TLDR 2024-04-05

ALPHABET REPORTEDLY WEIGHING OFFER FOR HUBSPOT, SENDING SHARES IN THE $32 BILLION MARKETING COMPANY UP 5%

Alphabet is in talks with advisors as it considers making an offer for marketing software company HubSpot. It has yet to determine how much it should offer. It is unclear whether antitrust officials will greenlight the deal. No official offer has yet been submitted.

ELON MUSK BOOSTS AI ENGINEER PAY IN ‘CRAZIEST TALENT WAR’

Tesla is raising its compensation for artificial intelligence engineers to ward off poaching from other companies. Elon Musk says that the competition for AI engineers is the craziest talent war he has ever seen. Tech companies are offering million-dollar-a-year compensation packages and accelerated stock-vesting schedules. Layoffs are continuing in other areas of tech.

10 YEARS AFTER FACEBOOK BOUGHT OCULUS, WHAT'S NEXT FOR META'S VR PLANS?

Smartwatches weren't even mainstream yet when Facebook bought Oculus 10 years ago. VR is still not massively adopted in 2024, but it has gone mainstream several times. This article contains an overview of where Meta is heading next with the Quest 3, AI, smart glasses, and AR glasses. Meta is bringing its own generative AI features to its Ray-Ban smart glasses later this month. The glasses will use their onboard cameras to recognize things in the real world.

PHYSICISTS TAKE A MAJOR STEP TOWARD MAKING A NUCLEAR CLOCK

Scientists were recently able to use a tabletop laser to bump an atomic nucleus into a higher energy state, a feat that paves the path towards creating the first nuclear clock. Nuclear clocks keep time based on the inner workings of atomic nuclei. They could be more simple and portable than atomic clocks. They could also be used to test fundamental physics theories in new ways. Nuclear clocks are based on different physics than atomic clocks, so comparing the two types of timepieces could allow for new studies of fundamental physics.

DOTLOTTIE-RS

dotLottie-rs is a Rust implementation of the dotLottie player and its related tools. It utilizes uniffi-rs to generate FFI bindings for Kotlin, Swift, and WebAssembly (WASM) for use in native dotLottie players. dotLottie-rs builds on the Lottie format, adding new improvements and features like theming support, multi-animation support, built-in interactivity powered by state machines, reduced animation file sizes, and more. It brings consistency of playback and dotLottie features across all platforms.

SIGNALS FOR TAILWIND CSS

Signals for Tailwind CSS is a plugin that utilizes style queries via container queries to reactively enable custom states that can be consumed by descendants in the DOM. It reduces development effort and the need to compose a chain of variants. Signals for Tailwind CSS is useful for simplifying the application of styles based on ancestor states, improving developer experience with a more declarative API, and reducing the need for complex selector chaining and arbitrary targeting. Browser support for style queries is still limited, so Signals for Tailwind CSS may not be suitable for projects that require broad compatibility.

ANATOMY OF A CREDIT CARD REWARDS PROGRAM

Credit cards earn money in multiple different ways. One important method is interchange, a fee paid by card-accepting businesses. The fee is split between various parties in the credit card ecosystem for marketing. Credit card issuers offer rewards cards so customers use their rails and then compete with each other for 'share of wallet' by bidding with interchange. Not every card is a reward card due to different card applications and features, regulations, collusion, and other reasons. This article explains how credit card rewards programs work and the systems that work together that make them profitable.

ASK HN: HAPPY 404 DAY. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE 404 ERROR PAGE? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Most of the best and cleverest 404-error pages have been lost to time. This Hacker News thread looks at the current best 404 pages and classic error pages that still survive today. Some examples of sites that have noteworthy 404-error pages include the Financial Times, The Sisters of Mercy, Adult Swim, and Reddit.

OPENAI EXPANDS ITS CUSTOM MODEL TRAINING PROGRAM

PIG KIDNEY TRANSPLANT PATIENT LEAVES HOSPITAL

The 62-year-old patient, who is no longer on dialysis, was sent home two weeks after the ground-breaking surgery.

SABLEDB

SableDb is a key-value NoSQL database that aims to reduce memory costs and increase capacity compared to Redis.

OUR POST-EA WORLD

Effective Altruism taught us that it is possible to take the hardest problems in the world and work on them.

HOW TO BE CONFIDENT

Confidence comes from taking action - it is the memory of success.

NEW RISC-V MICROPROCESSOR CAN RUN CPU, GPU, AND NPU WORKLOADS SIMULTANEOUSLY

The new CPU/GPU hybrid, designed as a 'jack-of-all-trades' processor, will be released to early partners sometime this year.