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META'S NEW LIGHTWEIGHT AR PROTOTYPE SHOWS A FUTURE BEYOND BULKY VR HEADSETS

Mark Zuckerberg revealed a prototype of Meta's Orion AR glasses at this year's Meta Connect keynote. While the 100g pair of see-through augmented-reality glasses won't likely be ready for consumer release anytime soon, the demo represents a new vision of lightweight, wide-ranging, see-through smart glasses. Getting the glasses down to a weight of 100 grams was a challenge - a small amount of processing is done in a 'small puck' that connects wirelessly to the glasses. The glasses use tiny projectors embedded into the arms that shoot light into specially designed waveguides instead of a screen, creating a holographic display that allows for a 70-degree field of view. Pictures and more details are available in the article.

OPENAI CONSIDERING RESTRUCTURING TO FOR-PROFIT, CTO MIRA MURATI AND TWO TOP RESEARCH EXECS DEPART

OpenAI's board is considering plans to restructure itself into a for-profit business while still retaining its non-profit segment as a separate entity. The structure will make investing more straightforward and make it easier for OpenAI employees to realize liquidity. OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati is leaving the company after six and a half years. Research chief Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, a research vice-president, are also departing the company.

NASA SPACECRAFT TO PROBE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE IN EUROPA'S SALTY OCEAN

Jupiter's moon Europa possibly contains a liquid saltwater ocean that may be potentially as welcoming to life as Earth's. In 2030, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will swoop past the moon in a series of nearly 50 flybys to remotely probe the ocean in hopes of finding a chemistry that could support life. It may even be capable of detecting microbes directly. It will be a habitability mission rather than a life search mission. If Europa is found to be habitable to life, it could fundamentally change the definition of a habitable zone around a star as it would mean that all that is required for life is ice and gravitational tides.

'WORLD-FIRST' INDOOR VERTICAL FARM TO PRODUCE 4M POUNDS OF BERRIES A YEAR

The world's first farm to grow indoor, vertically farmed berries at scale is opening in Richmond, VA. The farm is designed to produce more than four million pounds of strawberries while using a fraction of the land needed for traditional strawberry production. It will not be subject to seasonal and environmental factors that limit yield. The company aims for its strawberries to be on grocery store shelves by early 2025.

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WEBJSX

WebJSX is a minimal library for building web applications with JSX and Web Components. It provides two core functions: createElement, which creates virtual DOM elements using JSX, and applyDiff, which efficiently applies changes to the real DOM by comparing virtual nodes. Examples and an API reference are available.

SUMMARY OF ILYA SUTSKEVERS AI READING LIST

A reading list shared on X earlier this year went somewhat viral due to claims that it was originally compiled by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and part of onboarding at OpenAI. The combined contents of this list amount to about 300,000 words of dense, technical text that requires a decent investment in time and energy for self-study. This post provides a condensed and structured summary of the readings to capture the essential key points, context, and perspective gained, free of mathematical notation. The list contains 27 reading items - papers, blog posts, courses, one dissertation, and two book chapters - all originally dating from 1993 to 2020.

WHY MARK ZUCKERBERG THINKS AR GLASSES WILL REPLACE YOUR PHONE

This is an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where the CEO discusses new developments in VR, AI, and the fast-growing world of consumer smart glasses. It also includes a bit with Verge's deputy editor Alex Heath that talks about the Orion smart glasses demo he experienced at Meta's headquarters, some of the context around Meta's AR efforts, and how Zuckerberg is approaching his reputation as a leader and the public perception of Meta as a whole. A link to the full podcast is available.

91% OF POLLED AMAZON STAFF UNHAPPY WITH RETURN-TO-OFFICE, 3-IN-4 WANT TO JUMP SHIP

A staff poll suggests that Amazon's recent return-to-office mandate has not gone down well. Of the over 2,500 Amazon employees polled, only nine percent said they were happy with the order. 73 percent are now considering moving jobs. Amazon is reportedly having trouble hiring staff since the policy was announced, with employees at other companies agreeing that the policy meant Amazon was off their list of potential employees.

OPENAI TO REMOVE NON-PROFIT CONTROL AND GIVE SAM ALTMAN EQUITY

The plan, if approved, will allow for the OpenAI non-profit to continue to exist and own a minority stake in the for-profit company.

