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FIRST LOOK AT GOOGLE PIXEL 9A WITH STUNNING 5K RENDERS

The new design of the Pixel 9a has been leaked ahead of its expected launch in the Spring. The biggest change appears to be the camera bar, which is now nearly flush with the back of the device. The Pixel 9a will launch with Android 15 and seven years of updates. The specs will likely be very similar to the Pixel 8a.

THE ART OF THE OPENAI DEAL

OpenAI's upcoming investment round includes a term where the company has two years to convert to a for-profit business or the funding will convert into debt. While convertible notes are common, this is essentially the opposite. This could be a very real problem for the company in a couple of years if it is neither a for-profit nor insanely profitable.

AI BOTS NOW BEAT 100% OF THOSE TRAFFIC-IMAGE CAPTCHAS

Locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can achieve a 100% success rate when challenged with Google's ReCAPTCHA v2. Google has been phasing out the system in favor of a new 'invisible' system that analyzes user interactions. However, it is still used by millions of websites. Details about how the system works are available in the article.

AI'S THIRST FOR ENERGY HAS ANOTHER NUCLEAR PLANT COMING ONLINE

Holtec Palisades has received a $1.52 billion loan from the Department of Energy to restore a nuclear power plant in Michigan. The plant ceased operations in 2022, but will be brought back online as early as 2025. It will add about 600 jobs to the area. Holtec had originally bought the plant to dismantle it, but changed course due to renewed interest in nuclear power from data center providers.

TIPS FOR BUILDING AND DEPLOYING ROBOTS

Use other people's supply chain scale wherever possible. Using existing infrastructure makes deploying robots easier. New infrastructure made for humans tends to also be useful for robots. Deployed robots live in a sea of real-world data - this can be used for various things, for example, training learning algorithms or to create synchronized networks so robots know what is happening in the world.

QRFRAME

qrframe is a code-based QR code generator. It can create QR codes with customized data in many different styles. Many examples of generated codes are available.

Y COMBINATOR TRADED PRESTIGE FOR GROWTH

Reputation and prestige are everything. The reason Harvard doesn't accept a higher percentage of applicants isn't because it can't scale, but because it chooses not to. Its success lies in exclusivity. Y Combinator is trading its reputation capital for money - it now looks like it is willing to fund just about anything, which means that the accelerator isn't doing any real due diligence and doesn't care about its existing portfolio companies. It is no longer an exclusive club that signals legitimacy.

EPIC GAMES SUES GOOGLE, SAMSUNG OVER ALLEGED APP-STORE SCHEME

Epic is suing Google and Samsung, claiming that the tech giants colluded to place onerous restrictions on app stores. The lawsuit alleges that Google and Samsung made it too difficult for consumers to download app stores from outside software developers by making a feature called Auto Blocker active by default on Samsung's newest smartphones. The feature prevents users from downloading alternative app stores. Turning off the feature and installing a third-party app store requires 21 steps. The friction has caused 50% of users trying to install the Epic Games Store on Android to give up before they've gotten it installed.

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DIRECTV AGREES TO BUY SATELLITE RIVAL DISH (AND ITS DEBT) FOR ONE DOLLAR

DirecTV will take on $9.75 billion of Dish debt if the deal is completed.

WHY YOUR RAILS-LIKE FRAMEWORK IS NOT WIDELY USED

This article discusses what makes a modern Rails-like framework successful.

PRODUCT HUNT ISN'T DYING – IT'S BECOME GENTRIFIED

Small-time makers have been priced out by those with deep pockets.

IN FEAR OF MORE USER PROTESTS, REDDIT ANNOUNCES CONTROVERSIAL POLICY CHANGE

Moderators now need Reddit's permission to change subreddits to private or not-safe-for-work.

OPENAI AND ANTHROPIC REVENUE BREAKDOWN

OpenAI is five times larger than Anthropic - OpenAI is much more dominant on the consumer side, with the two being closer on the API side.

WHAT COMES AFTER?

Legislators should ensure that AI developers make sure outputs are safe, understand the technology better, and be minimally restrictive.

