TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2024-03-05

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01BIG TECH & STARTUPS

APPLE LAUNCHES NEW 13-INCH AND 15-INCH MACBOOK AIR WITH M3 CHIP, SUPPORT FOR TWO EXTERNAL DISPLAYS, FASTER WI-FI

Apple has announced next-generation M3 MacBook Airs in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes. Besides the M3 chips, the new laptops feature an upgraded Neural Engine, up to 2x faster Wi-Fi, and the ability to connect to two displays at once - when the laptop lid is closed. The overall design of the M3 MacBook Air is the same as the M2 model. The new MacBook Airs can be ordered from the Apple online store starting at $1099 for the 13-inch and $1299 for the 15-inch model. Shipping will start on March 8.

9to5mac.com2 min read

THE AI WARS HEAT UP WITH CLAUDE 3, CLAIMED TO HAVE “NEAR-HUMAN” ABILITIES

Anthropic's Claude 3 apparently sets new industry benchmarks across a range of cognitive tasks. The company claims that it approaches 'near-human' capability in some cases. Claude 3 has three models: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet (which powers the Claude.ai chatbot), and Claude 3 Opus (available through a subscription service). All three models feature a 200,000-token context window and are available through an API. Claude 3 beats GPT-4 on a range of widely used benchmarks.

arstechnica.com4 min read

02SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

BLUE ORIGIN IS GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT DEVELOPING A HUMAN SPACECRAFT

Blue Origin's new chief executive Dave Limp is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm. The company plans to launch its own heavy-lift rocket later this year, possibly as soon as August. It has been developing hardware to fly on the heavy-lift rocket, including a transfer vehicle for ferrying satellites into precise orbits, and working on a private space station called Orbital Reef. Blue Origin is now hiring staff to develop a commercial space transportation system for humans.

arstechnica.com3 min read

AWS ACQUIRING DATA CENTER CAMPUS POWERED BY NUCLEAR ENERGY

Amazon Web Services purchased a data center campus powered by a nearby nuclear power station in Pennsylvania for $650 million. The nuclear power plant has been in operation since 1983. It will supply AWS with electricity for 10 years as part of the purchase agreement. The data center campus comprises 1,200 acres. AWS also plans to invest $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia over the next few years to create an AWS Infrastructure Region.

powermag.com3 min read

03PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

THE HUNT FOR THE MISSING DATA TYPE

While developers see graphs everywhere and use them to analyze all sorts of systems, there is almost no graph support in any mainstream language. This is because there are too many different kinds of graphs, representations of each kind of graph, and graph algorithms. Also, graph algorithm performance is very sensitive to graph representation and implementation details. Languages don't support graphs in their standard libraries because there are too many design decisions and tradeoffs and too much maintenance burden. This also explains why programmers avoid third-party graph libraries - they're either too limited to too slow.

hillelwayne.com16 min read

CSS FOR PRINTING TO PAPER

This article explains how CSS controls how webpages look when printed. It covers the @page property, @media print, element positioning, how to handle multi-page documents with repeating elements, and more. An 'essentials cheatsheet' is provided at the end of the article.

voussoir.net17 min read

04MISCELLANEOUS

GOOGLE CO-FOUNDER SERGEY BRIN SAYS IN RARE PUBLIC APPEARANCE THAT COMPANY ‘DEFINITELY MESSED UP’ GEMINI IMAGE LAUNCH

Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin, who came out of retirement to work on AI, spoke to a group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts over the weekend at the 'AGI House' in Hillsborough, California, about AI's impact on search and how Google might maintain its leadership position as AI continues to grow. Brin commented on the launch of Google's image generator, saying that the company messed up due to a lack of thorough testing. He also spoke about other topics such as virtual and augmented reality hardware and Gemini's potential impact on products like Google Maps and Street View.

cnbc.com7 min read

AGGREGATOR’S AI RISK

The Internet made publishing and distribution zero marginal cost activities. It created a new world of abundance, but it also created a new type of power given to those who had the ability to make sense of that abundance. Allowing anyone to publish didn't further decentralize power - new powers emerged to control discovery. Generative AI flips that paradigm around, collapsing all published knowledge into a single answer. This answer is unlikely to make everyone happy. A potential solution to this problem is to personalize AIs so they do a better job of giving people what they want to see.

stratechery.com27 min read