NIST PROPOSES BARRING SOME OF THE MOST NONSENSICAL PASSWORD RULES

Some of the most vexing password requirements include mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and the use of security questions.

DISABLING SCHEDULED DEPENDENCY UPDATES

Scheduled updates allow dependency updates and issues to be addressed while continuing to work with maintained versions, but they can create a lot of noise.

WORDPRESS FILES TO TRADEMARK ‘MANAGED WORDPRESS' & ‘HOSTED WORDPRESS'

If the trademarks are approved, the commercial use of these terms by web hosts and plugins without prior permission will be limited.

ELIMINATING MEMORY SAFETY VULNERABILITIES AT THE SOURCE

Safe Coding for new code quickly reduces the overall security risk of a code base while being scalable and cost-effective.

ASK HN: PLATFORM FOR 11 YEAR OLD TO CREATE VIDEO GAMES? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Game design and programming are separate skills - there are tools for learning game design without focusing on programming, allowing students to express their ideas with less friction.

LLAMA 3.2: MULTIMODAL

Meta has released a new suite of Llama models with vision capabilities that includes a 1B, 3B, and several new Multimodal models.

MIRA LEAVING OPENAI

OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati is stepping away from her role at the company to give herself space to pursue different creative paths.

MOLMO OPEN SOURCE MULTIMODAL MODEL

Allen AI has released a fully open multimodal model that outperforms many open and closed vision language models. The release includes the model's dataset and training regime.

MASKBIT: EMBEDDING-FREE IMAGE GENERATION VIA BIT TOKENS

This study introduces two key advancements in image generation: a modernized VQGAN model that enhances accessibility and performance and a novel embedding-free generation network using bit tokens. These improvements led to state-of-the-art results on the ImageNet benchmark, achieving an FID of 1.52 with a compact 305M parameter model.

COMIC STORY UNDERSTANDING

Researchers propose a pipeline using Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for generating detailed, grounded captions that link comic elements and their relationships to enhance comic analysis.

EXPLORING PARALLEL STRATEGIES WITH JAX

This post explores ways to parallelize language models using the Jax library.

TIME MOE

Time MoE is a Mixture of Experts model that reaches Billion Scale on time series prediction tasks.

LONG TEXT GENERATION WITH HELLOBENCH

HelloBench is a benchmark that evaluates LLMs across five long text generation tasks based on Bloom's Taxonomy.

AI SAFETY IS A GLOBAL PUBLIC GOOD

Top AI scientists from China and the West held an International Dialogue on AI Safety, reaching a consensus on AI governance. Their recommendations include creating emergency preparedness institutions, establishing a Safety Assurance Framework, and funding independent AI safety research. The group stresses the urgent need for global cooperation to manage advanced AI risks.

SAKANA, STRAWBERRY, AND SCARY AI

A Japanese startup created "Sakana," an AI scientist that generates hypotheses, codes, and writes papers, but its output is largely trivial and occasionally fabricated. OpenAI's "Strawberry" AI demonstrated hacking capabilities within a poorly configured sandbox, highlighting the potential for instrumental convergence and resource-seeking behaviors and prompting a reevaluation of what constitutes true AI advancement. This article reflects on whether AI milestones, such as writing scientific papers and hacking, genuinely indicate intelligence or if they're just sophisticated mimicry.

AMAZON LAUNCHES AMELIA, A GENERATIVE AI-POWERED ASSISTANT FOR THIRD-PARTY SELLERS

Amazon has announced Project Amelia, a generative AI assistant for independent sellers on its platform. Built using Amazon's Bedrock, Amelia offers personalized insights, sales data, and operational support to enhance seller productivity. Currently in beta for select U.S. sellers, it will expand to more users and countries soon.

first day of activity. Start with just an email account

YOUTUBE SHORTS TO INTEGRATE VEO, GOOGLE'S AI VIDEO MODEL

YouTube has announced the integration of Google DeepMind's AI video generation model, Veo, into YouTube Shorts, allowing creators to generate high-quality backgrounds and six-second clips.

CAN AI PREDICT WHEN YOU'RE ABOUT TO DIE? NEW CANADIAN TECH PREVENTS UNEXPECTED HOSPITAL DEATHS, STUDY FINDS

St. Michael's Hospital's AI-based early warning system, Chartwatch, significantly reduced unexpected deaths by 26% among patients in a recent study.

