TLDR 2024-10-29

META IS REPORTEDLY WORKING ON ITS OWN AI-POWERED SEARCH ENGINE, TOO

Meta has been working on an AI powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft. The Meta AI bot built into Meta's apps currently uses Google and Microsoft Bing to answer questions about recent news and events. Meta has been building a database of information for its chatbot. It is also building up location data that could compete with Google Maps.

APPLE ANNOUNCES NEW IMAC WITH M4 CHIP, STARTS AT $1,299

Apple has announced an updated iMac with the company's latest M4 chip. Starting at $1,299, it is now available for order ahead of its release on November 8. The M4 iMac comes in new shades, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and silver. It has four USB-C ports on the back with the Thunderbolt 4 standard and supports up to two additional 6K displays. The iMac comes with an updated Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard with USB-C charging. Apple may announce more new Macs over the coming days.

CHINA'S FIRST SPACE TOURISM VENTURE SELLS INITAL PAIR OF TICKETS

Deep Blue Aerospace used a livestream on Chinese e-commerce site Taobao to sell two tickets on its first suborbital flights. At just ¥1,000,000 ($140,000), the seats were at a deep discount compared to the expected cost of ¥1,500,000 ($210,000) per seat. The flight is not expected to launch for another three years or so. The livestream, which was the first time space tourism tickets have gone on public sale in China, attracted an audience of three million viewers.

WE'VE FOUND THE SOURCE OF MOST METEORITES

70% of meteorites come from three collisions that occurred in the asteroid belt within the past 40 million years. An exhaustive study by an international team of scientists has tracked down the sources of most meteorites falling on Earth. The team gathered data and ran simulations to reveal how collisions produce families of asteroids that start in similar orbits and how those fragments spread out over time. Their work still needs to be validated, but it explains several key observables with a single model.

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WE'RE FORKING FLUTTER. THIS IS WHY

Flutter began as a UI toolkit for mobile only before expanding to the web and desktop platforms. Despite the project's massive expansion of scope and responsibility, the Flutter team has only marginally increased its size. Flutter has been forked to help expand its available labor and accelerate development. The Flock fork will remain constantly up to date with Flutter but add important bug fixes and popular community features. The Flutter team can choose to add these bug fixes and features on their own schedule.

OPEN-SOURCE AI MUST REVEAL ITS TRAINING DATA, PER NEW OSI DEFINITION

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has released its official definition of 'open' artificial intelligence. For an AI system to be considered truly open source, it must provide the complete code used to build and run the AI, access to details about the data used to train the AI so others can understand and recreate it, and the settings and weights from the training. The definition directly challenges Meta's Llama, which has restrictions on commercial use and does not provide access to training data. Meta claims that it restricts access to its training data due to safety concerns, but critics say the company is just minimizing its legal liability and safeguarding its competitive advantage.

A MYSTERIOUS NEW IMAGE GENERATION MODEL HAS APPEARED

red_panda is a mysterious new image generation model that is beating other top models. The model is over 100 times faster than OpenAI's DALL-E3. It is unknown which company made the model and when it will be released. AI companies are increasingly using community benchmarks to drum up anticipation ahead of announcements, so it is likely a reveal will be coming soon.

AIRBNB CEO BRIAN CHESKY ON THE GOSPEL OF STEVE JOBS AND WHAT FOUNDER MODE REALLY MEANS

This article contains a transcript of an interview with Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky, who made a lot of waves earlier this year when he started talking about something called 'founder mode'. Chesky spends a lot of time specifically obsessing over company structure and decision-making. In the interview, Chesky talks about founder mode and what he thinks it means. Founder mode isn't about micromanagement or pure swagger - good leaders need to get into the details while still delegating and trusting their teams to make decisions independently of them.

DI-WISE 🧙♀️

di-wise is a dependency injection library for JavaScript and TypeScript.

APPLE'S NEW MAGIC KEYBOARD, MAGIC MOUSE, AND MAGIC TRACKPAD HAVE USB-C

The Magic Mouse still charges via a port on the bottom.

TESLA RELEASES RARE BLOG POST AND IT'S AN INTERESTING ONE: STANDARDIZING AUTO CONNECTIVITY

Tesla wants to standardize electrical connectors inside vehicles to unlock operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and manufacturing automation.

NETFLIX'S NEW ‘MOMENTS' FEATURE LETS YOU SAVE AND SHARE CLIPS FROM YOUR FAVORITE EPISODES

Netflix's Moments feature on its iOS app lets users quickly save favorite scenes to rewatch or share across social platforms with a single tap.

CARE DOESN'T SCALE

Care doesn't really scale without becoming something else.

ON GOOD SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

Good engineers are proactive - they see a broken process and they take action to fix it.