Search the archive

BIGCAPITAL

Bigcapital is an intelligent cloud and open-source accounting software for small and medium businesses.

HOW TO HIDE A $2 TRILLION ANTITRUST TRIAL

Google is currently going through an antitrust trial against the United States government. Last week, over half of the trial was held behind closed doors because the judge, Amit Mehta, is deferring to Google on the need for secrecy. This means that the media isn’t able to report on the trial as much as they did during Microsoft’s antitrust trial 25 years ago.

THE STATE OF ASYNC RUST: RUNTIMES

Async Rust is not yet perfect. For example, libraries still need to be written against individual runtimes, which means that async Rust code needs to be written in a runtime-agnostic fashion. This makes the code more verbose and forces it to handle more edge cases.

YOU CAN NOW PROMPT CHATGPT WITH PICTURES AND VOICE COMMANDS

ChatGPT Plus users will soon be able to have voice conversations with ChatGPT and show images to it.

ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE

Dr. Rich Sutton, a distinguished research scientist, has left DeepMind to join John Carmack’s Keen Technologies in order to work on AGI.

PIXEL 8 LEAK PROMISES 7 YEARS OF OS UPDATES

Google has updated its policy of 3 years of OS updates to 7 years of OS updates.

TESLA’S OPTIMUS ROBOT CAN NOW SORT OBJECTS AUTONOMOUSLY

Tesla's Optimus robot can now sort objects on its own using its end-to-end trained neural network. The company shared a video showing the robot self-calibrating and physically sorting colored blocks into trays. The robot is able to adapt and adjust to its environment dynamically. Tesla is encouraging people to come and work with the company to help develop Optimus. The video is available in the article.

VIDEO

A promo video released by Google shows off the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro from all angles. The devices are set to launch on October 4. The Pixel 8 line seems to focus on new camera features. The Pixel 8 Pro will have new camera features, including Pro controls, Real Tone, Night Sight, Astrophotography, Super Res Zoom, and the ability to swap faces in an image. A list of the complete camera specifications for both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro is available in the article.

HERE’S WHY IT MATTERS

A capsule containing material from an asteroid was released from a passing spacecraft and retrieved by NASA this morning. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected several hundred grams of asteroid material. The capsule will be processed to prevent any contamination before it can be opened. NASA hopes to investigate the asteroid material to discover whether the basic building blocks of life were formed on ancient asteroid bodies and delivered to Earth from outer space.

IDENTIFIED

A creature discovered off the coast of Okinawa, Japan in 2018 left biologists baffled as it wasn't like anything else they've seen before. The creature has now been determined to be a type of parasitic flatworm. It is made up of two forms of the parasite that cooperate together. This article tells the story of how scientists identified the creature. Pictures of the flatworm are available.

SOLVING THE ENGINEERING STRATEGY CRISIS

This article discusses a unified theory of Engineering strategy. It focuses on how individuals can drive strategy even if they are not the company's CTO. The article discusses what engineering strategies are, why some strategies are more effective than others, why written strategy is powerful, and how to drive engineering strategy as an individual. Solving the engineering strategy crisis only requires two straightforward steps: write down the existing strategy and then improve the quality of the strategy.

CLOUDNATIVEPG

CloudNativePG is an operator designed to manage PostgreSQL workloads on any supported Kubernetes cluster running in private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. It leverages Kubernetes by extending its controller and defining all the actions that a good database administrator would normally do when managing a highly available PostgreSQL database cluster. CloudNativePG covers the full life cycle of a PostgreSQL database cluster with a primary/standby architecture using native streaming replication.

UNITY APOLOGIZES TO DEVS, REVEALS UPDATED RUNTIME FEE POLICY

Unity's runtime fee will no longer apply to games built on Unity Personal. It will only apply to developers on the Pro and Enterprise plans using the next LTS version of Unity arriving in 2024. The fee will not apply to games made with previous versions of Unity unless they are upgraded to the next version of Unity. Games with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be exempt from the fee.

A STRANGE SIGN OF THE TIMES

The FBI seized stolen credentials for 80 million accounts from a darknet marketplace in April. It decided to work with the owner of data breach notification service 'Have I Been Pwned' to notify people whether their data was part of the seized data. Have I Been Pwned is run by a couple in Australia. This article tells the story of how the service started and why the FBI decided to work with it.

