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INSTAGRAM'S LATEST FEATURE IS A DIGITAL BUSINESS CARD FOR YOUR PROFILE

Instagram's new profile card feature makes it easier for users to share their accounts with others, connect with new people, and make friends.

ELON DREAMS AND BITTER LESSONS

This article discusses Elon Musk's companies and how they fit into his dreams - making things cheaper drives scale, resulting in change.

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GOOGLE BACKS NEW NUCLEAR PLANTS TO POWER AI

Big Tech companies are increasingly investing into nuclear power. Google has committed to buying power generated by seven nuclear-power reactors to be built by Kairos Power. The project aims to add 500 megawatts of nuclear power starting at the end of the decade. The project site (or sites) have yet to be determined. Google will have its data centers somewhere near the reactors, but it hasn't been determined whether they will receive power directly from the plants or from the grid.

OPENAI UNVEILS SECRET META PROMPT — AND IT'S VERY DIFFERENT FROM ANTHROPIC'S APPROACH

OpenAI has revealed the meta-prompt for its new o1 model family to help developers improve and fine-tune their products. Meta-prompts are used to instruct models to create good prompts based on user task descriptions or to improve existing prompts. This article looks at both OpenAI and Anthropic's approaches and compares them. The companies are using very different engines and their prompts reveal a lot about how each company thinks and what they expect from their products. OpenAI conceptualizes ChatGPT as a powerful computational tool while Anthropic envisions Claude as a friendly, human-like assistant.

SCIENTISTS USE HUMAN STEM CELLS TO RESTORE A MONKEY'S VISION

Scientists successfully used human stem cells to patch a hole in a monkey's retina, restoring the primate's vision. Macular holes, a condition associated with aging, cause vision to blur and decline over time. Current fixes for the condition come at the cost of a loss of peripheral vision as they involve transplanting cells. Using stem cells to repair the problem would introduce new cells, avoiding this issue. More research is needed to determine whether the treatment is suitable for human eyes.

SOLAR-POWERED DESALINATION SYSTEM REQUIRES NO EXTRA BATTERIES

MIT engineers have built a solar-powered desalination system that removes salt from water at a pace that closely follows changes in solar energy. It automatically adjusts to any sudden variation in sunlight, maximizing the utility of solar energy. The system can produce large quantities of clean water regardless of sunlight variation throughout the day without any batteries or supplemental power supply. It is geared towards desalinating brackish groundwater, a huge untapped source of potential drinking water.

LODASH REPLACEMENTS

This page contains a complete catalog of all the functions that Lodash provides. For each function, it provides a description of how to implement the same behavior in plain JavaScript. The page is still a work in progress.

VORTEX

Vortex is a toolkit for working with compressed Apache Arrow arrays in-memory, on-disk, and over-the-wire. It is a highly extensible and extremely fast framework for building a modern columnar file format. Vortex features a state-of-the-art, batteries-included reference implementation. It has dramatically faster random access reads and scans than Apache Parquet while preserving approximately the same compression ratio and write throughput.

TERENCE TAO, MATHEMATICIAN: ‘IT'S NOT GOOD FOR SOMETHING AS IMPORTANT AS AI TO BE A MONOPOLY HELD BY ONE OR TWO COMPANIES'

This article contains an interview with Terence Tao, indisputably one of the best mathematicians in history. At 49, Tao, who was born in the Australian city of Adelaide, received his doctorate from Princeton University at 21 and was already a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles at 24. In the interview, Tao discusses the results from the recent presidential election in Venezuela, whether AI is a threat that could destroy humanity, AI systems like AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry, whether water could spontaneously explode and destroy the world, and more.

CAPTURE LESS THAN YOU CREATE

The success of others shouldn't diminish your satisfaction with your own efforts. Working on open source means you will capture vanishingly less than you create as you are offering software with no strings attached to anyone who might wish to build. Thus, developers shouldn't feel envious of their users and their success. Having 'enough' is a special kind of wealth.

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE IS BACK AS A READ-ONLY SERVICE AFTER CYBERATTACKS

A data breach and DDoS attack kicked the site offline on October 9.

ADOBE'S AI VIDEO MODEL IS HERE, AND IT'S ALREADY INSIDE PREMIERE PRO

Adobe's Firefly Video Model has launched across a handful of new tools.

