Sam Altman's Worldcoin crypto project has changed its name to just 'World', potentially signaling the project's interest in expanding its identity beyond its original cryptocurrency mission. Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the project, has unveiled the next generation of its iris-scanning 'Orb' and other tools. The new Orb is easier to mass-produce, has fewer parts, and operates three times faster than the previous version. One of the new tools is called Deep Face - it is an attempt to combat online deepfakes and impersonation using Tools for Humanity's human-verification services.
It's hard to stop churn a week before renewal. Much more effective: giving customers the training and knowledge to get the most out of your product from day 1. Thinkific Plus is a scalable customer education platform [10] that fuels your bottom line. Fast time to value, $0 launch fees, easy for learners and admins. See how it works
37signals brought its cloud bill down from $3.2 million a year to $1.3 million by pulling seven cloud apps out of AWS and into its own hardware. Its expenditure on all new hardware has been entirely recouped. Most of the $1.3 million spend is still on AWS S3 - the company's cloud storage contract doesn't expire until next summer and it plans to stop using AWS when the contract expires. Moving completely away from AWS is expected to save the company another $4 million over five years.
It's possible to record a screen capture of a browsing session and then use Google Gemini to extract numbers from the video. While these language models shouldn't be trusted not to make mistakes, it appears that the Gemini 1.5 Flash 002 model is sufficient enough to complete the task consistently. Extracting data from a 35-second video costs less than a tenth of a cent. Video scraping allows developers to have total control over what is exposed to the AI model. This article walks readers through how to do it.
AWS CEO Matt Garman suggested during an all-hands meeting for AWS on Thursday that employees who did not wish to work for Amazon in-office five days a week should quit. He claimed that nine out of ten workers he had spoken with supported the new 5-day-per-week in-office policy, which takes effect in January. Many Amazon employees have said that the new policy will waste time with additional commuting and that the benefits of working from the office are not supported by independent data. Garman says that it's too hard to accomplish company goals with the current mandatory three days of in-office work.
Meta has reportedly fired about 24 staff at its Los Angeles offices for using their meal credits to buy household goods. Meta usually feeds staff for free from canteens at its larger offices, but those at smaller sites are given daily credits to order food through delivery services. Some workers were found to be abusing the system, including sending food home when they were not in the office. Employees who had only occasionally broken the rules were reprimanded but were able to keep their jobs.
My recent podcast appearance on Permission to Shine discussing the origins of TLDR and the future of media. Listen on Spotify [16], Apple [17] or YouTube [18], hope you enjoy!
Unity 6 gives developers access to faster rendering, advanced lighting options, seamless multiplayer workflows, enhanced AI capabilities, and improved support for mobile web runtimes.
Writer is excited to introduce Writer AI Studio [4], the fastest way to build AI apps, products, and features. Writer's unique full-stack design makes it easy to prototype, deploy, and test AI apps [4] – allowing developers to build with APIs, a drag-and-drop open-source Python framework, or a no-code builder, so you have flexibility to build the way you want.
Amazon has announced a new Kindle e-reader with a color display. The Kindle Colorsoft has weeks of battery life and a display that's designed to ensure colors don't appear washed out or pixelated even when users zoom in on images. It can be preordered now for $279 and will ship on October 30. Amazon also announced a refreshed Kindle Scribe with new note-taking features for $399, an updated Kindle Paperwhite for $159, and a 12th generation Kindle for $109.
Uber may be exploring a potential bid for Expedia Group. The company has approached advisers about a deal. Its interest is at a very early stage. Uber's CEO was Expedia's CEO from 2005 to 2017 and remains on the company's board. Expedia declined to comment on the deal.
Amazon has signed an agreement with Dominion Energy to explore the development of a small modular nuclear reactor near Dominion's existing North Anna nuclear power station. Google and Microsoft have announced similar plans. Tech companies are increasingly buying into nuclear power to fuel the growing demands of data centers. Nuclear power will also help these companies reach net-zero carbon emissions.
Scientists have created a new form of insulin that can modify its activity in response to glucose levels in the blood, reducing high blood sugar concentrations while preventing levels from dropping too low. It has been tested in pigs and rats with encouraging results. Further research to optimize the molecule is ongoing. There are several smart insulin drugs in the works - scientists aim to generate a suite of smart insulin drugs to enable doctors to individualize therapies for their patients.
Arch is an intelligent Layer 7 gateway designed to protect, observe, and personalize LLM applications. It handles tasks related to the handling and processing of prompts. Arch features function calling, prompt guardrails, standards-based observability, and more. Demos are available.
Socket Optimize is a tool for proactive dependency hygiene that secures open source dependencies with tested and optimized package overrides. It helps solve security challenges and various quality concerns. Socket Optimize makes it easy for developers to reduce dependencies, leverage new platform features, improve performance, and address security issues, all with one simple CLI command. The project is initially focused on the JavaScript ecosystem, but its team has plans to expand into other ecosystems such as Ruby and Python.
