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OPENAI JUST MADE AN IMPORTANT SERVICE 80 PERCENT CHEAPER

OpenAI's RealTime API will soon automatically cache audio and text inputs, reducing the cost of long conversations by up to 80%.

MATT MULLENWEG SAYS AUTOMATTIC IS ‘VERY SHORT-STAFFED' AMID WORDPRESS VS. WP ENGINE DRAMA

Automattic has offered two rounds of severance deals - 159 employees out of roughly 1,900 employees took the first deal.

HOW TO FREE ELON MUSK'S SPACEX FROM FEDERAL RED TAPE

The Federal Aviation Administration says that SpaceX neglected necessary paperwork for two 2023 launches and is seeking $633,009 in civil fines.

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OPENAI WILL START USING AMD CHIPS AND COULD MAKE ITS OWN AI HARDWARE IN 2026

OpenAI is reportedly working with Broadcom to develop custom silicon designed to handle large AI workloads for inference. It has secured manufacturing capacity with TSMC. The custom-designed hardware will likely not start production until 2026. OpenAI's chip development team reportedly includes lead engineers who have previously worked on Google's Tensor processors for AI.

ELON MUSK'S XAI IN TALKS TO RAISE FUNDING VALUING IT AT $40 BILLION

xAI is in talks with investors regarding a funding round that would value it around $40 billion. The startup was last valued at $24 billion just a few months ago. The funding discussions are in the early stages, so terms are still subject to change and the talks could fall apart. The company's current revenue sources include the X Premium subscription and an API developers can use to build applications with Grok.

THE BATTERY REVOLUTION IS FINALLY HERE

Solid-state cells, an emerging, ground-breaking technology, are already hitting the market. These batteries solidify the traditionally liquid electrolyte, enabling advantages such as higher energy density and lower cost and weight. There are many different types of solid-state cells. This article looks at several of the competitors in this industry and their approaches to developing solid-state batteries.

“IMPACT PRINTING” IS A CEMENT-FREE ALTERNATIVE TO 3D-PRINTED STRUCTURES

A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich claims to have developed a robotic construction method that is better than 3D printing. Impact printing uses Earth-based materials such as sand, silt, clay, and gravel to make homes. It is less carbon-intensive and much more sustainable and affordable than 3D printing. Earth-based materials are abundant, recyclable, available at low costs, and can even be excavated at the construction site. The researchers plan to commercialize this technology once they have a prefabrication facility.

GITHUB COPILOT MOVES BEYOND OPENAI MODELS TO SUPPORT CLAUDE 3.5, GEMINI

Google Copilot is switching to a multi-model approach over the coming weeks. It will roll out Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet to Copilot Chat's web and VC Code interfaces over the next few weeks, with Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro coming a bit later. GitHub is also adding support for a wider range of OpenAI models, including GPT o1-preview and o1-mini. Developers will be able to switch between the models to tailor the model to fit their needs. Organizations will be able to choose which models will be usable by team members.

TRENCH

Trench is an event tracking system that can handle large event volumes and provide real-time analytics. It is no-cookie, GDPR, and PECR compliant. Trench is compliant with the Segment API and can be deployed quickly with a single production-ready Docker image. It can process thousands of events per second on a single node, query data in real time, and connect data to other destinations with webhooks.

MORE THAN A QUARTER OF NEW CODE AT GOOGLE IS GENERATED BY AI

Google's third quarter 2024 earnings call highlighted how important AI is to the company. More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers. The company reported $88.3 billion in revenue for the quarter. While many people feel Google isn't as reliable as it once was, the company continues to operate a very strong business. Google faces a potentially tough road ahead - a breakup is on the table following a ruling that the company is a monopolist in the search and advertising markets.

INSIDE INTEL, CEO PAT GELSINGER FUMBLED THE REVIVAL OF AN AMERICAN ICON

Pat Gelsinger took the reins as Intel CEO three years ago with hopes of reviving the American industrial icon. At the time, Intel had a deal going with Taiwan's TSMC where TSMC would make chips that Intel designed but could not produce at a deep discount. Gelsinger offended TSMC by calling out Taiwan's precarious relations with China, resulting in TSMC deciding to no longer honor the discount. Gelsinger's affront to Taiwan was part of a series of missteps, covered in this article, during his time as Intel CEO.

IPHONE 17 EARLY MANUFACTURING SET FOR INDIA, MARKING NEW MILESTONE FOR APPLE

Apple is using an Indian factory to do the early manufacturing work for the base model of next year's iPhone 17.

GITHUB SPARK LETS YOU BUILD WEB APPS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

GitHub Spark allows developers to quickly build small web apps using nothing but natural language.

