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THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE

AI will create a future where we will be able to solve almost all problems, but figuring out how we distribute limited resources is an unsolved question.

DOGE REPORTEDLY PLANNING A HACKATHON TO BUILD ‘MEGA API' FOR IRS DATA

Two DOGE staffers, Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, plan to launch a hackathon to build an API that would grant cloud providers easy access to (and export of) IRS data including taxpayer names, addresses, social security numbers, tax returns, and employment information.

AMAZON'S NEW AI AGENT WILL SHOP THIRD-PARTY SITES FOR YOU

Amazon is testing a new AI shopping agent with a subset of users. The 'Buy for Me' feature displays products from other websites and allows users to request to purchase the products without ever leaving the Amazon Shopping app. Amazon's AI shopping agent visits the site and purchases items, filling out users' details automatically. The agent is powered by Amazon's Nova AI models. Amazon says that the feature uses encryption to securely insert users' billing information on third-party sites and that it can't see what users are ordering from outside of its platform.

SPACEX JUST TOOK A BIG STEP TOWARD REUSING STARSHIP'S SUPER HEAVY BOOSTER

SpaceX test-fired a 'flight-proven' Super Heavy booster for the first time on Thursday, paving the way for the rocket to fly again soon. A successful reflight of a Super Heavy booster is an important milestone for the Starship program. SpaceX has recovered three Super Heavy boosters in four attempts. A video of the static fire test is available in the article.

FIRST TOKAMAK COMPONENT INSTALLED IN A COMMERCIAL FUSION PLANT

Commonwealth Fusion recently installed the first component of its tokamak, the cryostat base. Construction is expected to wrap up about a year from now, after which there will be about a year of commissioning the hardware. Fusion experiments are planned for 2027. The company is on track to see plasma well in advance of ITER, a big tokamak that is expected to produce more energy than required to run it.

STARLINER'S FLIGHT TO THE SPACE STATION WAS FAR WILDER THAN MOST OF US THOUGHT

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5 last year. The mission had faced multiple delays before the launch. Starliner lost four thrusters as it flew up toward the International Space Station, requiring Wilmore to take control of the vehicle. Its approach to the space station was risky, but it wasn't safe to come home either. This article contains an interview with Wilmore and Williams where they talk about the experience.

SENIOR DEVELOPER SKILLS IN THE AI AGE: LEVERAGING EXPERIENCE FOR BETTER RESULTS

AI coding assistants, when properly guided, can dramatically enhance development productivity. It is necessary to apply traditional software engineering best practices to this new technology. Developers can harness the power of AI while maintaining code quality and architectural integrity by providing well-structured requirements, implementing appropriate guardrails, and using file-based keyframing. Time-tested practices developed through hard-earned human experience are more valuable than ever in the age of AI-assisted development.

HATCHET

Hatchet is a platform for running background tasks. It distributes functions between sets of workers with minimal configuration or infrastructure. Hatchet has built-in support for chaining complex tasks together into workflows, alerting on failures, making tasks more durable, and viewing tasks on a real-time web dashboard.

AI 2027

The impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will exceed that of the Industrial Revolution. This site presents a scenario of the future informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience, and previous forecasting successes. It tries to be as concrete and qualitative as possible. Looking into the future enables researchers to notice important questions or connections that previously hadn't been considered or appreciated before.

OPENAI, ANTHROPIC TARGET COLLEGE STUDENTS WITH LATEST EDUCATION AI ANNOUNCEMENTS

Anthropic and OpenAI are trying to capture the education market to convert students into users before they graduate and enter the workforce. Both companies rolled out education services within 24 hours of each other. Claude for Education is a specialized version of Claude designed for college students that has a 'learning mode' which guides reasoning rather than provide answers. ChatGPT Plus is free for US and Canadian college students through May.

AWS MCP SERVERS

This repository contains a suite of specialized MCP servers that implement AWS best practices directly to development workflows.

INTEL AND TSMC ARE REPORTEDLY LAUNCHING A JOINT CHIPMAKING VENTURE

The deal involves TSMC sharing some of its chipmaking practices with Intel employees and training them.

TRUMP SAYS TIKTOK DEAL WITHIN REACH, INVOLVES MULTIPLE INVESTORS

It is unclear whether ByteDance or the Chinese government have been involved in discussions on the sale.

THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IS THE SINGLE BIGGEST QUESTION WE THINK ABOUT IN BUILDING DEVIN

Devin 2.0 allows users to delegate to multiple agents in parallel.

VECTOR SETS ARE PART OF REDIS

Vector sets are a data type similar to Sorted Sets that allows developers to add and remove elements from vectors the Redis way.

Editor now - it's free!

AMAZON SAID TO MAKE A BID TO BUY TIKTOK IN THE U.S.

