We shouldn't try to replace all code with visual programming but instead only add graphics where it makes sense. Most visual programming environments fail to get any usage because they try to replace code syntax and business logic, which developers never try to visualize. Developers visualize things like state transitions, memory layouts, and network requests. Those working on visual programming would be more likely to succeed if it started with aspects of software that developers already visualize.
Businesses around the world experienced outages starting shortly after midnight on Friday. This was caused by a faulty update to CrowdStrike's Falcon security software, which is used widely in Windows machines to prevent cyber threats. The update exposed a massive flaw in the company's product that could have been easily avoided. The issue could have been prevented if CrowdStrike had properly tested its updates with a small group of users and rolled out the update gradually, a fairly standard practice in the industry.
The gap between FAANG and non-FAANG salaries can be quite substantial. While it is possible to make FAANG-level salaries elsewhere, these opportunities are usually in less well-known companies that rarely hire. Most of these jobs also require some kind of specialty. The finance industry pays well, but the job will likely be more stressful. One other option is to learn how to build a business rather than optimizing to being a well-paid employee.
Radar is the all-in-one alternative to Google Maps Platform. Pay up to 90% less for geocoding, search, routing, and base maps PLUS Radar's industry-leading Geofencing Platform. See the full comparison and get
Always explain why something is useful, minimize the amount of knowledge conveyed before the next opportunity to practice it, and explain in context rather than explaining upfront.
Mark Zuckerberg discusses why he believes open source is the best development stack, why open sourcing Llama is good for Meta, and why open source AI is good for the world.
xAI has activated a supercomputer cluster comprised of 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in Memphis, Tennessee. It is effectively the most powerful AI training cluster in the market today. The supercomputer is expected to be used to train Grok, the company's large language model. xAI is estimated to have spent about $3 billion to $4 billion on the project. xAI also recently announced that it is hiring to increase its human talent advantage.
While hundreds of millions of customers own Alexa-enabled devices, Amazon's bet that people would spend meaningful amounts of money to buy goods on its platform by talking to the voice assistant hasn't paid off. Customers mostly use Alexa to set alarms and check the weather. Amazon has lost tens of billions of dollars on its devices business. The company will launch a paid tier for Alexa as soon as this month as part of the plan to reverse these losses.
Researchers at Tsinghua University in China have successfully demonstrated a meltdown-proof nuclear fission reactor. The twin reactor design can generate 105 MW of power each. It can cool itself down without an external power source, reaching stable temperatures around 35 hours after shutdown. Construction of the facility started in 2016, with commercial operations beginning only in December last year. One drawback of the technology is that it can't be retrofitted onto existing nuclear reactors.
Powering spaceships using compact reactors could cut down Mars transit times by more than half. The technology also has military applications, with DARPA requesting a nuclear rocket demonstrator in June 2020. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) project aims to create space-based assets that can move quickly within space to deter strategic attacks by adversaries. This article discusses the DRACO project and the technologies that make it possible.
If you're looking to get in front of software developers, product managers, executives and other tech professionals, consider advertising in TLDR. We have 10 newsletters to choose from and a subscriber base of 4+ million tech professionals to effectively reach your target audience. Learn more [12] about running your first campaign with us.
Maestro is a general-purpose workflow orchestrator that can schedule millions of jobs every day and operate with a strict SLO even when there are spikes in traffic. It is highly scalable and extensible and provides a fully managed workflow-as-a-service. Maestro serves thousands of data platform users at Netflix for various use cases.
Jiff is a datetime library for Rust. It provides high level datetime primitives with reasonable performance that are difficult to misuse. Jiff supports automatic and seamless integration with the Time Zone Database, DST aware arithmetic and rounding, formatting and parsing zone aware datetimes losslessly, opt-in Serde support, and more. Its minimum supported rustc version is 1.70.0.
US regulators have approved spot exchange-traded funds that hold Ethereum. Bitcoin ETFs, which were approved in January, have attracted tens of billions of dollars of investment. Some analysts predict that inflows into ETH ETFs won't be nearly as high as for BTC ETFs. Ethereum doesn't have the first-mover advantage that Bitcoin had and it lacks a strong narrative.
There are many reasons technical cofounders will reject a startup. This article discusses some of these factors, such as unrealistic expectations from founders, putting too much value on an idea, or a lack of understanding of the market. Building a compelling case for a technical cofounder to want to join a founder involves providing proof that the idea or product will work and that the founder is able to bring the idea to life. Founders need to prove that they will be successful and that the train is departing.
Auth0 for Startups covers everything you want to do today, and everything you'll need tomorrow — from creating a seamless login experience with SSO to securely managing individual and business customers.
A fault with an update issued by CrowdStrike led to worldwide outages on Friday. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity vendor that develops software to help companies detect and block hacks. It uses cloud technology to apply cyber protections to internet connected devices. The software requires deep access to systems to scan for threats. A fix has been issued, but it could be hard to implement - engineers will have to go into each individual data center running Windows to apply the fix, entering complex encryption keys manually for encrypted machines.
Google has approached Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica about putting its Gemini assistant on future smart glasses. Meta was recently in advanced talks with EssilorLuxottica about acquiring a five percent stake in the company. It is unlikely that Meta will lose its partnership with EssilorLuxottica to Google. Google is developing an XR platform and has partnered with Samsung and Qualcomm for a device. It previously partnered with Luxottica prior to its merger with Essilor to make Google Glass.
Solid-state lithium batteries are stable, have a higher energy density, and are much safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, but they are more difficult to recycle. New research has revealed a practical and efficient way to recycle solid-state batteries. The process results in recycled batteries with over 92 percent of the discharge capacity of the original battery. The research demonstrates that it is possible to recycle solid-state batteries and harness their potential without harming the environment.
The Curiosity rover has discovered rocks made of pure sulfur. The discovery was made by accident after the 1-ton rover drove over a rock and cracked it open, revealing yellowish-green crystals. On Earth, pure elemental sulfur is mostly found in places like hydrothermal vents. The rock was discovered in an area that was likely formed due to violent water flows and landslides. Curiosity is still in great health after 12 years of service.
Software developers are often incorrectly held responsible for bugs and outages. The people responsible for these incidents are those who put pressure on software engineers: CEOs, customers, regulators, and other parties in positions of power. Other professionals, such as anesthesiologists or structural engineers, are given the respect they deserve and thus can take responsibility for their work. People ignore software engineers, resulting in broken organizational practices.
Passkeys are a technically interesting idea with many upsides, but they take away power from the user. This article discusses some of the issues with the technology. Passkeys can't be exported, sites can discriminate on which apps and devices passkeys can be stored on, and they rely on more centralized systems. It's bad for society if only vetted and authorized entities can build passkey apps and it's bad for users if they can't choose to use a particular passkey app.
California state Senator Scott Wiener's Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models bill requires companies training 'frontier models' that cost more than $100 million to do safety testing and be able to shut off their models in the event of a safety incident. The bill has received heavy criticism from the tech industry. It will affect everyone who does business in California, not just companies that develop their models in California. This article contains an interview with Wiener about the bill and its critics.
With OpenAI's recent introduction of GPT-4o mini, it's now possible to build dynamic, AI-generated content entirely supported by ads. Google's AdSense pays approximately $0.0026 per page view. A site could generate results tailored to user search queries and earn a profit after calculating for the cost of the generated content. This post presents a simple example of how this could be done with calculations of how much it would cost/profit.