USING AN 8K TV AS A MONITOR

8K TVs are better than multi-monitor setups for writing code all day or staring at Excel spreadsheets.

ZEROX OCR

Zerox is an OCR tool that converts documents for AI ingestion.

WHY SLIGHT FAILED: A SLIGHT POST-MORTEM

Slight failed to get enough traction to raise its seed round for several reasons, including a lack of 'big company features', issues with distribution, a lack of funding, and over-engineering.

META'S AI ABUNDANCE

Meta is the most well-placed company to take advantage of generative AI due to its abundance of content - every part of its business benefits from AI.

META IS REPORTEDLY WORKING ON ITS OWN AI-POWERED SEARCH ENGINE, TOO

Meta has been working on an AI powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft. The Meta AI bot built into Meta's apps currently uses Google and Microsoft Bing to answer questions about recent news and events. Meta has been building a database of information for its chatbot. It is also building up location data that could compete with Google Maps.

APPLE ANNOUNCES NEW IMAC WITH M4 CHIP, STARTS AT $1,299

Apple has announced an updated iMac with the company's latest M4 chip. Starting at $1,299, it is now available for order ahead of its release on November 8. The M4 iMac comes in new shades, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and silver. It has four USB-C ports on the back with the Thunderbolt 4 standard and supports up to two additional 6K displays. The iMac comes with an updated Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard with USB-C charging. Apple may announce more new Macs over the coming days.

CHINA'S FIRST SPACE TOURISM VENTURE SELLS INITAL PAIR OF TICKETS

Deep Blue Aerospace used a livestream on Chinese e-commerce site Taobao to sell two tickets on its first suborbital flights. At just ¥1,000,000 ($140,000), the seats were at a deep discount compared to the expected cost of ¥1,500,000 ($210,000) per seat. The flight is not expected to launch for another three years or so. The livestream, which was the first time space tourism tickets have gone on public sale in China, attracted an audience of three million viewers.

WE'VE FOUND THE SOURCE OF MOST METEORITES

70% of meteorites come from three collisions that occurred in the asteroid belt within the past 40 million years. An exhaustive study by an international team of scientists has tracked down the sources of most meteorites falling on Earth. The team gathered data and ran simulations to reveal how collisions produce families of asteroids that start in similar orbits and how those fragments spread out over time. Their work still needs to be validated, but it explains several key observables with a single model.

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WE'RE FORKING FLUTTER. THIS IS WHY

Flutter began as a UI toolkit for mobile only before expanding to the web and desktop platforms. Despite the project's massive expansion of scope and responsibility, the Flutter team has only marginally increased its size. Flutter has been forked to help expand its available labor and accelerate development. The Flock fork will remain constantly up to date with Flutter but add important bug fixes and popular community features. The Flutter team can choose to add these bug fixes and features on their own schedule.

OPEN-SOURCE AI MUST REVEAL ITS TRAINING DATA, PER NEW OSI DEFINITION

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has released its official definition of 'open' artificial intelligence. For an AI system to be considered truly open source, it must provide the complete code used to build and run the AI, access to details about the data used to train the AI so others can understand and recreate it, and the settings and weights from the training. The definition directly challenges Meta's Llama, which has restrictions on commercial use and does not provide access to training data. Meta claims that it restricts access to its training data due to safety concerns, but critics say the company is just minimizing its legal liability and safeguarding its competitive advantage.

A MYSTERIOUS NEW IMAGE GENERATION MODEL HAS APPEARED

red_panda is a mysterious new image generation model that is beating other top models. The model is over 100 times faster than OpenAI's DALL-E3. It is unknown which company made the model and when it will be released. AI companies are increasingly using community benchmarks to drum up anticipation ahead of announcements, so it is likely a reveal will be coming soon.

AIRBNB CEO BRIAN CHESKY ON THE GOSPEL OF STEVE JOBS AND WHAT FOUNDER MODE REALLY MEANS

This article contains a transcript of an interview with Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky, who made a lot of waves earlier this year when he started talking about something called 'founder mode'. Chesky spends a lot of time specifically obsessing over company structure and decision-making. In the interview, Chesky talks about founder mode and what he thinks it means. Founder mode isn't about micromanagement or pure swagger - good leaders need to get into the details while still delegating and trusting their teams to make decisions independently of them.

DI-WISE 🧙♀️

di-wise is a dependency injection library for JavaScript and TypeScript.

APPLE'S NEW MAGIC KEYBOARD, MAGIC MOUSE, AND MAGIC TRACKPAD HAVE USB-C

The Magic Mouse still charges via a port on the bottom.

TESLA RELEASES RARE BLOG POST AND IT'S AN INTERESTING ONE: STANDARDIZING AUTO CONNECTIVITY

Tesla wants to standardize electrical connectors inside vehicles to unlock operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and manufacturing automation.

