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TESLA FULL SELF-DRIVING (FSD) V13 STARTS INITIAL ROLLOUT

Tesla has started rolling out Tesla FSD V13 to customers. The latest version of the advanced driver-assist system was released with software update version 2024.39.10. The Cybercab units operating at Tesla's 'We, Robot' event in October were supposed to be running near-production AI software expected to ship in FSD V13, so the expectations for the real-word performance of the update are pretty high. The release notes for the update are available in the article.

META PLANS TO BUILD A $10B SUBSEA CABLE SPANNING THE WORLD, SOURCES SAY

Meta is the second-biggest driver of internet usage globally, accounting for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic. The company is planning to build a new major fiber-optic subsea cable extending around the world. The 40,000+ kilometer project could cost more than $10 billion. The project is still in its early stages - plans have been laid out, but physical assets have not. Meta is expected to speak more publicly about the project in early 2025 after confirming plans for the cable.

TESLA OPTIMUS SHOWS OFF NEW UPGRADE

Tesla's Optimus has received new hands. They could theoretically be used with Neuralink's N1 implant. The hands were revealed after Tesla received approval for a new feasibility trial where it will test its brain-to-computer implant with assistive robotic arms. A video showing Optimus catching tennis balls with its new hands is available in the article.

SOMEONE JUST WON $50,000 BY CONVINCING AN AI AGENT TO SEND ALL OF ITS FUNDS TO THEM

Freysa is an AI agent that was released with the sole objective of never transferring money. Anyone was allowed to pay a fee to send a message to the agent to convince it to release all its funds to them. The cost for a message rose exponentially as the prize pool grew, with 70% of the message fees going into the prize pool and the developer taking the rest. It took 483 attempts, with the message fee rising to $450, to finally convince Freysa to release its funds. This post contains an analysis of the winning prompt.

strategies to thrive in the digital era. Save your virtual seat.

IF NOT REACT, THEN WHAT?

React is a legacy technology, but it continues to appear in greenfield applications. It is not built to meet current needs or performance standards. This article discusses why developers should stop using React and presents alternative frameworks that work better. Developers building SPAs or islands of client-side interactivity are now spoiled for choice with dozens of contemporary frameworks worthy of their attention, like Svelte, Lit, FAST, Solid, Qwik, Marko, HTMX, Vue, and Stencil.

BUILDING A DISTRIBUTED LOG USING S3 (UNDER 150 LINES OF GO)

This tutorial shows readers how to implement a durable, distributed, and highly available log using S3. It is the third part of a series that also discusses disaggregated storage and zero disk architecture. The code in the tutorial is open source and comes with tests and open issues to contribute.

THE MOST HATED WAY OF FIRING SOMEONE IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER. IT'S THE AGE OF THE PIP

The use of performance improvement plans (PIPs) is on the rise. PIPs usually list tough-to-achieve goals to be completed within 30 to 90 days. Failure to complete the tasks results in termination of employment. They are intended to bring consistency and fairness to the way employees are judged and managed, but both workers and managers dread them. This post presents a guide to PIPs and how to navigate them, as well as alternatives to the practice. One common tactic for employees placed on PIPs is to file for a leave of absence, which stops the clock on the PIP, allowing the employee to job hunt without having to explain a resume gap to prospective new employers.

HOW LIBRA WAS KILLED

Libra was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a stablecoin developed by Meta. The project was announced in June 2019 but eventually killed off due to politics. Meta had addressed every possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and much more. The project was killed through intimidation of captive banking institutions.

OPENAI IS AT WAR WITH ITS OWN SORA VIDEO TESTERS FOLLOWING BRIEF PUBLIC LEAK

OpenAI cut off testing access to its Sora video generation platform after a group of artists in the program shared their access on a usable webpage last week.

THE FASCINATING SECURITY MODEL OF DARK WEB MARKETPLACES

The success of the current most trusted dark web marketplace, which has been chugging along since May 2020, is likely due to its exceptional operational security.

TESLA IS LOOKING TO HIRE A TEAM TO REMOTELY CONTROL ITS ‘SELF-DRIVING' ROBOTAXIS

While Tesla will use AI to power its autonomous fleet, it still needs the ability to access and control the vehicles remotely.

BREAKING DOWN THE DOJ'S PLAN TO END GOOGLE'S SEARCH MONOPOLY

Experts watching the case say that a forced Chrome sale may not be the biggest threat to Google's power.

PRETTY & DENSE

This prompt for Claude makes it produce highly information-dense outputs.

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH CHATGPT AND THE NAME 'DAVID MAYER'?

ChatGPT seems to crash whenever it tries to mention David Mayer de Rothschild, heir to the famed Rothschild banking family.

How does it work?

1️⃣ Set your departure airports.

