TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2024-03-08

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01BIG TECH & STARTUPS

KEY OPENAI EXECUTIVE PLAYED A PIVOTAL ROLE IN SAM ALTMAN’S OUSTER

OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati questioned Sam Altman's management in front of the board last year before Altman was briefly ousted from the company. This move helped to propel the board's decision to force Altman out. Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, expressed similar concerns. Both executives said that Altman sometimes created a toxic work environment by freezing out executives who did not support his decisions. WilmerHale, the law firm investigating the incident, is expected to release a report in the coming days that could shed more light on the board's decision.

nytimes.com9 min read

APPLE PLANNING 20-INCH MACBOOK WITH FOLDABLE SCREEN

Apple is planning to release a 20.3-inch MacBook with a foldable screen in 2027, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. It will have a screen measuring about 20 inches diagonally when fully expanded. The laptop is Apple's only foldable product with a clear development schedule. A foldable iPhone or iPad is not likely to come any time soon.

macrumors.com1 min read

02SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

NEW WEIGHT LOSS PILL MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OZEMPIC, TESTS FIND

Novo Nordisk's new obesity treatment drug, amycretin, helped patients lose 13% of their body weight in just 12 weeks. The drug may be more effective than semaglutide. Amycretin targets GLP-1 and another hormone called amylin, both of which are believed to be linked to hunger and satiety. The drug still needs to go through much larger trials that will likely drag on for years before it will be publicly available. The results of the initial trials sent Novo Nordisk's stock rising as much as 8.3%.

futurism.com2 min read

ENGINEER PLANS SOLAR PANEL IMPLANT FOR HUMAN RETINA TO RETAIN EYESIGHT

Engineers from the University of New South Wales in Australia are working on a prototype solar panel implant for the retinas to restore sight. The implant converts light into electrical signals that can be directed to the optic nerve, enabling vision. Users may need to wear special glasses or goggles that amplify sunlight for the device to work. The device is still in a proof-of-concept stage - a lot more work still needs to be done before it is ready for human implantation.

interestingengineering.com4 min read

03PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

WHY FACEBOOK DOESN’T USE GIT

Mercurial is a tool for creating and managing code changes used at Facebook. Facebook started out on Git, but it began hitting scaling limits in around 2012. Mercurial's developers were receptive to the idea of Facebook engineers contributing patches to scale it better while Git's developers were not. There were other alternatives, but all were quickly disqualified. Facebook adopted Mercurial not because it had better technology, but because the maintainers and codebase felt more open.

graphite.dev12 min read

GRATS

Grats makes building GraphQL servers as simple as writing functions. It leverages existing type annotations to automatically extract an executable GraphQL scheme from generic TypeScript resolver code. Grats makes the TypeScript implementation into a source of truth so developers don't have to worry about validating whether their implementations match their schemas.

github.comGitHub repository

04MISCELLANEOUS

OPENAI: FACTS FROM A WEEKEND - AN UPDATE

The investigation into OpenAI's sudden ousting of Sam Altman is almost over, and it appears Altman won. A new board has apparently been chosen. Leaks about the case are likely moves from the anti-Altman faction to strike first before WilmerHale's report is released. This post makes predictions about the results of the investigation and who will be on the new OpenAI board.

lesswrong.com8 min read

US LAWMAKERS VOTE 50-0 TO FORCE SALE OF TIKTOK DESPITE ANGRY CALLS FROM USERS

The House Commerce Committee has voted to approve a bill that would force ByteDance to sell the company or lose access to the US market. The bill still has to pass in the House and Senate and be signed into law before it comes into effect. TikTok is urging its users to protest the bill. Lawmakers responded by noting that the app will only be banned if it doesn't sever its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.

arstechnica.com4 min read