Amazon has put in a last-minute bid to acquire TikTok. The various parties who have been involved in the talks do not appear to be taking Amazon's bid seriously. Neither company has spoken publicly about the bid. Despite multiple bids, TikTok has maintained that it is not for sale, partly because the Chinese government would block a deal.

NINTENDO SWITCH 2 DETAILS: PRICE, SCREEN SIZE, CONTROLLERS, MICROPHONE CHAT, AND GAMES

The Nintendo Switch 2 will be available in stores on June 5 for $449.99. It will be bigger and faster than the original Switch, which has sold 150 million units since its release. Launch titles include Mario Kart World and Street Fighter 6. Nintendo stock is up nearly 28% so far this year in anticipation of the console's release.

AMAZON TO LAUNCH FIRST BATCH OF KUIPER SATELLITES ON APRIL 9

Amazon's Kuiper internet satellites are scheduled to take off on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on April 9 at 12 PM ET. Project Kuiper, which launched in 2019, aims to provide broadband internet from a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. Amazon completed the first test of its service in October 2023 and was expected to set its first operational satellites aloft last year, but the launch was delayed in favor of two US Space Force missions. Amazon is marketing Kuiper to consumers who lack adequate access to broadband internet, along with governments and companies.

NEURALINK RECRUITS GLOBALLY FOR RESEARCH ON BRAIN IMPLANTS

Neuralink is looking for patients worldwide to participate in research on its brain implant. The company has invited people with quadriplegia to sign up for its patient registry. Neuralink has implanted its device in three patients so far. The device allows people to use their thoughts to control computers.

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PICO.SH

pico.sh allows users to publish content without needing to install anything. The platform enables developers to rapidly probate type on the web and share their projects with the world. It can host static sites and public web services, stream data between computers, serve data using SSH, and more. pico.sh was designed to be like a hacker lab where developers can experiment with new ways to interact with the web.

GREPPING LOGS REMAINS TERRIBLE

Databases were created because scanning through raw data over and over again was inefficient and did not scale. This applies to logs just as much as any other kind of data. Programs should output to a log-ready database - this will make querying them require less computing power and RAM and take less time. It also enables aggregations, computations, build stats, and many other database functionalities.

THE AFFIDAVIT OF A RIPPLING EMPLOYEE CAUGHT SPYING FOR DEEL READS LIKE A MOVIE

According to an affidavit filed by Rippling, a workforce management platform, which accuses rival Deel of alleged spying, Keith O'Brien was hired by Deel to spy on Rippling after O'Brien had pitched Deel on working together on a payroll consulting business. O'Brien was working at Rippling at the time and had planned to quit to work full-time on the consulting business, but Deel offered to pay him €5,000 per month in crypto, with the first payment at US$6,000, to turn over information on sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, employee names, and more. The alleged spying took place over four months.

GOOGLE SHAKES UP GEMINI LEADERSHIP, GOOGLE LABS HEAD TAKING THE REINS

Longtime Googler Sissie Hsiao will step down from her role of leading the Gemini team effective immediately and be replaced by Josh Woodward, who currently leads Google Labs. The change is aimed at sharpening Google's focus on the next evolution of the Gemini app. Woodward will remain in charge of Google Labs while leading the Gemini team. Hsiao has opted to take some time off before returning to Google in a new role.

WIKIPEDIA'S OVERLORDS BEMOAN AI BOT BANDWIDTH BURDEN

The Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wikipedia and similar projects, says that the bandwidth spent serving requests for multimedia files has increased by 50% since January 2024, largely due to automated programs that scrape the Wikimedia Commons image catalog to feed images to AI models.

OPENAI'S O3 MODEL MIGHT BE COSTLIER TO RUN THAN ORIGINALLY ESTIMATED

The Arc Prize Foundation, which maintains and administers ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, estimates that it costs around $30,000 for the best-performing configuration of o3 to solve a single ARC-AGI problem.

‘TIKTOK AMERICA' IS TRUMP'S NEW PROPOSAL FOR SAVING TIKTOK, PER REPORT

President Donald Trump has a plan for a new company called TikTok America that would be 50% owned by new US investors and license TikTok's algorithm from ByteDance.

HOW TRUMP COULD MAKE LARRY ELLISON THE NEXT MEDIA MOGUL

Larry Ellison, who co-founded database company Oracle, appears to be planning to grow his corporate empire, as Oracle keeps emerging as a possible bidder for TikTok.

ACTUALLY RUN JAVASCRIPT EVERYWHERE

Bare allows developers to run JavaScript everywhere, making servers obsolete.

BILL GATES PUBLISHES ORIGINAL MICROSOFT SOURCE CODE IN A BLOG POST

Bill Gates and his friends coded day and night for two months to create software that they said already existed.