AMAZON RELEASES A VIDEO GENERATOR - BUT ONLY FOR ADS

Amazon has launched an AI-powered Video Generator for advertisers that creates product videos from single images.

AI AGENTS INVADE OBSERVABILITY: SNAKE OIL OR THE FUTURE OF SRE?

Advances in AI are poised to transform the observability business with "agentic" generative AI models that can take actions based on real-world data.

PAYPAL ENABLES BUSINESS ACCOUNTS TO BUY, HOLD, AND SELL CRYPTOCURRENCY

PayPal has extended cryptocurrency capabilities to U.S. business accounts, allowing merchants to buy, hold, and sell crypto directly through their PayPal accounts, with external transfers to third-party wallets also supported. This move builds on PayPal's ongoing efforts to expand digital currency utility, including the launch of its PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin.

VISA TO HELP BANKS TEST TOKENIZED ASSETS AND SMART CONTRACTS

Visa is launching a platform to help banks test tokenized assets and smart contracts, advancing the integration of real-world assets on blockchains. This move supports the growing trend of tokenization in finance, offering banks the tools to issue fiat-backed tokens in a regulated manner.

AUTOMATED ACCOUNT TRANSFERS

Privy has improved its authentication systems to allow users to merge multiple accounts (e.g., MetaMask and Google) into a single account, addressing a common integration challenge faced by developers. This feature improves UX by simplifying account management and maintaining data integrity.

ONCHAINKIT INTRODUCES UPGRADED SWAP

Onchain Kit's upgraded swap feature now supports low liquidity tokens on Base and includes new features like configurable max slippage, USD values for tokens, one-click swaps with atomic batching, and gasless swaps. The update also introduces the ability for apps to charge a fee on user token swaps, providing developers with new revenue models.

AR and VR (no headsets needed) technologies. Become an investor

COMPLETE GUIDE TO SUI

Sui has emerged as a rapidly growing L1 blockchain, distinguished by its unique consensus design that separates the mempool from consensus to enable high scalability and low latency. Its implementation of the Move programming language promotes more complex asset ownership structures and creative applications in gaming and other verticals. With a TVL of $800 million, features like zkLogin, and Sui Play gaming hardware, the chain is positioning itself as a disruptive force.

TOP HABITS TO STAY AHEAD IN CRYPTO

This post outlines 14 habits for success in crypto trading, emphasizing disciplined approaches to price checking, strategy development, and emotional control. Key recommendations include avoiding impulsive decisions, developing clear trading indicators, and embracing market discomfort. It also highlights the myth of diversification in crypto and notes that the entire market is still highly speculative.

INSIDE THE BIDEN ADMIN'S PLOT TO DESTROY SILVERGATE AND DEBANK CRYPTO FOR GOOD

New evidence suggests the Biden administration pressured regulators to target crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank, contributing to its downfall as part of a broader effort to "debank" the crypto industry. Allegations include political interference, such as capping crypto deposits, which accelerated the bank's collapse and fueled the 2023 regional banking crisis.

THE GREAT RETURN OF DEFI

The crypto industry is witnessing a potential DeFi renaissance, echoing the 2020 “DeFi Summer” but with more mature protocols and institutional involvement. Improvements include greater scalability, new use cases like interest derivatives markets and real-world assets, and a growth in total value locked to $118 billion in June 2024. Increased institutional adoption, exemplified by BlackRock's tokenized fund and PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, along with an expected Federal Reserve easing cycle, suggest a favorable environment for DeFi growth.

FANTASYTOP HAS GREAT SEPTEMBER

Fantasy Top has seen more sustainable traction with 77 ETH (~$200k) in inflows from September 1 to 23, averaging about 23 ETH ($60k) in weekly inflows as it expands into new games like Thematic Tactics.

WALLETS ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE WALLETS

Passkey-based wallets significantly simplify wallet creation and management through familiar authentication methods like biometrics and email logins.

ANDRE CRONJE INVITES BUILDERS TO SONIC

New evidence suggests the Biden administration pressured regulators to target crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank, contributing to its downfall as part of a broader effort to "debank" the crypto industry.

HAMSTER KOMBAT TEASES TOKEN BUYBACK, NFTS, AND LAUNCH OF WEB APP AHEAD OF AIRDROP

Hamster Kombat has outlined a roadmap that includes potential token buybacks, the launch of a mobile "progressive web app" (PWA), and the integration of NFTs as in-game assets.