INSIDE ELON MUSK'S QUEST TO BEAT OPENAI AT ITS OWN GAME

Elon Musk started xAI last summer. He poached talent from across the industry in an effort to play catchup with OpenAI. The startup raised at least $11 billion at a valuation of $50 billion in a funding round this month. It is the second most valuable private AI developer behind OpenAI. xAI plans to launch a stand-alone consumer app like ChatGPT as soon as next month.

F.T.C. LAUNCHES ANTITRUST INVESTIGATION INTO MICROSOFT

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an investigation into whether Microsoft has violated antitrust law. The agency recently sent a formal request for information to Microsoft asking about its cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity products. The FTC is particularly interested in how the company bundles its cloud computing offerings with office and security products and the company's growing power in the artificial intelligence space. Regulators in the European Union said earlier this year that Microsoft had violated antitrust rules when it packaged Teams with Office tools like Excel and Word.

HUMANOID ROBOT FIGURE 02 IMPRESSES AT BMW PLANT WITH 400% EFFICIENCY UPGRADE

Figure AI has achieved a 400% increase in speed and a sevenfold improvement in success rate in its Figure 02 robot. The company recently released a video showing Figure 02 performing up to 1,000 placements per day at BMW's Spartanburg plant. The video is available in the article. Figure AI plans to deploy more humanoid robots in real-world environments in 2025.

DIAMOND OPTICAL DISCS COULD STORE DATA FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS

Chinese researchers have achieved a record-breaking diamond storage density of 1.85 terabytes per cubic centimeter. The diamonds are able to retain data for millions of years at room temperature without requiring any maintenance. The system currently requires complex lasers, imaging cameras, and other equipment, but the researchers believe they will be able to eventually fit everything inside a microwave oven-sized device. The technology will be particularly useful for governments, research facilities, and large libraries.

AISUITE

aisuite provides developers with a simple unified interface for multiple generative AI providers. It makes it easy to use multiple large language models (LLMs) and compare the results. aisuite allows creators to seamlessly swap out and test responses from different LLM providers without changing any code. It currently supports Anthropic, Azure, Google, AWS, Groq, Mistral, Hugging Face, and Ollama.

COMPARING AWS S3 WITH CLOUDFLARE R2: PRICE, PERFORMANCE AND USER EXPERIENCE

R2 is a storage service by Cloudflare accessible through the S3 API that doesn't charge any egress fees. Developers only pay for storage and read/write/delete requests. This article looks at how R2 compares to AWS' S3 service. S3 is better for latency, but more than 90% of projects and organizations would be better served with R2.

HAS AI SCALING HIT A LIMIT?

The AI community has operated on the principle that intelligence emerges from scale for the past four years. This has driven billions in investment and reshaped the field of AI. Signs have emerged in recent months that brute-force scaling alone might not be enough to drive continued improvements in AI. The next breakthrough in AI might not come from making current models bigger, but from making them fundamentally different.

GOOGLE'S PLAN TO KEEP AI OUT OF SEARCH TRIAL REMEDIES ISN'T GOING VERY WELL

Google's AI products may be restricted as a remedy following the government's win in the search monopoly trial. The Department of Justice has asked for a wide range of remedies to stop Google from potentially using AI to entrench its market dominance in search advertising. They include a ban on exclusive agreements with publishers to train on content and restrictions on investments in or acquisitions of AI products or companies. The DOJ alleges the changes are necessary to clear the way for a thriving search market as AI stands to shake up the competitive landscape.

OPENAI GETS NEW $1.5 BILLION INVESTMENT FROM SOFTBANK, ALLOWING EMPLOYEES TO SELL SHARES IN A TENDER OFFER

Employees will have until December 24 to decide if they want to participate in the tender offer.

REPLY ON BLUESKY AND DECENTRALIZATION

While Bluesky may not be decentralized or federated in its current form, its team is still focused on its design principles and there are still many tasks and milestones left on the checklist.

NINTENDO SWITCH 2 RELEASE DATE LEAK SUGGESTS WE NEED TO START SAVING NOW

The Nintendo Switch 2 will be announced in January next year before being publicly released in March.

WHY AM I WRITING A JAVASCRIPT TOOLCHAIN IN ZIG?

REDIS INC SEEKS CONTROL OVER FUTURE OF RUST REDIS-RS CLIENT LIBRARY, AMID TALK OF TRADEMARK CONCERNS

Redis has contacted the maintainer of redis-rs with a proposal to take over the Rust package in order to add enterprise-grade features.

CHINA HAWKS ARE MANUFACTURING AN AI ARMS RACE

There is no solid evidence that China is actually racing towards AGI.

