TLDR Index
TLDR

TLDR 2025-05-09

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01GENERAL

Sponsored

TOOLS

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developers.google.comSponsor

02BIG TECH & STARTUPS

META REPORTEDLY EYEING 'SUPER SENSING' TECH FOR SMART GLASSES

Meta is working on a 'super sensing' type of facial recognition technology for its smart glasses lineup. The software will be able to recognize people by name and keep a better track of what users are doing throughout the day. It will be opt-in only. The company is reportedly working on two new pairs of smart glasses and also re-evaluating its privacy policies and potential safety risks associated with the technology.

cnet.com2 min read

OPENAI HIRES INSTACART CEO AS HEAD OF APPLICATIONS

Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is joining OpenAI to lead its applications business. Simo has served as an OpenAI board member over the last year. She will remain CEO of Instacart for the next few months. Simo will focus on enabling OpenAI's traditional company functions to scale as it enters its next phase of growth, which will allow CEO Sam Altman to increase his focus on research, compute, and safety, which are critical as the company approaches superintelligence.

links.tldrnewsletter.com2 min read

03SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

AURORA TO ADD NIGHT DRIVING, NEW ROUTES AS IT RAMPS DRIVERLESS TRUCKING

Aurora Innovation plans to expand its driverless trucking route beyond Dallas to Houston and into El Paso and Phoenix. The company plans to start sending its self-driving trucks out at night and during adverse weather conditions in the second half of 2025. It already runs freight with self-driving trucks in those conditions, but with a human safety operator behind the wheel. Running at nighttime would double the company's drive time and is a key milestone.

techcrunch.com3 min read

ULTRA-RARE 'ASIAN UNICORN' HAS GENOME SEQUENCED, AND IT COULD MEAN EVERYTHING

The saola is a bovine that hangs out in the mountainous forests of Vietnam and Laos. The species wasn't scientifically described until 1993 and has still never been seen in person by scientists or studied in the wild. It is a critically endangered species with an estimated population ranging from 50 to up to a few hundred individuals. An international team of scientists has reconstructed the saola genome, hinting at some potential good news for the chances of its conservation. The saola are split into two populations with considerable genetic differences, which means there may be enough genetic diversity to start working on building a captive breeding program.

sciencealert.com4 min read

04PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

POSTGRESQL 18 BETA 1 RELEASED!

The first release of the PostgreSQL 18 beta is now available for download. It contains previews of all of the features in PostgreSQL 18, but some of the details of the release may change during the beta period. The update improves performance and the developer experience and introduces new security features. It also adds monitoring and observability tools. This post goes over the new update.

postgresql.org5 min read

ASK HN: HOW MUCH BETTER ARE AI IDES VS. COPY PASTING INTO CHAT APPS? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Copying and pasting into chat apps can be tedious, but assistants like Copilot aren't as smart as the 'thinking' chat apps. This makes it clear why AI IDEs exist, but using them can get expensive because of the pay-per-use pricing as opposed to effectively unlimited prompts for a monthly subscription as with thinking apps. This Hacker News thread contains a discussion on the current state of AI IDEs and how they compare to chat apps. The thread mentions lesser known alternatives to Cursor and Windsurf, such as Roo code and aider-chat, that unlock different workflows.

news.ycombinator.com

05MISCELLANEOUS

BILL GATES TELLS HIS FOUNDATION TO SPEND IT ALL BY 2045

Bill Gates expects his foundation to exhaust its coffers and spend more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. The total of Gates' donation is expected to be the second-largest philanthropic gift in US history, adjusted for inflation. His foundation has already spent more than $100 billion on a range of causes. Many of the foundation's beneficiaries have been people in low-income countries with endemic and frequently deadly diseases.

techcrunch.com2 min read

ASK HN: WHAT ARE GOOD HIGH-INFORMATION DENSITY UIS (SCREENSHOTS, APPS, SITES)? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

It can be difficult to find examples of good high information density UIs. This Hacker News thread lists resources for finding these examples and tips for how to find good examples. One of these methods is to look at programs used by pro creatives - some people regularly spend their days using a single such product as their primary work tool. Another source of good examples of dense information communication can be found in command line system monitoring tools.

news.ycombinator.com