TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2024-03-01

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01BIG TECH & STARTUPS

OPENAI WANTS TO MAKE A WALKING, TALKING HUMANOID ROBOT SMARTER

Humanoid robots could be working alongside human manufacturing workers in only a few short years. Figure, a prominent company in the humanoid robot space, recently raised $675 million and struck a new agreement with OpenAI to develop next-generation AI models for its robots. The funding, which was reportedly over $150 million more than the amount Figure had initially sought, will help scale up the company's AI training, robotic manufacturing, and add on new engineers, speeding up the company's timeline for making its product available commercially. OpenAI's technology will help improve Figure's robots' semantic understanding, making them more useful in work scenarios.

popsci.com9 min read

02SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

ASTRO MECHANICA HAS INVENTED A NEW KIND OF JET ENGINE

Astro Mechanica's new jet engine is efficient at every speed. It uses electric motors to drive a compressor, allowing it to spin at any speed. The jet engine could be used in the first stage of an orbital vehicle to get payloads to orbit dramatically cheaper than other all-rocket systems. A video of a demonstration from last year is available in the thread - Astro Mechanica is already working on a new engine with 10x the thrust.

twitter.com3 min read

HIGH-SPEED HUMANOID FEELS LIKE A STEP CHANGE IN ROBOTICS

Sanctuary AI's Phoenix humanoid robot has robot hands that work totally autonomously at near-human speeds. The robot's hands are hydraulically actuated - while hydraulics technology is expensive to develop, it enables the robotic hands to gain a combination of precision, speed, and strength. Sanctuary AI trained Phoenix by using teleoperation to show it how to do things and then letting it figure out more in simulations. A video showing Phoenix manipulating objects is available in the article.

newatlas.com6 min read

03PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

IN PRAISE OF NUSHELL

Nushell is a non-POSIX shell for working with structured data. It features redefined common shell commands that output structured data. Nushell's commands and pipes allow users to transform data from within the shell. It is able to replace many database query tools.

lars.yencken.org6 min read

VERSIONFOX

VersionFox is an extendable cross-platform tool for managing SDK versions. It allows users to quickly install and switch between different versions of SDKs using the command line. VersionFox supports Global, Project, and Session scopes when switching versions. It has a simple plugin system for adding language support.

github.comGitHub repository

04MISCELLANEOUS

ASK HN: DID YOU ENCOUNTER ANY LEAP YEAR BUGS TODAY? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

An extra day in the year can have interesting consequences. This Hacker News thread discusses bugs that users observed on February 29. Bugs were seen in card payment systems, parcel delivery websites, and daily post bots. China's app for scheduling marriage certificates apparently has a leap-year bug that prevents people born on February 29 from making appointments as it marks them as too young to marry legally.

news.ycombinator.com

CAN WE GET MORE DECENTRALISED THAN THE FEDIVERSE?

The fediverse will likely become as decentralized as email: a bit, but not that much. Personal instances will be pretty rare. This article explains why the fediverse won't be distributed and examines ideas for a distributed social system. It may be possible to get more decentralized than the fediverse using a simple extension on RSS, which can already incorporate a lot of popular content. Compared to the fediverse, RSS has a lower barrier to entry and cleaner separation of concerns and responsibilities.

gist.github.com13 min read