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WAVE TERMINAL

WaveTerm is an open-source, cross-platform terminal that integrates CLI functionality with graphical widgets, including a file browser, editor, web browser, and AI chat, aiming to bridge the gap between CLI and GUI applications.

CYPHERNETES

Cyphernetes is a Kubernetes query language that uses a graph-based approach that simplifies CRUD operations with easy syntax and interactive visualization.

FUN

fun provides a local development runtime for serverless functions. It supports various runtimes (Node.js, Python, and Go) and closely mimicks the AWS Lambda environment. fun was created by Vercel.

COMPUTING INSIDE AN AI

This author proposes a shift in how we interact with AI, moving from the current "model-as-person" metaphor to a "model-as-computer" approach. The approach would involve AI-generating GUIs similar to modern apps, with buttons, sliders, and visual outputs for easier interaction. The "model-as-person" method is reliant on textual conversation, and is slow and inefficient for complex tasks.

SHOULD YOU DITCH SPARK FOR DUCKDB OR POLARS?

A performance benchmark compared Spark, DuckDB, and Polars for typical lakehouse data engineering tasks. This author found that Spark's performance scaled better with increased compute resources than DuckDB and Polars, which experienced out-of-memory errors at lower core counts. While DuckDB and Polars were great at ad-hoc queries, Spark was very competitive for larger ELT processes.

CSS WRAPPED 2024

CSS Wrapped 2024 highlights seventeen new CSS features launched in Chrome and the web platform in 2024, including improvements to animations, scrollbars, view transitions, and developer experience features like `@property` and `light-dark()`.

PROGRAMMERS WANT FLOW. WHEN PROGRAMMING, LIGHT TURNS RED

This article goes over a "FlowLight" system that uses Emacs Lisp and a CircuitPython-powered Adafruit MagTag to indicate whether a dev is in a state of flow or not by changing colors on an LED light.

WORKING WITH ENGINEERS THAT FOCUS ON DOING FANCY SH*T (REDDIT THREAD)

A software engineer at a fast-paced startup is frustrated by a colleague who constantly introduces unnecessary new technologies, leading to discussions about the need for a clearer engineering strategy and better team communication.

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GOOGLE STEPS INTO “EXTENDED REALITY” ONCE AGAIN WITH ANDROID XR

Android XR is a mixed-reality operating system that will power future headsets and glasses. The first headset powered by the OS will be Project Moohan, a mixed-reality headset built by Samsung available for purchase next year. Project Moohan seems to be aimed at the same use purposes as the Apple Vision Pro. Android XR is available for developers now.

IOS 18.2 REVIEW: THE AI APPLE PROMISED US

iOS 18.2 introduces several long-awaited Apple Intelligence tools. These features require an iPhone 15 Pro or the latest iPhone 16 models. This article looks at the new features, which include ChatGPT integration, emoji generation, and more. Examples of emojis generated by the new Genmoji feature are available in the article.

WAYMO'S MARKET SHARE IS NOW EQUAL TO LYFT WITHIN SF

When Waymo launched in August last year, Uber and Lyft were at 66% and 34% market share in San Francisco. 15 months later, Waymo is at 22% market share, the same as Lyft, while Uber sits at 55%. Waymo's wait times are longer than Uber and Lyft because the company doesn't have enough cars on the road. It's possible that Waymo's market share will climb even faster as it puts more cars on the road and reduces wait times to be in line with its competition.

THOSE DESIGNER BABIES EVERYONE IS FREAKING OUT ABOUT – IT'S NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN

Geneticists cannot read the genetic code and know who will be about average in intelligence and athleticism. Traits and diseases that result from multiple genes and lifestyle factors cannot be predicted using just DNA. Designer babies aren't possible now and will unlikely be possible in the future. The creation of designer babies is not limited by technology, but by biology.

WAVE TERMINAL

Wave Terminal can launch graphical widgets that are controlled and integrated directly with the CLI. It makes it easy to access the web from the CLI. Wave Terminal features a base terminal, directory browser, file previews, a graphical editor, a web browser, and integrated AI chat.

HARVARD AND GOOGLE TO RELEASE 1 MILLION PUBLIC-DOMAIN BOOKS AS AI TRAINING DATASET

Harvard University plans to release a dataset that includes around one million public-domain books that are no longer copyright-protected due to their age. The dataset's release is aimed at leveling the playing field in the AI industry, allowing research labs and AI startups to access a huge dataset to train large language models. It is unclear when or how the dataset will be released.