ASK HN: SOLOPRENEURS, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR IDEA? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Look to solve real problems rather than trying to come up with ideas.

BORING TECH IS STIFLING IMPROVEMENT

While boring tech may be useful, relying on it too much can suck the fun out of work, chill innovation, and cause stagnation.

TIKTOK LAYS OFF HUNDREDS OF STAFF—TO REPLACE THEM WITH AI

Around 500 TikTok employees in Malaysia are being laid off as the company shifts towards AI-powered content moderation.

IS ANYONE HERE BECOMING A BIT TOO DEPENDENT ON LLMS? (REDDIT THREAD)

Some developers feel that using large language models is causing them to lose some of their programming skills, but this might not be a bad thing.

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SPACEX'S STARSHIP TEST COMPLETES WITH A REMARKABLE ‘CHOPSTICK' BOOSTER CATCH

SpaceX's Super Heavy booster was caught by a launch tower using arms that the company has nicknamed the 'chopsticks' at the completion of Starship's fifth flight test yesterday. The remarkable catch was an important step towards making the Super Heavy booster a fully reusable launch system. Starship splashed down in the Indian Ocean a little over an hour after launch. A short clip of the booster being caught by the launch tower is available in the article.

WORDPRESS.ORG'S LATEST MOVE INVOLVES TAKING CONTROL OF A WP ENGINE PLUGIN

WordPress.org has taken over the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, a popular WP Engine plugin. It claims the move was intended to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg claims that the move was related to WP Engine's recently-filed lawsuit against him and Automattic. Those who aren't WP Engine, Flywheel, or ACF Pro customers will need to go to the ACF site and download the genuine 6.3.8 version to keep getting updates.

TWO PEOPLE COMMUNICATE IN DREAMS: INCEPTION MOVIE-STYLED SCI-FI TURNED INTO REALITY

Lucid dreams could unlock new dimensions of communication. Researchers at REMspace recently demonstrated that people can communicate in their dreams. Participants in REMspace's study were able to send and receive messages through a server that recorded their brain waves and other polysomnographic data during REM sleep. The company plans to release a device that accurately tracks all sleep stages for customers to view on a mobile app by 2025.

SCIENTISTS FOUND A WAY TO MAKE SOUND TRAVEL IN ONLY ONE DIRECTION

Waves tend to flow equally in both directions. This can cause interference, garbling signals or reducing efficiency. Researchers at ETH Zurich have figured out how to direct sound waves so that they only travel forward without weakening the sound's strength. This feat could have vast implications for future technologies, from communications systems to radar.

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SWARM

Swarm is an educational framework that explores ergonomic, lightweight multi-agent orchestration. It makes agent coordination and execution lightweight, highly controllable, and easily testable. The project, created primarily for training purposes, aims to showcase the handoff and routine patterns explored in the 'Orchestrating Agents: Handoffs & Routines' cookbook. It is not meant to be used as a standalone library or in production.

ZZZ

zzz is a framework for writing performant and reliable networked services in Zig that focuses on modularity and portability. It allows developers to swap in their own implementations for various things, allowing for maximum flexibility. zzz can be used in standard servers as well as embedded/bare metal domains. While it is generally stable, it is still in alpha and there is still a lot changing.

MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE (2 HOUR READ)

In this post, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, talks about how AI could transform the world for the better. He sketches out what the world might look like with a powerful AI if everything goes right. The effects of powerful AI are likely to be even more unpredictable than past technological changes. The list of positive applications of powerful AI is extremely long - this post focuses on a small number of areas that have the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life.

HAVE WE REACHED PEAK HUMAN LIFE SPAN?

While life expectancies have generally increased in the last few decades, the rate at which they are increasing is slowing down. This suggests that humans could be closing in on the limits of what's possible for average life span. The only thing that might radically lengthen life expectancy may be an intervention that slows the aging process itself, something some scientists are optimistic about.

OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS MODEL STRUGGLES AT WORDPRESS

This post presents an overview and analysis of the Automattic vs WP Engine drama and predictions for the outcome of the situation.

ASAHI LINUX'S BESPOKE GPU DRIVER IS RUNNING WINDOWS GAMES ON APPLE SILICON MACS

The developers behind Asahi Linux, a project that is getting Linux working on Apple Silicon Macs, have managed to get PC games running on Macs, in Linux, on Arm processors.

