TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2024-12-26

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01BIG TECH & STARTUPS

PRICE WAR INTENSIFIES AS AMAZON REPORTEDLY TARGETS CHINESE SELLERS OFFERING CHEAP GOODS ON TEMU

Amazon has reportedly instructed some of its Chinese cross-border merchants to stop listing lower-priced products on Temu. Temu has seen rapid growth in its market share in the US - it was the most downloaded free app in the country in 2024. The site's aggressive pricing strategy has forced Amazon to take action. Amazon has responded to the rumors by stating that sellers have the freedom to determine their own sales strategies and can set prices for their products on Amazon and other sales channels.

technode.com3 min read

META TO ADD DISPLAYS TO RAY BAN SMART GLASSES IN 2025

Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses may get displays as soon as the second half of 2025. The new displays will be used to show notifications and responses from Meta's virtual assistant. Plans to turn Orion, its augmented reality glasses prototype, into a consumer product have been brought forward, though a release is still likely to be years away. More big tech firms, like Qualcomm, Samsung, and Google, are entering into the mixed-reality glasses space. Apple may be releasing a cheaper version of the Apple Vision Pro at some point after 2027.

links.tldrnewsletter.com2 min read

02SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

AI DECODES THE CALLS OF THE WILD

Animal communications have patterns and structures that convey information to other members of that animal's species. A growing number of biologists and computer scientists are applying AI to animal sounds to reveal what they are saying to each other. AI-assisted studies have found that both African savannah elephants and common marmoset monkeys give names to their companions. As these computer models improve, they may enable scientists to investigate animals' self-awareness.

nature.com50 min read

TRANSPARENT BAMBOO: A FIREPROOF AND WATERPROOF ALTERNATIVE TO GLASS

Chinese scientists have turned bamboo into a transparent material that is resistant to fire and water and suppresses smoke. The team used the same method used to turn wood transparent to turn the bamboo transparent - bamboo's internal structure and chemical composition is very similar to wood. The resulting transparent bamboo can be used as a building material. When used as a substrate for perovskite solar cells, it acts like a light management layer, boosting cells' power conversion efficiency by 15.29%.

newatlas.com3 min read

03PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

SHORTEST

Shortest is an AI-powered natural language end-to-end testing framework. It lets developers write tests in plain English and let AI handle the execution. Shortest uses Anthropic's Claude API. It is built on Playwright and has GitHub integration with 2FA support.

github.comGitHub repository

A CSS WISHLIST FOR 2025

2024 was a great year for CSS. Several features, including cross-document view transitions, scroll-driven animations, anchor positioning, and animate to height: auto were introduced. This article suggests more CSS features that developers want, such as a conditional if() statement, CSS mixins, anchor positioning in more browsers, and a way to balance flex-wrap.

css-tricks.com10 min read

04MISCELLANEOUS

AI MODELS ARE GETTING SMARTER. NEW TESTS ARE RACING TO CATCH UP

Evaluations (or evals) help researchers understand what advanced AI systems can do. Designing effective evals is challenging and expensive and the field is underfunded. Modern AI systems regularly achieve top scores on many popular evals, making it harder to judge how quickly they are improving. Companies, nonprofits, and governments have created new sets of much more challenging evals in response, but AI systems are making astonishing progress, even on the most advanced tests.

time.com13 min read

MARK ZUCKERBERG WENT ALL IN ON META'S AI STRATEGY THIS YEAR. THE PRESSURE BUILDS IN 2025

Meta said in April that it would raise spending levels by as much as $10 billion to support infrastructure investments for its AI efforts. The announcement sent shares plunging, but several months later, Meta's stock price has hit a new record. AI has become Meta's top priority, directly impacting the company's business and potentially paving the way for future revenue opportunities. This all-encompassing approach to AI has led analysts to predict that Meta will be positioned for more success in 2025.

cnbc.com13 min read