TLDR 2024-11-01

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OPENAI LAUNCHES CHATGPT WITH SEARCH, TAKING GOOGLE HEAD-ON

OpenAI has launched an upgraded web search feature for its AI assistant. Called 'ChatGPT with Search', the feature makes web searches based on user questions, providing source attributions with the answers it provides. It has the potential to streamline web search by eliminating the need for multiple search queries and link exploration. The system uses a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o.

ALEXA'S NEW AI BRAIN IS STUCK IN THE LAB

Amazon executives were confident a beta version of a new and improved Alexa was doable by early 2024. However, the timeline started slipping - the deadline has been moved to 2025. Alexa's conversational abilities have improved, but it still has issues and struggles with some tasks. Getting Alexa right is important for Amazon given the huge portion of kids and families that use Echo hardware.

META IS MAKING A ROBOT HAND THAT CAN ‘FEEL' TOUCH

Meta has partnered with GelSight and Wonik Robotics to commercialize tactile sensors for AI. The partnership aims to create devices that can learn about the world in richer detail to advance research into AI. Meta is working with GelSight on Digit 360, a tactile fingertip with human-level multimodal sensing capabilities. Its work with Wonik will focus on developing robotic hands with tactile sensors like Digit 360. These products will be available for purchase next year.

‘CLOUD-MILKING': THE ZERO-ENERGY TECHNIQUE KEEPING YOUNG TREES ALIVE

Cloud milking is a zero-energy technique for extracting water from fog. The technique mimics the way that the leaves capture water droplets from fog. It involves erecting special structures in the path of the wind to collect water droplets as the wind blows fog through them. Cloud milking is revolutionizing the recovery of forests devastated by fire and drought.

GENERATIVE AI SCRIPTING

GenAIScript is a JavaScript-ish environment with convenient tooling for file ingestion, prompt development, and structured data extraction. It can programmatically assemble prompts for LLMs using JavaScript. GenAIScript features a JavaScript toolbox for working with prompts, abstractions to make the process easy and productive, and seamless Visual Studio Code integration. A large collection of guides and examples are available.

HOW TO ACCELERATE CODE REVIEWS WITH NUDGES: INSIGHTS FROM MICROSOFT'S STUDY

Pull requests (PRs) are essential for ensuring code quality and enabling collaboration across teams, but they can become major bottlenecks. Microsoft and the Delft University of Technology conducted a comprehensive study that analyzed 22,875 pull requests to uncover the key factors that contribute to delays in PR completion. The study led to the development of Nudge, an automated system designed to send timely 'nudges' to authors and reviewers. Using Nudge reduces PR completion times by 60%. This article looks at the key insights from Microsoft's research and explores how nudges transform the code review process.

AMA WITH OPENAI'S SAM ALTMAN, KEVIN WEIL, SRINIVAS NARAYANAN, AND MARK CHEN (REDDIT THREAD)

A team from OpenAI, including CEO Sam Altman, Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil, SVP of Research Mark Chen, VP of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan, and Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki, recently participated in a Reddit AMA. The team discussed ChatGPT search, OpenAI o1 and o1-mini, Advanced Voice, OpenAI's research roadmap, the future of computer agents, AGI, and what's coming next. OpenAI has some releases planned for later this year, but these won't include GPT-5.

'A LOT OF DEMORALIZED PEOPLE': GHOST JOBS ARE WREAKING HAVOC ON TECH WORKERS

Ghost jobs are a common phenomenon in the tech industry. These fake job listings serve multiple purposes. Employers make these listings to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool. They also use the listings to gauge how replaceable their employees are, look more stable during hiring freezes, make employees feel replaceable, and trick overworked employees into believing that more people will be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workloads.

OVER 500 AMAZON WORKERS DECRY “NON-DATA-DRIVEN” LOGIC FOR 5-DAY RTO POLICY

Over 500 Amazon employees reportedly signed a letter to Amazon Web Services' CEO this week, sharing their outrage over Amazon's upcoming return-to-office policy, which will force workers into offices five days per week starting in 2025.

L3HARRIS' ROCKET MOTOR UNIT INVESTMENTS BOOSTING OUTPUT

L3Harris' investment in Aerojet, one of the only two large solid-fuel rocket makers for the Pentagon, has paid off, with revenue in L3Harris' business up 23.6% compared to the same quarter five years ago.

MICROSOFT'S FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES SHOW HOW OPENAI IS FUELING GROWTH — AND TAKING A TOLL ON PROFITS

Microsoft has made total funding commitments of $13 billion to OpenAI.

META IS USING MORE THAN 100,000 NVIDIA H100 AI GPUS TO TRAIN LLAMA-4

Mark Zuckerberg says that Llama 4 is much faster and has new modalities and stronger reasoning.

GOOGLE ACCUSED OF SHADOW CAMPAIGNS REDIRECTING ANTITRUST SCRUTINY TO MICROSOFT

An astroturf group called the Open Cloud Coalition appears to be led by a handful of European cloud providers secretly recruited by Google.

EVERYONE IS WRONG ABOUT THAT SLACK FLOWCHART

Slack's engineering team published an incredibly complicated flowchart in March 2017 that summarized the logic Slack uses to determine whether to send a given user a notification for a message.