While Manifest V3 makes things harder for ad blockers, it's not the death of ad blockers by any stretch. uBlock Origin already has a new version built on Manifest V3 that works almost as well as the Manifest V2 version and with added privacy and performance benefits. However, there are quite a few filtering capabilities that can't be ported to Manifest V3. There are tools in Chrome's Extensions settings that help users determine whether an extension is compatible with Manifest V3 and find alternatives for incompatible extensions.
The FTC has finalized a rule that makes canceling subscriptions and services as easy as signing up for one. Businesses offering online signups will be required to implement a click to cancel and there must be a way for customers to cancel online or over the phone if they signed up in person. Most of the final rule's provisions will go into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register.
Kloudlite is an open-source platform designed to provide seamless and secure development environments for building distributed applications that connects local workspaces with remote Kubernetes environments via a WireGuard network.
Palantir has produced a remarkable number of founders and technology leaders - this article looks at what makes the company special through the lens of company building and helping other founders apply best practices.
In recent years, security and compliance have been simplified, strengthened, and established not as a _nice-to-have_, but as a _requirement_ of doing business. So where do we go from here? We'll explore just that at VantaCon 2024: Beyond the Standard, [4] coming to San Francisco on November 20th. AND THIS YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, WE'LL BE LIVE-STREAMING OUR KEYNOTE FOR A BROADER AUDIENCE. On Wednesday, November 20th at 9:30am PT / 5:30pm BST tune in to:
Apple quietly announced a new version of the iPad mini via a press release yesterday. The seventh-generation device looks mostly identical to its predecessor, but it features an Apple A17 Pro chip, the same processor used in the iPhone 15 Pro. The new iPad mini is available for preorder now starting at $499 for the base 128GB model. It will be the only iPad mini capable of supporting Apple Intelligence, which will be rolling out within the next few weeks. The device will only work with either the Apple Pencil Pro or the cheaper USB-C Apple Pencil and not the first- or second-generation Apple Pencils.
SpaceX has submitted an application to the US Federal Communications Commission seeking approval for changes to Starlink that will enable gigabit-per-second broadband service. The changes include lowering the altitude of satellites to increase the potential maximum number of orbital planes and satellites per plane. SpaceX plans to send 29,988 or less second-generation satellites into orbit - the FCC has so far approved 7,500 Gen2 satellites. To obtain approval for the changes, SpaceX will have to demonstrate that the changes won't negatively affect other spectrum users and satellite operators.
Mass timber replaces steel beams and concrete with manufactured wood elements that can extend more than half the length of a football field. The process of creating the elements involves gluing smaller pieces of wood together in layers under pressure in large specialized presses. Beams created with this process can be stronger than steel by weight. Mass timber buildings tend to be manufactured like automobiles, with all the separate pieces shipped to a final location for assembly, making the building process more simple.
GeneCode, a pharmaceutical company, received a €16 million funding option from the European Innovation Council Accelerator last year to support the development of a novel drug designed to combat neurodegeneration in Parkinson's patients. Preliminary evidence suggests that the drug may alleviate symptoms, protect neurons from further damage, and help restore neurons for a healthier, longer life. The drug binds to receptors in the brain and sends chemical signals that stimulate dopamine production, which helps neurons with axons stay active and maintain synaptic connections with other neurons. GeneCode has almost completed animal experiments, but it still needs to certify that the drug can be consistently and safely produced to ensure future quality assurance and perform toxicology studies before the drug can begin clinical trials in humans.
This playbook provides a detailed approach for streamlining the incident response process with Datadog. Each play details specific action items [9] and their purpose for helping organizations improve their incident response capabilities and meet industry standards such
Number Flow is a React component for transitioning, formatting, and localizing numbers. It is dependency-free, accessible, and customizable. The component doesn't support scientific and engineering notations. A video showing examples of how the component can be used is available in the repository.
Passkeys are currently confined to companies' software ecosystems, forcing users to create duplicate keys. The FIDO Alliance, an association made up of the top tech companies, has announced an industry effort for a new protocol and format for exchanging passkey data. This would allow users to share and sync the same collection of keys across platforms. The draft specifications for the protocol focus on ways to prevent hackers from abusing the interoperability to steal passkeys.
Palantir's stock is currently on a tear, with the company nearing a $100 billion market cap. The company was unpopular in the past as it was seen as developing spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse. There's a lot about the company that people don't understand - this article, written by someone who has worked at the company for eight years, attempts to explain some of this. It discusses what working at the company is like, the company culture, the type of people who work in the field, the morality of working at companies like Palantir, the opportunities AI brings, and more.
Digg was something like the homepage of the internet in its early days. The best and most popular stuff made it to the homepage, which was seen by tens of millions of people every month. The site featured voting mechanisms and a commenting system, which were brand-new concepts when it launched. This article contains an interview with Digg's creator, Kevin Rose, where he talks about why he built the site the way he did, the legacy of some of the tools he helped create, the death of the homepage and the rise of the news feed, and what happens when a company goes from a fun idea to a potential cash cow. Rose believes that there's a case for Digg to make a comeback, but only in a very different corporate form.
Grab the attention of software developers, executives and other tech professionals reading TLDR every day. Learn more [14] about running your first campaign with us.
Automattic has been planning to get significantly stricter about trademark enforcement across WordPress and its ecommerce platform WooCommerce since at least the beginning of the year.