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'CLOSER THAN PEOPLE THINK': WOOLLY MAMMOTH 'DE-EXTINCTION' IS NEARING REALITY — AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

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VALKEY IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF FORK

Valkey is a high-performance key/value datastore forked from Redis. It has gained a lot of support, with two-thirds of former top Redis maintainers and developers switching over to the project. Valkey 8.0 introduces serious speed improvements and new futures that Redis users have wanted for some time, including improved debugging tools, enhanced documentation, and new command-line utilities for easier management and monitoring. It maintains full API and CLI compatibility with Redis and compatibility with the Redis Serialization Protocol, making migrating from Redis to Valkey easy.

OK, HERE IS MY BEST GUESS ON THE STATE OF LLMS

Making a jump similar to the 100x jump going from GPT-3 to GPT-4 is going to be very hard. It will require a lot more training data and larger data centers. It is difficult to see whether efforts to improve models will bear any fruit. Policies like SB 1047 threaten to further slow down progress.

HOW DO YOU CHANGE A CHATBOT'S MIND?

Today's AI may seem harmless, but these systems are being woven into society in ways that may be hard to untangle. It could be problematic for people if AI has somehow trained a bias against them, for example, a person whose name was associated with a negative event may be unfairly discriminated against by other chatbots. Chatbots are highly suggestible - if people add text on the internet and it gets memorized, it's memorialized in the language model.

NOT EVERYTHING IS PHYSICS

Physicists like to write books with grand unified theories of the world, but that view of the world is limited and we shouldn't expect a theory or algorithm that explains it all. The universe is made up of many different worlds, both physical and metaphorical, and many of these worlds aren't connected to each other in any meaningful way. The truth is contextual, so it isn't a good idea to reduce everything to fundamentals. Reality being a disjoint collection of domains seems infinitely more rich than it being a single equation.

(must be US-based)

THE THREAT TO OPENAI IS GROWING

New competition is coming from startups that promise to undercut OpenAI's services with cheaper bots that are also better at certain narrow tasks.

APPLE SUCCESSION STRATEGY: KEEP THE OLD GUARD AROUND AS LONG AS POSSIBLE

Executives quitting Apple don't actually leave - they are usually moved to other roles, like Luca Maestri, who recently departed his role as Chief Financial Officer but will still oversee the Information Systems and Technology unit.

FOUNDER MODE

Scaling a startup doesn't always mean switching to manager mode.

WILLINGNESS TO LOOK STUPID

If you don't regularly have people thinking you're stupid, you're either likely having extremely filtered interactions with people, you are avoiding looking stupid, or you are not noticing when people think you're stupid.

THE SECRET INSIDE ONE MILLION CHECKBOXES

This article explains how the creator of One Million Checkboxes discovered a group of teens sending him secret messages using binary.

A PRIMER ON WHY MICROBIOME RESEARCH IS HARD

There are still technical limitations, unknown unknowns, and other issues making establishing causality between the microbiome and disease difficult.

COHERE COMMAND R UPDATE

Command R and Command R+ received an upgrade on essentially all tasks. They are now better at recall, speed, math, and reasoning.

WORKERS AT GOOGLE DEEPMIND PUSH COMPANY TO DROP MILITARY CONTRACTS

Nearly 200 Google DeepMind employees signed a letter urging Google to terminate military contracts, claiming a violation of the company's own AI ethics principles. DeepMind technology has been bundled into Google Cloud and sold to militaries, sparking internal conflict with AI staff who value ethical standards. Google's response demonstrated an adherence to AI Principles, but workers remain unsatisfied, seeking stronger governance against military use of their AI.

APPLE'S ROBOTICS WORK AIMS TO SOLVE USER'S FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS

Apple may be expanding into robotics, potentially introducing devices that move, such as an iPad mounted on a robotic arm. Headed by VP of Technology Kevin Lynch, Apple's robotics efforts are progressing with the help of experts from firms like Israel's Technion, and propose to include AI interfaces beyond Siri. While still conceptual, Apple is considering a 2026 or 2027 release for these new robotic products.

AUXILIARY-LOSS-FREE LOAD BALANCING FOR MOES

Routing tokens to experts in MoEs helps sparsify the computation. However, learning that routing can be challenging. There is typically a complicated loss structure. This paper shows a novel way to overcome this problem and dramatically improve expert balancing and training stability.

IMPROVING LOW-LIGHT VIDEO QUALITY

This end-to-end framework simultaneously addresses low-light enhancement and motion deblurring in videos using event cameras.

SOUND SOURCE LOCALIZATION

Researchers have proposed a new audio-visual learning framework for enhancing sound source localization, addressing the issue of false negatives in traditional methods. The framework includes two schemes: Self-Supervised Predictive Learning (SSPL) and Semantic-Aware Contrastive Learning (SACL). SSPL eliminates false negatives by focusing on positive-only learning, while SACL refines the contrastive learning process to improve alignment between audio and visual features.