HITRUST, ISO 27001, and more

And with Vanta continuously monitoring your security posture, your team can focus on growth, stay ahead of evolving regulations, and close deals in a fraction of the time.

VISA OFFERS APPLE ROUGHLY $100 MILLION TO TAKE OVER CREDIT CARD FROM MASTERCARD

Visa has offered Apple around $100 million for its credit card. Goldman Sachs is exiting the consumer lending world, leaving Apple's card up for grabs. Apple is increasingly becoming the epicenter of many consumers' daily payments and other financial habits - the network that locks in this deal is expected to stay close to Apple's future payments efforts. The Apple credit card program has roughly $20 billion in balances.

TRUMP TO CONSIDER FINAL TIKTOK PROPOSAL WEDNESDAY, SOURCES SAY

A final proposal for TikTok will be issued today. Trump's administration is finalizing plans for potential investors. ByteDance has until Saturday to sell its stake in TikTok or potentially face a ban in the US market. Trump says there is a lot of interest in the deal and that the final decision will be his to make.

SPACEX LAUNCHES FRAM2, THE FIRST CREWED SPACEFLIGHT TO EXPLORE EARTH'S POLAR REGIONS

The Fram2 private crewed mission launched successfully on March 31 on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is the first human spaceflight to explore the Earth's polar regions. It will fly from the North to the South Pole around every 46 minutes over three to five days. The mission is expected to provide a healthy amount of footage of the polar regions - the first views are available in the article. The crew will also conduct 22 experiments designed to better understand human health in space.

HOW META'S UPCOMING $1,000+ SMART GLASSES WITH A SCREEN WILL WORK

Meta is working on a deluxe version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses. It plans to include hand-gesture controls and a screen for displaying photos and apps. The first glasses with a screen will be introduced as early as the end of this year at a price of over $1,000 - it may cost as much as $1,400. The Ray-Ban Meta Glasses have been a surprise hit - Meta plans to continue selling the device as its popularity will push users towards the higher-end models.

THE PRAGMATIC OPEN SOURCE CONTRIBUTOR

The pragmatic open source contributor is motivated by their drive to fix tooling that isn't enabling them to do the best job they can. That mindset influences all aspects of the contribution process. This article discusses how to contribute to open source projects once you have identified a potential contribution. Working on open source technology can provide developers with a great opportunity to spot issues and areas of improvement that can benefit everyone.

THE CASE AGAINST CONVERSATIONAL INTERFACES

Natural language is a slow method of data transfer and it isn't the best method to interact with computers. It takes much longer to say 'What's the weather like today?' than to simply tap on the weather app icon on a device. While the quality of large language model output is improving at an astonishing rate, the input modality is a step backwards from what we already have. We shouldn't have to describe a desired action using natural language when we could simply press a button or keyboard shortcut. The technology should instead complement existing methods, acting as an additional input mechanism that increases the bandwidth of data transfer to make human-computer interaction feel effortless.

DEEPMIND IS HOLDING BACK RELEASE OF AI RESEARCH TO GIVE GOOGLE AN EDGE

DeepMind has introduced a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy to make it harder to publish studies about its work on AI. It has been most reluctant to share papers that reveal innovations that could be exploited by competitors or research that casts Google's Gemini model in a negative light. This is a significant shift for the company, which has long prided itself on its reputation for releasing groundbreaking papers. The company still publishes hundreds of papers each year and is among the largest contributors to major AI conferences.

TECH'S BIG ANXIETY: FEWER JOBS, LOWER PAY, MORE AI

Until recently, there were abundant jobs in tech. Today, an increasing number of people are stuck in job-search purgatory. AI is transforming the job market - some companies have publicly stated that they do not plan to hire engineers this year due to AI. Workers are being pushed harder to keep what they have. Students are advised to learn how to use AI tools and look for jobs at smaller companies - many tend to underestimate how applicable and transferable their skills are.

DEBTS, TECH AND OTHERWISE

There are a lot of different types of debt that organizations can incur - it's inadvertent/reckless debt that causes the most angst.

GOOGLE PIXEL 10 PRO FOLD RENDERS

Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold should launch in August with the rest of the Pixel 10 series.

GRAFT

Graft is a transactional page storage engine optimized for scale and cost over latency that supports lazy partial replication to the edge.

“RETINA” IS NOT A STATIC PPI

'Retina' - which is a marketing term rather than a scientific one - refers to displays with pixels so small that someone using the screen at a typical viewing distance won't be able to make out the individual pixels.

SSLYZE

SSLyze is an SSL/TLS scanning tool and Python library that can analyze SSL/TLS configurations to ensure strong encryption settings and check servers against known TLS vulnerabilities.

META'S HEAD OF AI RESEARCH ANNOUNCES DEPARTURE

Joelle Pineau, Meta's vice president of AI research, will leave the company on May 30.