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SVELTE 5 IS ALIVE

Svelte 5 is finally stable after almost 18 months of development. It is the most significant release in the project's history. Svelte 5 is a ground-up rewrite, which means that apps will be faster, smaller, and more reliable. It allows developers to write more consistent and idiomatic code and there's less stuff to learn for newcomers. Svelte 5 is almost completely compatible with Svelte 4 and the initial upgrade will be completely seamless for the majority of users.

NVIDIA COMPUTER FINDS LARGEST KNOWN PRIME, BLOWS PAST RECORD BY 16 MILLION DIGITS

Luke Durant, a researcher, former Nvidia employee, and the most prolific contributor to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has discovered a new largest known prime number. Short-handed as M136279841, the number can be calculated by multiplying two together 136,279,841 times and then subtracting one. GIMPS has discovered the last 18 Mersenne primes. Durant used a supercomputer comprising thousands of GPUs in 17 different countries to find the number.

LEARNING TO LEARN

When you're starting something new, the most important thing is knowing what to learn. The optimal learning flow involves very quickly identifying what the foundational knowledge is, building a personal curriculum to become an expert, and sprinting hard in the first hours to impress initial memory, then decelerating to a more regular place. Knowing how to learn is an extremely high-leverage skill. Being productively honest is one of the most effective and kindest things you can do for yourself.

SUDOKU-IN-PYTHON-PACKAGING

sudoku-in-python-packaging can solve Sudoku puzzles entirely using the Python package resolver.

LAB-GROWN HUMAN BRAIN CELLS DRIVE VIRTUAL BUTTERFLY IN SIMULATION

FinalSpark, a Switzerland-based startup that offers a platform which allows researchers interested in biocomputing to write code that interacts with brain organoids, created a virtual world with a butterfly model to demonstrate its platform.

INITIAL EXPLORATIONS OF ANTHROPIC'S NEW COMPUTER USE CAPABILITY

This article looks at Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model and new API mode called 'Computer Use'.

NASA'S NEWEST TELESCOPE CAN DETECT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES FROM COLLIDING BLACK HOLES

NASA's new telescope prototype, part of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission led by the ESA, can detect gravitational waves, which are created during collisions between two black holes.

RWF

Rwf is a comprehensive framework for building web applications in Rust that comes with everything required to easily build fast and secure web apps.

CONSUMER FINANCE WATCHDOG FINALIZES ‘OPEN BANKING' RULES AIMED AT DRIVING COMPETITION

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized rules that will allow customers to transfer their bank data to other banks or allow third-party apps to access it without having to pay fees or clear other hurdles.

See what's new in Modern Treasury's Fall 2024 release →

BYTEDANCE INTERN FIRED FOR PLANTING MALICIOUS CODE IN AI MODELS

An intern at ByteDance maliciously interfered with the company's model training tasks, sabotaging its AI models. They were fired for committing serious disciplinary violations. None of the intern's sabotage impacted ByteDance's commercial projects or online business and none of the company's large models were affected. Rumors suggest the intern's actions cost the company tens of millions of dollars in losses, but ByteDance says those claims are exaggerated.

RAY-BAN META GLASSES ARE THE TOP SELLING PRODUCT IN MANY RAY-BAN STORES

Ray-Ban Meta glasses are the top-selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company's sales figures suggest that consumers are willing to pay more for smart glasses if they're stylish and widely available to try on. Meta and EssilorLuxottica have extended their partnership into the 2030s. The companies plan to continue developing multi-generational smart eyewear products.

SOLAR POWER FROM SPACE? ACTUALLY, IT MIGHT HAPPEN IN A COUPLE OF YEARS

The idea of harvesting solar power continuously from space, where there are no nights, clouds, or atmosphere to interfere with the collection of photons, and beaming it back down to Earth via microwaves sounds simple, but implementing the technology is difficult. Aetherflux, a small company with only about 10 employees, plans to launch a satellite to test the idea and determine both the safety and efficiency of collecting solar energy in space. If the demo mission works, Aetherflux plans to develop a constellation of satellites to deliver power to remote locations.

MATH IS STILL CATCHING UP TO THE MYSTERIOUS GENIUS OF SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN

Srinivasa Ramanujan, who died at the age of 32 in 1920, had a mathematical gift that others did not. He came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof, saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by gods. Mathematicians are still trying to catch up to his work more than 100 years later. This article takes a look at Ramanujan's life and work and how his insights continue to appear again and again in the world of mathematics.

