TLDR

TLDR 2025-02-10

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01GENERAL

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EVIL PORTALS — AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

A WiFi Pineapple is a penetration testing tool developed by Hak5 for running security assessments, either internally or with an outsourced team of ethical hackers. It can be misused by bad actors to phish for credentials by impersonating the login pages of trusted accounts.

threatlocker.comSponsor

02BIG TECH & STARTUPS

APPLE IS REPORTEDLY DEVELOPING AIRPODS WITH CAMERAS: HERE'S WHAT THAT MEANS

Apple is reportedly prototyping AirPods with integrated cameras. The integration may be aimed at bringing Visual Intelligence to the AirPods, allowing them to understand the outside world and provide information to the user. They could be used together with Vision Pro headsets to enhance the user experience and strengthen the spatial computing ecosystem. The AirPods' cameras could enable in-air gesture controls. The tech is unlikely to debut anytime soon - it won't be released until 2027 at the earliest.

9to5mac.com2 min read

HOW SAM ALTMAN SIDESTEPPED ELON MUSK TO WIN OVER DONALD TRUMP

Sam Altman was on the phone with Donald Trump just days before Trump's inauguration preparing the announcement to build data centers across the country. Altman was relegated to the overflow room during the inauguration, but he stood behind Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House the day after as Trump announced Stargate, describing it as the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history. Stargate had been in the works for months, but the announcement was timed for Trump to take credit for it in his first days in office. This article takes a behind-the-scenes look at how the deal came about.

nytimes.com9 min read

03SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

THE DRUG INDUSTRY IS HAVING ITS OWN DEEPSEEK MOMENT

Summit Therapeutics, a drug company backed by billionaire Bob Duggan, recently announced that its drug had outperformed Merck's Keytruda in a lung cancer trial. Keytruda is the best-selling drug in the pharma industry. Summit had licensed the drug from a little-known Chinese biotech called Akeso. While Summit's drug still needs regulatory approval, the news added billions of dollars to the company's market capitalization and created a watershed moment for the industry.

links.tldrnewsletter.com3 min read

HUMAN-LIKE TEETH SUCCESSFULLY GROWN IN A PIG'S MOUTH

Scientists have been manipulating genes to grow human cells in animals for decades. They have now shown it is possible to cultivate human teeth cells inside of a pig's mouth. The teeth that grew inside the pigs didn't reach full human tooth size and likely wouldn't stand up to regular use, but these findings could lead to the development of biological tooth substitutes. Research shows that more than half of US adults may be receptive to the technology.

popsci.com4 min read

04PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

THE LLM CURVE OF IMPACT ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

AI's impact on someone's day-to-day job largely depends on their level. It impacts junior engineers the most, with the impact level dropping through to the senior level, before becoming useful again for Staff+ engineers. This may be why developers' experiences vary so much. The reason some people are skeptical or overly excited may be because the tasks they are working on are quite different.

serce.me3 min read

AI-BY-HAND-EXCEL

This repository contains a collection of Excel exercises that teach concepts in AI. It covers topics like Softmax, Temperature, Backpropagation, Long Short Term Memory, Multihead attention, AlphaFold, and much more. The repository is still being expanded with more sheets.

github.comGitHub repository

05MISCELLANEOUS

DEFINANCIALIZATION / HYPERFINANCIALIZATION

The world has become increasingly financialized as a consequence of bad money. The US dollar serves as a poor monetary instrument because it doesn't effectively preserve purchasing power over long time frames. Instead of saving, people are forced to invest. While Bitcoin simplifies savings and definancializes the world of money and savings, crypto is producing a world of hyper-financialization. New products are constantly emerging that attempt to turn anything and everything into a financial market. The phenomenon will probably continue as fiat unwinds, but after a long enough time, Bitcoin's core value proposition will become more apparent.

mylessnider.com3 min read

HOW AI TAKEOVER MIGHT HAPPEN IN 2 YEARS

This post contains a short story on what an AI researcher thinks could be the worst-case scenario for an AI takeover. It is not a likely scenario, but it is not pure fantasy either - AI progress might not become as fast or untamable as the story portrays, but it could happen in the right circumstances. The future is still not set, but some of the worst outcomes are already plausible.

lesswrong.com52 min read