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OPENAI IS GROWING FAST AND BURNING THROUGH PILES OF MONEY

OpenAI's monthly revenue hit $300 million in August and it expects about $3.7 billion in annual sales this year. However, it expects to lose roughly $5 billion after paying for costs related to running its services. There will also be other costs such as equity-based compensation to employees. Its biggest cost is the computing power it gets through a partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI plans to raise ChatGPT Plus to $44 over the next five years.

META'S NEW AI-MADE POSTS OPEN A PANDORA'S BOX

Meta is starting to test personalized content created by Meta AI in Facebook and Instagram. Content will be generated based on interests, with some featuring the user's likeness. Users will be able to edit the content or swipe to see more content generated in real time. They will be able to opt out of the feature.

SPACEX LAUNCHES RESCUE MISSION TO RETURN STRANDED ASTRONAUTS

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off on Saturday with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov on board. The mission has two empty seats to return Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stranded for months on the International Space Station. Their stay was only supposed to last 8 days, but a problem with Boeing's Starliner's propulsion system prevented their return. Their total stay will end up lasting 8 months.

GOOGLE UNVEILS ALPHACHIP AI-ASSISTED CHIP DESIGN TECHNOLOGY — CHIP LAYOUT AS A GAME FOR A COMPUTER

Google's AlphaChip reinforcement learning method for designing chip layouts promises to substantially speed up the design of chip floorplans and make them more optimal in terms of performance, power, and area. The method has been instrumental in designing Google's Tensor Processing Units. Its success has inspired a wave of new research into using AI for different stages of chip design. The method has been shared with the public - a link to the repository is available in the article.

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MITATA

mitata is a tool for benchmarking. It features automatic garbage collection and universal compatibility with engines and runtimes. mitata makes augmenting benchmarks easy and provides helpful warnings. It provides visualizations in the terminal as well as clear summaries.

IT'S HARD TO WRITE CODE FOR COMPUTERS, BUT IT'S EVEN HARDER TO WRITE CODE FOR HUMANS

Writing code that other humans interact with, like frameworks, libraries, APIs, SDKs, and programming languages, is difficult because developers need to grapple with other users' mental models of their code. It is equal parts computer science and psychology. This post discusses how to make these products easier for developers to adopt.

WHEN TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE

There's a lot of selection bias in advice about whether to follow your passion. Most people telling you to follow your passion became successful by doing what they're most interested in. One of the requirements for doing great work is that the person is working on what interests them most. Not everyone can do or wants to do great work. However, the root of great work is a sort of ambitious curiosity which can't be manufactured.

THE MESSY WORDPRESS DRAMA, EXPLAINED

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg last week came out with a harsh attack on major WordPress hosting provider WP Engine, calling the company a 'cancer' to the community. This has escalated into a barrage of legal threats that has caught many website operators in a conflict beyond their control. WP Engine customers were off from accessing WordPress.org's servers, but the company has been granted a temporary reprieve. WP Engine claims that Automattic demanded a very large sum of money days before Mullenweg's attack and threatened to carry out a 'scorched earth nuclear approach' toward WP Engine if the amount wasn't received. Many more details about the situation are available in the article.

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BEING RAISED BY THE INTERNET

A childhood spent tinkering with computers has resulted in a successful career, largely thanks to the kindness of strangers who were willing to share their work openly.

KAMAL 2.0 RELEASED

Kamal, a deployment tool for running web apps directly on VMs or bare metal servers, is now simpler to use at any scale.

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN PROBLEM

A Creative Commons Zero license is the best way to guarantee that authors or their successors won't try to reclaim their work.

1 IN 6 COMPANIES ARE HESITANT TO HIRE RECENT COLLEGE GRADUATES

Gen Z has a reputation for being challenging to work with and difficult to manage.

DELL SALES TEAM TOLD TO RETURN TO OFFICE 5 DAYS A WEEK, STARTING MONDAY

Dell's new policy applies to salespeople worldwide - they were previously allowed to work remotely two days per week.