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XAI, ELON MUSK'S AI STARTUP, LAUNCHES AN API

The xAI API is now available. It currently only has a single model, grok-beta, which is priced at $5 per million input tokens or $15 per million output tokens. The API supports function calling and its documentation suggests that it will eventually include vision models capable of analyzing both text and images.

RIP2

rip is a safe and ergonomic alternative to rm with a simple interface and a focus on safety, ergonomics, and performance. It sends deleted files to the graveyard, giving developers a chance to recover them. rip doesn't overwrite any data - files that share the same path will be renamed as numbered backups.

APPLE'S AIRPODS PRO HEARING HEALTH FEATURES ARE AS GOOD AS THEY SOUND

Apple's AirPods Pro 2 is getting new features next week with the release of iOS 18.1 that will transform the earbuds into an over-the-counter hearing aid. In addition to helping people hear more clearly, there is a hearing protection feature that protects the ears at all times across noise cancellation, transparency, and adaptive audio modes. This article looks at the new features of the AirPods and describes the experience of setting them up and using them.

HERE'S WHAT TURBOTAX'S BOSS DOESN'T WANT YOU TO HEAR

TurboTax's CEO Sasan Saeedi recently got into a somewhat confrontational exchange during an interview where he was pressed about parent company Intuit's efforts to prevent a simplification of tax filing in the US. Intuit's Head of Communications requested the segment be cut from the interview or otherwise heavily edited to make it seem less confrontational. The company has been strongly opposed to the IRS making its own software for free tax filing. It offers free tax filing to some US citizens as a cover to continue a regime of charging others for tax preparation.

LIQUID VS ILLIQUID CAREERS

Illiquid career paths tend to yield a wider distribution of outcomes.

WALMART'S RELOCATION MANDATE JUST SENT A SAM'S CLUB EXECUTIVE RUSHING FOR THE EXIT

Cheryl Ainoa, the chief technology officer at Walmart-owned Sam's Club, is leaving her position after almost five years because she doesn't want to relocate to the retail giant's home base in Bentonville.

DAZE, A CREATIVE, AI-POWERED MESSAGING APP FOR GEN Z, IS BLOWING UP PRELAUNCH

Daze is a free-form messenger service aimed at younger audiences with a suite of fun and creative features.

TIM COOK ON WHY APPLE'S HUGE BETS WILL PAY OFF

Tim Cook believes that Apple Intelligence will make the experience of using Apple's products profoundly different.

CIVET

Civet is a programming language that compiles to TypeScript and JavaScript, allowing developers to use existing tooling while enabling concise and powerful syntax.

THE MASK COMES OFF: AT WHAT PRICE?

OpenAI is close to finalizing its transformation to an ordinary Public Benefit B-Corporation.

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STRIPE ACQUIRES STABLECOIN PLATFORM BRIDGE FOR $1.1 BILLION IN CRYPTO'S LARGEST ACQUISITION

Payments company Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion in the largest acquisition in the crypto industry to date. Bridge was previously valued at $200 million. Stripe recently reinstated crypto payments for US businesses via USDC on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon. It also inked a partnership with Coinbase that required Stripe to incorporate Coinbase's Base Layer 2 network into its crypto payment products and Coinbase to add Stripe as a way for its customers to buy crypto within its Coinbase Wallet.

OPENAI, MICROSOFT REPORTEDLY HIRE BANKS TO RENEGOTIATE PARTNERSHIP TERMS

OpenAI and Microsoft have both hired investment banks to help revise the terms of their partnership as OpenAI plans to restructure to reincorporate its for-profit arm as a benefit corporation and remove caps that previously limited investors' returns. The negotiations are said to focus on how big of a stake Microsoft will receive in OpenAI following the restructuring. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019. The current terms of the partnership say that Microsoft will receive most of OpenAI's initial profits until it recoups its investment. OpenAI doesn't expect to become profitable until 2029.

IT'S TIME TO BUILD THE EXOPLANET TELESCOPE

Starship is designed to launch at least 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit at an exceptionally low cost with a launch cadence high enough to ultimately deliver over one million metric tons per year. This will transform human logistical capacity in space and allow for greatly reduced space development costs. It would enable humanity to develop a self-assembling and ever-growing telescope in space. This telescope would be able to resolve features on the surface of exoplanets and reveal continents, mountain ranges, river systems, seasonal variations in plants and animals, and more.

US STARTUP CHARGING COUPLES TO ‘SCREEN EMBRYOS FOR IQ'

Heliospect Genomics is a US startup that offers embryo screening services. The company allows couples to rank up to 100 embryos based on IQ, section, height, risk of obesity, risk of mental illness, and other traits. Its services cost up to $50,000. The company's offers represent an ethical minefield. Selecting embryos based on predicted IQ is legal in the US, but not in some other countries like the UK.