GOING

Many organizations and even a few government institutions have reached out to Shopify to request a Meeting Cost Calculator of their own after the company's success with the tool.

EXPERT CSS: THE CPU HACK

This article discusses how to continually crunch data and reevaluate state using CSS without ever touching JavaScript.

BRITAIN SET TO APPROVE AMENDED MICROSOFT-ACTIVISION DEAL

The amended Microsoft-Activision deal involves the sale of Activision's cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft.

CHOOSE POSTGRES QUEUE TECHNOLOGY

Postgres queue technology is a relatively obscure tech that announces and listens for new jobs and enables row locks.

TO TAME TECH

The Federal Trade Commission has been preparing a complaint against Amazon since at least the start of this year and it will file an antitrust case against the online retailer as soon as Tuesday.

MY SOLOPRENEUR STORY: ZERO TO $45K/MO IN 2 YEARS

The story of how one solopreneur created four successful products and built an audience of 97,000 followers on Twitter to bring in a total revenue of around $45,000 a month in just two years.

META IS BRINGING OUT ‘SASSY CHATBOTS’ FOR YOUNGER USERS

BING TO GAIN A NUMBER OF AI IMPROVEMENTS

SECODA SECURES $14M TO EXPAND ITS DATA CATALOGING PLATFORM

Researchers have introduced TCOVIS, an online video instance segmentation technique that prioritizes temporal consistency.

EMOTION-AWARE PROSODIC PHRASING FOR NATURAL TEXT-TO-SPEECH RENDERING

A NEW MODEL FOR GENERATING REALISTIC BODY SHAPES AND POSES

This paper proposes a model that can create super-realistic virtual humans in any pose you can think of. This is the first model of its kind trained only on fake data, but it can still make highly accurate human shapes that could be useful for science and video games.

This repository introduces FGFusion, a new method that combines data from cameras and Lidars in a detailed way for self-driving cars. Instead of just using high-level details, it captures both big-picture and fine details to create a more accurate 3D view of the surroundings.

EFFICIENT ML COURSE

Course on how to do low resource machine learning efficiently at the edge. Lectures and homework included.

FLASH ATTENTION 2 IN HUGGINGFACE TRANSFORMERS

A NEW RESULT THAT UNDERMINES LLMS

DALL-E 3 KILLS PROMPT ENGINEERING

OVERSEAS DERIVATIVES BUSINESS

Coinbase apparently mulled over the idea of purchasing FTX's European arm after FTX’s fall last year. While the talks did not progress extensively, the move highlighted the importance of derivatives in Coinbase's global strategy. As spot trading volumes have declined during the bear market, derivative volumes have risen, particularly in Asia. Coinbase's interest also brought about questions regarding the future of crypto derivatives in Europe, as FTX Europe was the only company offering a type of crypto derivative called perpetual futures.

AS OTHERS DEPART THE US, COINSHARES EXPANDS VIA NEW HEDGE FUND UNIT

Crypto investment firm CoinShares is launching a hedge fund division, CoinShares Hedge Fund Solutions, to cater to US investors, marking the firm's expansion into the country. The unit will be led by Lewis Fellas and offer funds based on Bitcoin and Ethereum. This move comes while other companies have been exiting the US due to its oppositional regulatory stance. CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti sees potential with the product as he has observed increased demand for active digital asset management amid an inflation-driven macro environment.

ERC5564 CONTRACTS FOR STEALTH ADDRESSES ON EVM CHAINS

This developer has open-sourced an EVM chain-based protocol for private payments and transfers of any asset, including ERC20 and ERC721 tokens. The smart contracts aim for a balance between stealth and simplicity. The idea was based on a framework that Vitalik Buterin proposed for stealth addresses. The technology is accessible for developers seeking transaction privacy, leveraging ERC5564, a formal standard for stealth addresses.

INNOVATION

ZeroSync, a Swiss non-profit, is aiming to bring zk proofs to Bitcoin, starting with a zk proof-based light client for the network. Its roadmap includes developing a protocol on top of Bitcoin to increase throughput, allowing for the incorporation of tokens and enhanced privacy. The project, which is funded by grants and is the first to use StarkWare's Cairo programming language outside Ethereum, would require a soft fork in Bitcoin's code. The ZeroSync team is currently exploring options and participating in the community to find the best approach.