NETFLIX'S EXTRAORDINARY PARENTAL LEAVE WAS PART OF ITS CULTURE. THAT'S OVER

Netflix made headlines nearly a decade ago when it pledged to give new parents unlimited time off in their child's first year. More staffers than expected took full advantage of the benefit, which Netflix found unsustainable. The company has spent the last few years walking back the policy. Netflix's new mindset of cost-consciousness has aided its recovery from a sluggish period. The long-term risk for Netflix is that the characteristics that made its workplace distinct will erode, making it harder to attract and retain talent.

I SAW GOOGLE'S PLAN TO PUT ANDROID ON YOUR FACE

This article details an experience with Samsung's Project Moohan, the first device to run Android XR. The experience of using its UI feels similar to that of the Apple Vision Pro's, but Google-flavored. Google believes that Gemini will help Android XR crack the augmented reality puzzle. Video demos from Google are available in the article.

EV WILLIAMS WAS LONELY. HE DOESN'T WANT YOU TO BE

Mozi is an app aimed at helping people foster in-person connections with their social circle by letting people tell their friends about any upcoming plans that may overlap.

ELON MUSK'S STARBASE IS TRYING TO BECOME A REAL CITY

Starbase is hoping to incorporate as a town to streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world-class place to live.

EUROPEAN AMBITION

Europe could create the most consequential companies of the next generation, but it needs increased investment or friendlier regulations.

EPIC GAMES' APP STORE WILL BE PREINSTALLED ON MILLIONS OF ANDROID PHONES

Epic Games has struck a deal with Telefónica to have its mobile store pre-installed on compatible Android devices.

INTEL SAYS IT'S AN OPEN QUESTION WHETHER TO BREAK UP COMPANY

Intel's next leader will decide on whether the company will separate its factory and product-development divisions.

ANTHROPIC'S 3.5 HAIKU MODEL COMES TO CLAUDE USERS

Claude 3.5 Haiku is now available in Claude on the web and mobile.

$1M K PRIZE LAUNCHES

Andy Konwinski has launched a new prize for an open source AI agent that can get 90% on a private contamination free SWE agent benchmark. The competition is hosted on Kaggle and runs for the next 3 months.

OPENAI INTRODUCES ADVANCED VIDEO MODE

OpenAI's 6th announcement day introduces video in advanced voice mode, allowing users to share their live videos and screens with ChatGPT.

AI'S ROLE IN SAFEGUARDING 2024 ELECTIONS

Anthropic discusses how AI technologies can be deployed to ensure the integrity of the 2024 elections, focusing on detecting disinformation and enhancing cybersecurity.

STYLIZE YOUR VIDEO WITH ARTISTIC GENERATION AND TRANSLATION

Surprisingly robust video style transfer method that maintains strong consistency over time and has a diverse range of available styles prompted via text.

ENHANCING TEXT REPRESENTATION WITH CONTRASTIVE LEARNING

This research explores how contrastive learning techniques can improve text representation models, demonstrating superior performance in various NLP benchmarks.

HIERARCHICAL TRANSFORMERS

The paper presents a novel hierarchical transformer model designed for long-context understanding, offering efficiency gains over traditional transformers in processing extensive text or data.

LAION-SG: AN ENHANCED LARGE-SCALE DATASET

This work improves upon LAION Aesthetics dataset by adding structured prompting information. This can be used as a dataset for improved training of multimodal generative models.

BROWSERGYM

An open toolkit for accelerating browser based agentic research. It includes a unified interface and a number of important tasks. It also provides a way to screenshot the output from the browser.

LIGHTWEIGHT FINE-TUNING FOR MULTILINGUAL TASKS

A framework that simplifies fine-tuning for multilingual NLP models, enabling faster and more efficient adaptation across languages.

GPT-POWERED DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK

GPD is a new framework leveraging GPT models to streamline software development tasks, including code generation and debugging, with a focus on user-friendly workflows.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE NEW AMAZON NOVA LLMS

Amazon unveiled the Nova family of LLMs at AWS re:Invent, featuring competitive pricing and multimodal capabilities like handling images, video, and PDFs. The Nova series, particularly Nova Micro, is extremely cost-effective, undercutting Google's Gemini models while offering large context handling. With Nova's multimodal advancements, Amazon positions itself as a strong competitor in the AI landscape.

GOOGLE'S MODEL OUTPERFORMS TOP WEATHER FORECAST SYSTEMS

The new GenCast AI model advances weather forecasting by using high-resolution ensemble predictions to provide faster and more accurate forecasts up to 15 days ahead.