TRL RELEASE

This may be one of the bigger improvements to the Transformer Reinforcement Learning library. It includes onlineDPO, Liger Kernels, WinRate Callbacks, and more.

FAST SD SUPPORT FOR SCHNELL ON CPU

A popular inference library now has support for Flux Schnell running on the CPU.

SPIKING DIFFUSION MODELS FOR IMAGE GENERATION

Spiking Diffusion Models (SDMs) is a new family of Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) designed for image generation, offering significant energy savings and high biological plausibility.

LAION 5B SAFETY RELEASE

Laion 5B was the largest open image dataset on the internet. It was shut down over concerns of inappropriate and harmful images. The organization has made significant efforts to mitigate these issues and is now rereleasing the dataset.

THE NEXT GENERATION PIXAR: HOW AI WILL MERGE FILM & GAMES

Generative AI is poised to revolutionize storytelling, blending narrative depth with the dynamic interactivity of video games. Recent advancements in generative models such as OpenAI's Sora and Luma AI's Dream Machine are accelerating this shift, enabling real-time, interactive video creation. This evolution has the potential to produce the next "Pixar" in interactive media, merging film, gaming, and AI.

CHINA'S ROBOT MAKERS CHASE TESLA TO DELIVER HUMANOID WORKERS

Over 25 Chinese companies showcased humanoid robots aimed at factory automation at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, backed by substantial government investments and leveraging China's deep supply chain. The global humanoid robot market is predicted to hit $38 billion by 2035. China aspires to mass-produce these robots by 2025, intensifying competition with Tesla's upcoming Optimus robot. Tesla anticipates that it will deploy 1,000 Optimus robots in its factories in the next year, while Chinese firms forecast significant cost reductions for their models.

VYBE RAISES $4.75M TO POWER AI-PHOTO FUN AND A NEW WAY TO CONNECT WITH FRIENDS

The Vybe AI camera app transforms your selfies into vibrant, beautiful photos using cutting-edge AI.

APPLE AND NVIDIA MAY INVEST IN OPENAI

OpenAI is reportedly preparing for a significant funding round that could value the company at over $100 billion, potentially involving investments from Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

BOSTON DYNAMICS' NEW ELECTRIC ATLAS CAN DO PUSH-UPS

Boston Dynamics has showcased its electric biped robot, Atlas, performing push-ups in a new video that emphasizes its strong actuators amidst its early commercialization phase for factory floor applications.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN CRYPTO DONATIONS OUTPACING ALL OTHER CORPORATE DONATIONS

During Trump's discussion with BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, he was promised $100 million in donations and 5 million re-election votes for promoting pro-crypto policy. Since then, $25 million has been raised. 48% of all corporate money raised this cycle is from crypto. Pro-crypto money has led to 85% win rates for candidates. More than $4 million in crypto like USDC, ETH, and BTC has been directly donated. Ripple and Coinbase have been the biggest backers of pro-crypto PACs.

SEC WARNS FTX AGAINST PAYING CREDITORS BACK IN STABLECOINS, OTHER CRYPTO

The SEC has warned FTX that it may oppose the bankrupt exchange's plan to repay creditors using stablecoins or other digital assets. The agency also objects to provisions that would limit future legal liabilities for FTX's estate, aligning with the U.S. Trustee's concerns over discharge provisions that protect the debtors from further claims.

INTRODUCING RUMPEL: TURNING POINTS INTO PROFIT

Points have become the primary protocol reward mechanism, but users are frustrated with their lack of transferability. Rumpel wraps points into a Rumpel Point Token stored in a multisig wallet, allowing points to be traded onchain. Liquid points markets create more user interest and speculation, increasing protocol market awareness.

EIGENDA: REVOLUTIONIZING ROLLUP ECONOMICS

EigenLayer's data availability AVS, EigenDA, has over $9 billion of restaked capital protecting the availability of rollup data for transaction verification. Though the DA space is saturated with competitors, EigenDA has higher throughput and Ethereum alignment but may not offer as high restaking rewards as other AVSs. EigenDA must reach $160k monthly revenue, or around 11 rollups, to break even.

HOW L2S ACTUALLY WORK

On an L1, all the network's nodes have to process transactions and store data onchain, which is an expensive process causing high transaction fees. L2s use cheaper data and batch transactions together to be executed by an offchain entity, allowing for hundreds more transactions per second than L1s. L2s submit transaction proofs secured by cryptography or staked assets to the L1 for settlement.