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TANSTACK START

TanStack Start is a full-stack React framework that enables full-document SSR, streaming, server functions, bundling, and more. It comes with a routing system designed to handle all full-stack routing requirements with ease. TanStack Start is designed to be deployable anywhere that runs JavaScript.

THE FUTURE OF POSTGRES?

Stability and reliability are core to Postgres. New features will come from extensions, which allow developers to create other storage backends, new types, and more. There are a lot of extensions available. This article covers a few of the extensions that hint at the potential of Postgres' future.

HOW SAN FRANCISCO LEARNED TO LOVE SELF-DRIVING CARS

Self-driving cars have won over San Francisco after a rocky start a year and a half ago. The company is currently serving over 100,000 paid rides a week across Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. It opened its service to everyone in San Francisco this past summer. Waymo rides generally cost slightly more than Uber or Lyft, but users don't have to tip drivers, making the three apps' prices competitive. The company is already retaining riders at a higher rate than competitors while operating on a much smaller scale.

DID AUTOMATTIC COMMIT OPEN SOURCE THEFT?

Automattic, the VC-funded company behind WordPress, is in a full-blown corporate conflict with WP Engine, a popular managed WordPress hosting service. As part of the conflict, Automattic forked a popular plugin made by WP Engine, replaced the plugin in the plugin directory, and is migrating over 2 million of the plugin's customers silently onto the fork. The reviews for the plugin have remained as if nothing has changed and any reviews pointing out the heist are being actively removed. The silent change, aimed at reducing WP Engine's revenue, broke some production sites. The incident is a nightmare scenario for companies serious about supply chain security - the WordPress.org plugin directory is no longer reliable.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER TITLES HAVE (ALMOST) LOST ALL THEIR MEANING

Developers with just three or four years of experience under their belts are receiving 'senior' titles faster than ever.

APPLE INTERNALLY BELIEVES THAT IT'S AT LEAST TWO YEARS BEHIND IN AI DEVELOPMENT

Apple plans to run Apple Intelligence on every device with a screen by 2026.

THERE'S ANOTHER PLAN FOR A TECH UTOPIA IN CALIFORNIA — THIS TIME IN WINE COUNTRY

Esmeralda is a proposed enclave with a decentralized digital-first community that seeks to replace existing institutions with systems of governance.

THE IPV6 TRANSITION

The world will likely be stuck with both IPv4 and IPv6 for quite some time as there's no rush to transition to IPv4 anytime soon and there's no desire to revert to an IPv4-only network.

WIREIT

Wireit is a tool that upgrades npm scripts to make them smarter and more efficient.

@TRUTH_TERMINAL HAS JUST BECOME THE FIRST AI IN HISTORY TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE

Goatseus Maximus, a crypto based on AIs posting about a meme, is almost worth half a billion dollars and continues to grow.

BEHIND THE SCENES: HOW AI IS RESHAPING GOOGLE

Google has decided to reshuffle some of its departments to further speed up its AI development. The first part of this change involves the Gemini app team being absorbed by DeepMind. Another big change involves the Assistant teams moving to Platforms and Devices. Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP of search and ads, is changing roles to become Google's chief technologist. Nick Fox, who was a part of Raghavan's leadership team, will be taking over Raghavan's old position and be in charge of Search, Ads, Geo, and Commerce products.

MICROSOFT AND OPENAI'S CLOSE PARTNERSHIP SHOWS SIGNS OF FRAYING

Ties between Microsoft and OpenAI have started to fray. The partnership has been strained by financial pressure on OpenAI, concern about OpenAI's stability, and disagreements between employees of the two companies. OpenAI has been trying to renegotiate its deal with Microsoft to help it secure more computing power and reduce expenses, but Microsoft executives have grown concerned that the company's AI work is too dependent on OpenAI. Microsoft has started to hedge its bet on OpenAI by building its own technologies.

SCIENTISTS CLAIM BREAKTHROUGH TO BRINGING BACK TASMANIAN TIGER FROM EXTINCTION

Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company, claims to have extracted a thylacine DNA sequence that is 99.9% the same as the original from a 108-year-old specimen preserved in alcohol at a museum in Melbourne, Australia. The company aims to eventually bring back the thylacine, along with other species, back from extinction. While some argue that it is unethical to return long-extinct animals to habitats degraded by human activity, the company's research has produced beneficial advances that can be applied across current living animals. Its efforts could help protect threatened species.