GOOGLE AI SHARES TIPS FOR SMARTER TOOLS

Google shares practical tips and best practices for integrating AI into daily workflows.

SUMMARIZATION TOOL FOR COMPRESSED RECAPS

A tool for generating compressed recaps using cutting-edge summarization techniques, aimed at reducing reading time without sacrificing key content.

OPENAI CONSIDERS DITCHING PROVISION THAT WOULD PREVENT AGI FROM BEING USED FOR COMMERCIAL GAIN

OpenAI might remove a provision blocking Microsoft from its advanced tech if AGI is achieved.

GRAYSCALE LAUNCHES LIDO, OPTIMISM INVESTMENT FUNDS

Grayscale Investments has launched two new single-asset funds for Lido's LDO and Optimism's OP tokens, offering exposure to Ethereum's largest liquid staking protocol (LDO) and a popular layer-2 scaling solution (OP). This expansion adds to Grayscale's growing suite of crypto investment products, highlighting its focus on protocols that improve Ethereum's scalability, security, and adoption within the DeFi ecosystem.

ETHEREUM HEADED TO $5K AS ACTIVITY, INSTITUTIONAL DEMAND GROWS

Crypto analysts predict Ethereum could reach $5,000, driven by strong institutional demand evidenced by $2 billion in cumulative ETF inflows and increased network activity averaging 6.5-7.5 million daily transactions. The analysts point to bullish fundamentals including growing ETH burns since September, total value locked reaching $77 billion (led by Lido, Aave, and EigenLayer), and renewed market optimism following the U.S. presidential election results, with Trump's potential crypto-friendly policies sparking hopes for a DeFi sector revival.

ROYCO MAINNET BETA IS LIVE

Royco Protocol has introduced a new DeFi primitive called Incentivized Action Markets (IAMs), designed to create efficient markets for onchain transactions by allowing anyone to offer and negotiate incentives for specific blockchain actions. The protocol addresses current inefficiencies in token incentive distributions, citing examples like Ethereum's $4B+ staking rewards and EigenLayer's 15% token distribution, by enabling price discovery and broader market participation. Various lending markets have already released Royco vaults on Base, Arbitrum, and Ethereum.

COW SWAP LAUNCHING ON BASE

CoW DAO has launched its main product, CoW Swap, on Base, bringing gasless trading, MEV protection, and advanced order types to Base users while seamlessly integrating with its existing ecosystem. This deployment positions CoW DAO as a foundational player in Base's growing ecosystem and sets the stage for further innovations like CoW AMM, improving the DeFi experience for both traders and developers.

PRIMER ON ETH GAS LIMIT RAISE

The Ethereum gas limit is directly controlled by validators, who vote with each block to raise or lower it, bypassing the formal EIP process. Recently, core developers signaled support for raising the limit to 36m gas as a safe first step, with client updates facilitating the change, but there is frustration over the small increase and discussion about implementing more dynamic, scalable adjustments in the future.

6TH ANNUAL CRYPTO DEVELOPER REPORT

The Electric Capital Developer Report reveals shifts in patterns in 2024 with global monthly active developers down 7% to 23,613 and showing major geographic redistribution as Asia became the leading continent for crypto development, surpassing North America and Europe. The report highlights substantial growth in Ethereum Layer 2 development, with over half of Ethereum's developers now working on L2 solutions, while Solana emerged as the leading platform for new developers in 2024. Notable trends include record-breaking crypto ETF inflows exceeding $50B, all-time high stablecoin usage at $196B in circulation, and significant growth in NFT deployments and DeFi activity, particularly in restaking and liquid staking derivatives.

THE ODOS DAO LAUNCH

Odos DAO has officially launched, marking a shift towards decentralized governance and unveiling a Tokenized Loyalty Program set to begin on December 20. The initiative combines user rewards through $ODOS tokens with community-driven decision-making, positioning Odos at the forefront of decentralized finance's growth.

THE CYPHERPUNK ENDGAME & REAL WORLD ETHEREUM

Ethereum is shifting from speculative cycles to sustainable adoption patterns with a focus on real-world utility through stablecoins and traditional finance integration. This author predicts significant involvement from traditional financial institutions but warns of potential compromises to crypto's core values of permissionlessness and decentralization, drawing parallels to how other revolutionary technologies like file sharing and encrypted messaging evolved. The essay emphasizes the importance of preserving user freedoms within custodial solutions while acknowledging that mass adoption will likely come through more centralized, user-friendly applications.