflix plans to eliminate the cheapest ad-free plan available to users.

BREAKING FREE FROM DRM: THE STORY OF HACKING MY AIR PURIFIER

A guide on breaking the DRM controls on a Xiaomi 4 Pro air purifier.

SPOTIFY PLANS TO LAUNCH IN-APP PURCHASES, IF APPLE GETS OUT OF THE WAY

How Apple decides to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act will decide whether Spotify implements in-app payment functionality that will allow users to upgrade their subscriptions or buy audiobooks with a tap.

NVIDIA’S RTX GPUS CAN NOW UPGRADE SDR CONTENT TO HDR USING AI

Nvidia's RTX Video HDR feature uses AI to convert SDR color space video to HDR - it requires an HDR10-compatible monitor with HDR enabled in Windows.

THE ENCHIPPENING

The exponential improvements in tech in the 21st century can be explained by improvements in semiconductor fabrication.

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