NETFLIX'S NEW ‘MOMENTS' FEATURE LETS YOU SAVE AND SHARE CLIPS FROM YOUR FAVORITE EPISODES

Netflix's Moments feature on its iOS app lets users quickly save favorite scenes to rewatch or share across social platforms with a single tap.

CARE DOESN'T SCALE

Care doesn't really scale without becoming something else.

ON GOOD SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

Good engineers are proactive - they see a broken process and they take action to fix it.

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GOOGLE PLANS TO ANNOUNCE ITS NEXT GEMINI MODEL SOON

Google is aiming to release its next major Gemini model in December. Gemini 2.0 will be widely released at the outset as opposed to being rolled out in phases. While the model isn't showing the performance gains experts had hoped for, it will likely still have some interesting new capabilities. It appears that the top AI developers will continue to race to release ever-bigger and more expensive models even as performance improvements start leveling off.

THIS IS THE MAC MINI'S BIG MOMENT

Apple's Mac Mini's dimensions have remained the same since 2010, when it still had an optical drive. The incredible efficiency of Apple's new chips allows for all sorts of hardware designs that were technically unfeasible a handful of years ago. The new M4-powered Mac Mini is rumored to have a footprint similar to that of the Apple TV. The M4 Pro variant will include a total of five USB-C ports and an HDMI port, but will not have a USB-A port.

AWARD-WINNING IMAGE REVEALS A HIDDEN CULPRIT BEHIND ALZHEIMER'S

A neuroscientist at Augusta University has captured the precise moment brain tumor cells from mice interact in images by staining cellular components to reveal disruptions in support and transport structures. The research revealed how disruptions in a protein linking two cytoskeleton components together result in damage to the transport system, similar to what is seen in neurodegenerative diseases. Restoring normal cytoskeleton actin and myosin levels allowed the cells to transport their components normally again. The study shows how scientific imaging can help expose biological mysteries.

HUMANS ARE EVOLVING RIGHT BEFORE OUR EYES ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU

Humans living in the high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau, where oxygen levels in the air are notably lower than where humans usually live, have changed in ways that allow them to make the most of their atmosphere. Their adaptations maximize oxygen delivery to cells and tissues without thickening the blood. These traits developed due to ongoing natural selection. Learning about populations like these helps scientists better grasp the processes of human evolution.

SHOULD JAVASCRIPT BE SPLIT INTO TWO LANGUAGES? NEW GOOGLE-DRIVEN PROPOSAL DIVIDES OPINION

A proposal to split JavaScript into two languages has been presented to Emca TC39, the official standardization committee. The proposal argues that the foundational technology of JavaScript should be simple because security flaws and the complexity cost of the runtimes affect billions of users. New language features only benefit developers and applications that actually use those features to their advantage - adding them almost always worsens security, performance, and stability. The proposal suggests changing JavaScript's approach to one where most new features are implemented in tooling rather than in the JavaScript engines.

TYPESET

Typeset is an HTML pre-processor for web typography that provides typographic features used traditionally in fine printing. It features real hanging punctuation, optical margin alignment, small caps detection, soft hyphen insertion, and punctuation substitution. Typeset doesn't require any client-side JavaScript and uses less than a kilobyte of CSS. Examples are available on the website.

ENG ORG SENIORITY-MIX MODEL

One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company maintains its current margin and grows revenue at 25-30% or instead grow slower and increase its free cash flow year over year. Engineering costs have a major impact on free cash flow in many organizations. One of the largest contributors to engineering headcount costs is an organization's seniority mix. This article looks at how various policies impact an organization's seniority mix. To create a healthy seniority mix, stop hiring at senior-most levels, implement a 'backfill at N-1' policy, and cap the maximum number of individuals at the senior-most level.

WHY OPENAI'S $157B VALUATION MISREADS AI'S FUTURE

OpenAI's $6.6 billion fundraise earlier this month was a statement about where AI will create value and who stands to capture it. Its investors are betting that AI is so transformative that the usual rules of focus and specialization don't apply - the first company to achieve AGI will win everything. However, there are many barriers to overcome before its goal can be achieved. This article looks at the challenges that OpenAI faces and where the most promising opportunities in AI for investors and startups lie. New technologies, no matter how revolutionary, don't automatically translate into sustainable businesses.

ANDROID 16 COULD GET IPHONE-LIKE ‘ONGOING' NOTIFICATIONS

The Rich Ongoing Notifications API gives Android developers the ability to keep persistent notifications in the Android status bar.

OUR OPTIMIZERS NEED A RETHINK

A look at optimizers, where they fail, and how to make them better.