GOV. NEWSOM VETOES CALIFORNIA'S CONTROVERSIAL AI BILL, SB 1047

SB 1047 is a high-profile bill authored by State Senator Scott Wiener that would have made companies that develop AI models liable for implementing safety protocols to prevent 'critical harms'.

APPLE'S LONG-AWAITED ‘HOMEACCESSORY' COULD HAVE SQUARE DISPLAY, A18 CHIP FOR AI, MORE

Details about Apple's rumored new home accessory have been leaked. The device, codenamed J490, combines the capabilities of the iPad, Apple TV, and HomePod. It will be powered by the A18 chip, presumably to support Apple Intelligence features. The device currently has a squarish display - it is unclear whether the square aspect ratio will make it to the final product. It has a built-in camera that works for FaceTime and other video conferencing apps. The camera can identify hand gestures from a distance and identify users to enable personal requests. More details about the device are available in the article.

STARLINK HITS 4 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS

SpaceX's Starlink satellite network is expected to pass four million customers this week. The company has gained around a million new customers since the end of May. It started providing beta service of its product in October 2020, hitting one million subscribers in December 2022. Its constellation now comprises nearly 6,000 satellites, which service companies and individuals in nearly 100 countries.

STEM CELLS REVERSE WOMAN'S DIABETES — A WORLD FIRST

A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes has started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells. A year after the transplant, she can now eat sugar and enjoy eating everything. The surgery has completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who previously required substantial amounts of insulin. While the results are positive, they still need to be replicated in more people, and the researchers want to wait five more years before considering the patient as 'cured'.

RADIAN AEROSPACE COMPLETES GROUND TESTS OF PROTOTYPE SPACE PLANE

Radian Aerospace has announced the completion of a series of ground tests for its reusable space plane, which will be able to take off from airfields and land on runways like conventional airplanes. The tests were completed with a subscale prototype flight vehicle. They aimed to generate data on how the vehicle would fly and handle and to compare the data to simulations. While the vehicle did not fly, it did perform a series of small hops. The prototype vehicle is much smaller than the final vehicle, but the data will help inform key pieces of the final design and flight control systems.

POSTGRESQL 17 RELEASED!

PostgreSQL 17 improves on performance and scalability while adapting to emergent data access and storage patterns. It adds significant overall performance gains, including an overhauled memory management implementation for vacuum, optimizations to storage access and improvements for high concurrency workloads, speedups in bulk loading and exports, and query execution improvements for indexes. It also has features that benefit brand-new workloads and critical systems. This article covers the highlights of the new release.

HOTWIRE NATIVE

Hotwire Native is a web-first framework for building native mobile apps. It enables developers to build screens in HTML and CSS and reuse them across every platform. Hotwire Native provides developers with full access to underlying iOS and Android SDKs and APIs as soon as they're released. It allows small teams to build highly functional, beautiful, and sustainable mobile apps without the headache and rigmarole of traditional native development.

WORDPRESS.ORG BANS WP ENGINE, BLOCKS IT FROM ACCESSING ITS RESOURCES

WordPress.org has banned WP Engine from accessing its resources. The ban prevents WP Engine customers from accessing security updates, leaving them vulnerable. WP Engine is now working on fixes. The company claims that WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg is misusing his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine's customers' access to WordPress.org.

CRITICAL MASS AND TIPPING POINTS: HOW TO IDENTIFY INFLECTION POINTS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN

The concept of critical mass can be used to understand everything from viral cat videos to why changing habits is so hard. Sometimes, it can seem as if drastic changes happen at random, but there is a logic to these occurrences that can be explained by the concept of critical mass - the point at which something is prevalent enough to grow or sustain a process, reaction, or technology. The concept can help us understand the world around us by letting us spot changes before they occur. A firm understanding can help give people an edge in launching products, changing habits, and choosing investments.

TAILS OS JOINS FORCES WITH TOR PROJECT IN MERGER

GIT ABSORB

git absorb is a port of Facebook's hg absorb, which is a workflow enhancement to version control that automatically folds uncommitted modifications into the appropriate draft ancestor change sets.