MOATS IN CRYPTO MARKETS – A NEW FRAMEWORK

In the competitive crypto protocol industry, it is essential to understand moats and how entrenched specific protocols are. This framework focuses on six verticals — money markets, DEXs, stablecoins, LSTs, third-party bridges, and social apps — and analyzes them for their defensibility. Each vertical has “un-forkable” properties, like liquidity for a DEX, that keep the incumbents in power, though some properties are stronger than others.

GAMING STUDIO ZYNGA SELLS SUGARTOWN TO ITS DEVELOPERS

Zynga, the game studio behind hit games like Farmville and Words With Friends, has divested from its Web3 game Sugartown. The IP was sold to D20 Labs, a company led by two Sugartown game developers. A follow-up post promised more details about the project's future in the coming weeks.

EIGENLAYER: PUSHING BOUNDARIES OF TRUST

Restaking expands what staked capital can do, while the EIGEN token and intersubjectivity expand the use cases of governance tokens. The protocol will have outsized impacts on validator economics, and there will undoubtedly be unforeseen challenges in the AVS ecosystem. While complex, restaking could lead to more resilient and responsive blockchain systems through community-driven resolution of disputes and expanding decentralized collaboration.

BLOOMBERG TERMINAL ADDING POLYMARKET ELECTION DATA

The Bloomberg Terminal is reportedly adding Polymarket election data to its election dashboard, providing users with real-time insights on the prediction market's numbers.

DEFI WILL BE THE BACKBONE OF ALL FINANCE

DeFi protocols like Aave could become the backbone for all credit extensions through the tokenization of real-world assets.

PUMP.FUN SURPASSES $100 MILLION IN REVENUE AS POLYMARKET OUTSHINES NFTS IN AUGUST

Pump.fun, a memecoin launchpad, has exceeded $100 million in revenue since its January 2024 launch, while Polymarket's trading volume in August outpaced the entire NFT market.

YUGA LABS CEO REVEALS THE WORKSHOP TEAM FOCUSED ON APECHAIN DAPPS

Yuga Labs' CEO has created a special team, named "The Workshop," dedicated to developing dApps for its ApeChain blockchain.

FIGMA INTRODUCES ENHANCED CONNECTOR FUNCTIONS FOR BUILDING DIAGRAMS IN FIGJAM

Figma has introduced seven enhancements to its FigJam platform, focusing on connectors' visual and functional aspects. These updates include improved connector spacing for a cleaner look, streamlined alignment indicators to reduce visual distractions, and an enhanced "Quick Create" that automatically links nearby objects. Additional improvements like dynamic connector anchor points, new hover visuals, and customizable connector text colors make FigJam more intuitive and user-friendly for diagram creation and organization.

GOOGLE GEMINI WILL LET YOU CREATE AI-GENERATED PEOPLE AGAIN

After pausing it due to issues with historically inaccurate images, Google has reintroduced the image generation feature in its Gemini AI chatbot. Using brief text descriptions, the updated tool can create diverse types of images, from photorealistic landscapes to oil paintings. Enhanced safeguards preventing users from creating pictures of public figures, minors, and explicit scenes are now in place. Feedback from early users will guide further improvements.

THE MEANING BEHIND THE PARALYMPIC LOGO

The Paralympic Games have commenced. Its unique logo, known as the Agitos, meaning 'I move' in Latin, carries a distinct symbolism while sharing a connection with the idea of movement and unity. The logo emphasizes the dynamic spirit and resilience of Paralympic athletes.

BREAKING IN: A GUIDE TO LANDING YOUR FIRST PRODUCT DESIGN ROLE

Landing an early career opportunity requires a compelling portfolio that showcases your best work, storytelling skills, and a deep understanding of design decisions. Quality over quantity is key in a portfolio, and candidates should demonstrate technical and soft skills. Set yourself apart by regularly updating your portfolio and effectively presenting it in interviews.

DARK THEME: FIVE UI DESIGN TIPS

Designing a compelling dark theme involves avoiding pure black backgrounds, selecting legible fonts, and adjusting shadows for depth. Use muted colors to prevent eye strain and ensure accessibility. Consistency with the light theme's color scheme is crucial to maintaining a cohesive user experience across both modes.

HOW TO DESIGN DROPDOWN MENUS THAT IMPROVE NAVIGATION AND USABILITY

Dropdown menus enhance navigation, reduce clutter, and improve user experience. They help streamline website forms, navigation, and search while freeing up UI space and supporting responsive design. A focus on simplicity, accessibility, and mobile optimization contributes to creating effective, user-friendly menus.

WIREFRAME, DIAGRAM & WHITEBOARD ONLINE

Moqups is an online tool for creating wireframes, diagrams, and prototypes. It also enables real-time collaboration, simplifying the design process for teams.

HUETONE

Huetone generates accessible color palettes using the LCH color space, offering predictable contrast ratios and compatibility with various design tools like Figma.