👋 Talk with a (human) sales rep to see Ava in action

ARTISTS LEAK OPENAI'S SORA VIDEO GENERATOR

A group of artists recently made a post claiming that OpenAI was using them as unpaid beta testers for Sora, OpenAI's video generator, and that the company was pressuring them to spin a positive narrative around the tool. OpenAI required every video clip to be approved before sharing, suggesting that the early access program was less about creative expression and critique and more about PR and advertisement. The artists leaked a version of Sora on Hugging Face that could create 10-second clips but OpenAI shut down early access for all artists three hours after it was posted. The artists said in their post that they hope OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly, and supports the arts beyond PR stunts.

AI'S FUTURE AND NVIDIA'S FORTUNES RIDE ON THE RACE TO PACK MORE CHIPS INTO ONE PLACE

The most ambitious players in the AI race are now building super clusters of computer servers that cost billions of dollars and contain unprecedented numbers of Nvidia's most advanced chips. The push towards superclusters could help Nvidia sustain its growth trajectory. The trend is fostering demand for Nvidia's networking equipment, which is fast becoming a significant business. Nvidia's Blackwell chips, which are several times as powerful as its current chips, are set to start shipping in the next couple of months.

NASA'S SEARCH FOR LIFE: SPACEX TO LAUNCH DRAGONFLY MISSION TO SATURN'S MOON

NASA has announced a $256.6 million contract with SpaceX to support the launch of the Dragonfly mission. Dragonfly is a nuclear-powered spacecraft about the size of a Mars Rover that is capable of flight like a drone. It will be sent to Saturn's moon Titan to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry on the moon, and search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life ever existed on the Titan. The mission is expected to launch in July 2028 on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

CHINA PLANS TO BUILD EGG IGLOOS ON LUNAR SURFACE

China has unveiled a mock-up of a moon colony that shows a handful of egg-shaped gray igloos and space rovers with Lego-like spacemen grounding between them. The model is a result of careful examination of the conditions on the moon, where there is a lack of raw materials, extreme temperature fluctuations, and cosmic radiation. China is planning to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2035 and is developing detailed plans accordingly. Pictures of the model are available in the article.

ANT DESIGN X

Ant Design X is a tool for crafting AI-driven interfaces effortlessly. It features flexible and diverse atomic components, out-of-the-box model integration, efficient management of conversation data flows, rich template support, complete TypeScript support, and advanced theme customization. Ant Design X is widely used in AI-driven user interfaces within Ant Group.

WHICH IDES DO SOFTWARE ENGINEERS LOVE, AND WHY?

GOOGLE AND THE DOJ MAKE THEIR FINAL ARGUMENTS IN THE AD TECH MONOPOLY CASE

Google and the Department of Justice have made their closing arguments in the antitrust case against Google. The DOJ argued that Google used a suite of ad tech products to strong-arm site owners and advertisers. Google countered that it faces competition from other sources and shouldn't have to cut deals with competitors. US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema is expected to rule on the case by the end of 2024.

BUILDING LLMS IS PROBABLY NOT GOING BE A BRILLIANT BUSINESS

Large language models are cool, but that doesn't mean that building them is going to be a profitable business. What makes a good business is industry structure. Airlines have unfavorable industry structure, with only two makers of airplanes, fickle and unloyal customers, and high amounts of competition. The fizzy-drinks business has a very favorable industry structure - fizzy drinks are easy to make, customers aren't very picky, and it isn't easy for new competitors to enter the market. The industry structure for large language model makers isn't very good - there is only one true supplier (Nvidia), there doesn't seem to be any brand loyalty being built up, and there is a lot of competition in the market.

SHIPPING IS CAPTURING VALUE

Programmers need to think about the impact of their work when they start writing code.

A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING BROWSER SUPPORT

The article discusses a framework for evaluating browser support that looks at what happens when a feature fails, how many people would be affected by the lack of support, and the potential harm failure could cause.

SERVICETITAN COULD BE THE FIRST OF MANY ‘DIRTY' TERM-SHEET IPOS, VCS BELIEVE

ServiceTitan may be the first of a series of late-stage companies being forced to IPO or reveal other ugly terms they agreed to after the VC fundraising market tanked in 2022 and valuations plummeted.

UBER'S GIG WORKERS NOW INCLUDE CODERS FOR HIRE ON AI PROJECTS

Uber is recruiting contractors in India, the US, Canada, Poland, and Nicaragua to handle large-scale annotation tasks.

DENO V. ORACLE: CANCELING THE JAVASCRIPT TRADEMARK

Deno formally filed a petition with the USPTO to cancel Oracle's trademark for 'JavaScript' on November 22 to free the term from legal entanglements and recognize it as a shared public good.

SPACEX GETS FCC GREEN LIGHT FOR STARLINK DIRECT-TO-PHONE DEAL WITH T-MOBILE

There are a few limitations for how SpaceX can operate its 'supplemental coverage from space' service: it has to operate as an extension of an existing terrestrial provider (T-Mobile) and the service must not interfere with other services on the ground.