ANALYZING ETHEREUM WITH CRYO

This post provides a guide to using Cryo, a flexible user-friendly tool built by Paradigm that enables developers to easily extract blockchain data into multiple formats for analysis. The tool utilizes Rust and Python for data exploration, allowing users to download different datasets like blocks, transactions, and logs. The post offers a walkthrough of how to install Cryo, extract and download Ethereum data, and analyze it using Python libraries.

EXTENDING THE ETHEREUM-EQUIVALENCE DEFINITION

This article examines the concept of Ethereum-equivalence and introduces a layer of advanced definitions. The idea is to identify levels within Ethereum-equivalence, building up on conventional meanings towards a more philosophical alignment. This hierarchy aims to provide a roadmap for rollups and in achieving a full 'Ethereum on Ethereum' structure. The author proposes two further levels within the Ethereum-equivalence hierarchy, providing a comprehensive view of the topic. They also elaborate on what each level offers and the virtues of full Ethereum-equivalence.

THE BURN

NounsDAO is due for an update. This proposal lays out plans to burn any excess ETH held by the treasury. The move would tie the treasury, the Nouns supply, and the auction price together, and encourage the DAO voters to spend the treasury, increase the Noun supply, and raise the auction price. The proposal also suggests a waiting period post-update to allow the DAO to coordinate, potentially setting the first burn date for New Year’s Eve, 2023.

PROGRESSIVE COMPLIANCE

This article from Placeholder explains how the legal and regulatory uncertainties surrounding blockchains and dapps remain key barriers to mass adoption. Many projects aim to achieve "progressive decentralization" to comply with current regulatory frameworks. The primary challenge with this approach lies in accomplishing compliance without compromising foundational principles. The article lays out a parallel concept called “progressive compliance” for companies or protocols whose business models do not make sense to decentralize.

SHIFTS IN PRODUCT DYNAMICS

This blog post highlights some of the shifts in the dynamics of building in web3 that have occurred throughout the bear market. It specifically highlights 5 shifts: velocity being the new constant, the frontier paradox, headless brands, the multi-application flywheel, and putting the audience ahead of the product.

BASE TOKEN NOT 'RULED OUT ENTIRELY,' COINBASE'S PAUL GREWAL SAYS

Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal mentioned at Messari Mainnet that Coinbase has not ruled out issuing a token for its Ethereum L2 Base that launched and gained a great deal of traction throughout the summer.

STRUCTURAL ADVANTAGES FOR INTEGRATED BUILDERS IN MEV-BOOST

This study conducted by Max Resnick and Mallesh Pai explains how integrated builders, due to their speed, dominate CEX/DEX arbitrage, outperforming neutral builders.

CRACKDOWN

Vitalik Buterin was recently interviewed on CNBC, discussing the regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies in the US and how crypto will continue to thrive, especially in developing countries.

USERS

Meta is planning to launch a generative AI chatbot named "Gen AI Personas" aimed at younger users. These chatbots will come in various personas designed to engage young users with colorful behavior.

MACOS SONOMA LAUNCHING THIS WEEK WITH THESE NEW FEATURES

macOS Sonoma is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, September 25 with new features and improvements. These include desktop widgets, game mode, web apps in the dock, new screen savers and wallpapers, Safari profiles, and many more.

FRAMER LAUNCHES ACADEMY

Framer is rolling out a new channel with lessons and courses to help its users master the platform. The content is organized into design, navigation, effects, CMS, and more.

THE AI ERA OF COMPUTING IS STILL IN THE DESIGN PHASE

Chat-based interfaces dominate the AI landscape, but text prompts don't cover the richness of human expression and communication. Tone of voice, posture, and gestures should be considered as inputs, improving the collaboration between algorithms and humans.

GET IT SHIPPED — BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH DEVS

Establishing a good relationship with developers boils down to three essential things — collaboration, communication, and respect. Developers should be involved early in the design process and way before the handover. They should be involved in the design feedback sessions. Designers should be willing to compromise on their designs and ideas.