TLDR 2025-01-21

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ALL THE RUMORS ABOUT THE IPHONE AIR

The iPhone Air may mark the biggest design shift for the line in many years. Rumors suggest that the super-thin iPhone will debut as part of the iPhone 17 lineup this fall. There are enough rumors to infer that something real is in the works. This article rounds up all of the current rumors about the upcoming device, which will sacrifice some function for a sleeker, slimmer design. Apple is likely using the device as a testing ground for new technologies, including its in-house wireless and cell modem chips and the smaller tech needed to eventually build a folding iPhone.

THE 850 BILLION REASONS APPLE AND OTHERS AREN'T TAKING A CHANCE ON TIKTOK

TikTok has been removed from app stores in the US despite the Biden administration issuing a statement that it didn't intend to try to enforce the law and Trump saying there would be no liability for ignoring the law while he tries to suspend the ban. The law allows for app stores to be fined $5,000 per user, which would be a massive blow even for a company of Apple's size. It is not clear whether Trump has the power to shield companies from this liability. The providers that have resumed service for TikTok are rapidly accruing tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of liability.

OPENAI'S AGENT TOOL MAY BE NEARING RELEASE

A software engineer claims to have uncovered evidence of OpenAI's long-rumored Operator, an AI tool that can take control of users' PCs and perform actions on their behalf. OpenAI may be releasing the tool this month. The company's site and apps now contain hidden references to Operator. While AI agents are risky and speculative, tech giants are already touting them as the next big thing in AI. Analysts say the market for AI agents could be worth $47.1 billion by 2030.

CHINA TO HOST WORLD'S FIRST HUMAN-ROBOT MARATHON AS ROBOTICS DRIVES NATIONAL GOALS

Beijing is holding a marathon for humans and robots in its Daxing district in April. Around 12,000 humans will run alongside robots from more than 20 companies at the event. Prizes will be offered to the top three runners. China is ramping up efforts to develop artificial intelligence and robotics to gain an edge in its tech rivalry with the US and combat the challenges of an aging society and a falling birth rate.

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DEEPSEEK CRUSHES OPENAI O1 WITH AN MIT-LICENSED MODEL—DEVELOPERS ARE LOSING IT

Chinese AI research lab DeepSeek has unveiled its latest reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-R1-Zero. DeepSeek-R1 is fully open-source and distributed under the MIT license. The lab has released six distilled models, ranging from 32 billion to 70 billion parameters. They are designed to address tasks in math, code generation, and reasoning.

WHAT SEPARATES THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE IN QA/QAE/SDET/AUTOMATION FROM THE AVERAGE ONES?

This post looks at what makes people successful in QA/QAE/SDET/Automation. It covers mindsets, professional attributes, approaches to work, knowledge and growth, and personal properties. Successful candidates tend to have technical competency beyond just coding, prioritize problem-solving over pure coding ability, communicate clearly across technical leveling, take ownership of quality, have a deep understanding of the business domain, and possess a strong internal motivation. The post also shares a set of discussions gathered from various forums on the topic.

THE MAKING OF COMMUNITY NOTES

This article contains an interview with the team that built X's Community Notes feature where they discuss the design process and the philosophy behind their approach to combating false information on the platform. The idea for Community Notes started around the end of 2019 with the observation that people wanted to get accurate information on social media while there was obvious misinformation going around. The main approaches that were used by other companies at the time were slow, didn't scale well, and suffered from a fundamental trust problem - people don't want a tech company deciding what is true. Wikipedia showed that crowdsourcing was a potential solution space, and follow-up studies by the team confirmed the idea was worth implementing.

TWELVE DUDES AND A HYPE TUNNEL: SCENES FROM THE ‘SUPER BOWL FOR EXCEL NERDS'

The Microsoft Excel World Championship was held last month in the Las Vegas e-sports arena. During the event, finance professionals fluent in spreadsheets gathered to solve complex Excel puzzles in front of an audience of around 400 people, with more watching on livestream. There was a $5,000 prize. The organizer, Andrew Grigolyunovich, hopes to turn competitive Excel into a popular e-sport where pros compete for million-dollar prizes.

KRONOTOP

Kronotop is a Redis-compatible, distributed, and transactional document database that is horizontally scalable and sharded by default.

X IS ROLLING OUT A DEDICATED VERTICAL VIDEO FEED FOR US USERS

X is adding a video tab to the app's bottom bar for users in the US.

AWS DECLARES IT'S ICEBERG ALL THE WAY UNTIL CUSTOMERS SAY OTHERWISE

AWS bet on the Apache Iceberg open table format in response to demand from customers already using its popular S3 object storage.

I AM (NOT) A FAILURE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM SIX (AND A HALF) FAILED STARTUP ATTEMPTS

Failure teaches you a lot, which makes you grow, and this can add up to a good life at the end of the day.

OSV

OSV helps developers identify known third-party open source dependency vulnerabilities.

MALICIOUS EXTENSIONS CIRCUMVENT GOOGLE'S REMOTE CODE BAN

This article looks at the various approaches that malicious extensions in the Chrome Web Store use to run unapproved code.