CHEAPER APPLE VISION HEADSET RUMORED TO COST $2,000, ARRIVING IN 2026

The lower-end Apple Vision headset will allegedly use a less powerful chip and lower-resolution screens than the higher-end model.

OVERVIEW OF STRONG HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AMPLIFICATION METHODS

This post discusses how to make many humans good at solving difficult problems.

THE QUIET ART OF ATTENTION

Mastering the mind, the only thing we truly possess, is the key to a deeper kind of freedom.

ELON MUSK WANTS TO DOMINATE ROBOTAXIS — FIRST HE NEEDS TO CATCH UP TO WAYMO

Waymo has been offering fully driverless rides since 2020 - it reached 100,000 weekly rides in August.

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TESLA CYBERCAB ANNOUNCED: ELON MUSK'S ROBOTAXI IS FINALLY HERE

Tesla has unveiled the Cybercab, a new electric vehicle dedicated to self-driving that lacks a steering wheel or pedals. It will need approval from regulators before going into production. The robotaxi features a futuristic design with doors that open upward and a small cabin with only enough space for two passengers. It doesn't have a charging plug - the vehicle will use inductive charging to regain power wirelessly. Tesla plans to have the Cybercab in production by 2026, although that could be delayed until 2027.

TIKTOK OWNER BYTEDANCE LAUNCHES US$170 EARBUDS IN CHINA IN PUSH INTO AI WEARABLES

ByteDance has launched earbuds that enable users to talk directly with the company's generative AI chatbot without waking up their smartphone. The open-ear wearables are currently only available in China. They come in four color options: purple, silver, black, and white. At $170, the device is set to ship from October 17.

STARTUP UNVEILS LUXURIOUS FINAL DESIGN FOR ITS PLANNED COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION

Vast, a space startup, has shown off the final design for its Haven-1 commercial space station. The cylindrical outpost is designed to house state-of-the-art facilities for scientific research. The video from Vast is available in the article. Vast hopes to launch its station via a SpaceX Falcon 9 no earlier than August 2025.

CAN APPLE WATCH MEASURE BLOOD PRESSURE? NOT YET — BUT HERE'S HOW THE SCIENCE WOULD WORK.

This post explains the science behind blood pressure detection on the wrist, past medical literature on using deep neural networks to glean signals from consumer wearables, likely limitations of wrist-based blood pressure sensors, and how doctors and patients can incorporate the technology into medical practice. 120 million people in the US have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, but only 23% have it under control. A continuous blood pressure monitor could help give real-time feedback on dietary choices and help control the condition, which in turn could lower heart attack rates.

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NIXIESEARCH

Nixiesearch is a hybrid search engine that can learn the intent of a visitor by fine-tuning data. Unlike other vector search engines, it supports facets, rich filtering, sorting, and autocomplete. Nixiesearch will not return hallucinated responses. It doesn't support sharding or analytical queries over deeply-nested documents. The project is focused on consumer-facing search.

FORKING IS BEAUTIFUL

FreeWP is a fork of WordPress started by a former WordPress community member. The last decent fork attempt for WordPress was ClassicPress in 2018, which started over disagreements about Gutenberg being integrated into core. WordPress itself started as a fork of the b2/cafelog project. Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, strongly encourages anyone who disagrees with the direction WordPress is headed in to join the FreeWP fork.

GENERATIVE AI'S ACT O1

Research in AI is progressing from 'thinking fast' to 'thinking slow', unlocking a new cohort of agentic applications. The focus is now shifting to the development and scaling of the reasoning layer, which could endow AI systems with deliberate reasoning, problem-solving, and cognitive operations at inference time that go beyond rapid pattern matching. This essay explores how the consolidation of the foundational LLM layer has set the stage for the race to scale higher-order reasoning and agentic capabilities, and discusses a new generation of killer apps with novel cognitive architectures and user interfaces.

THE FBI SECRETLY CREATED A COIN TO INVESTIGATE CRYPTO PUMP-AND-DUMP SCHEMES

The FBI created an Ethereum-based token called NexFundAI as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets. The investigation resulted in the SEC charging three market makers and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets and the DOJ charging 18 people and entities for widespread fraud and manipulation in crypto markets. The DOJ reportedly secured $25 million from fraudulent proceeds that will be returned to investors.