The US v. Google antitrust ruling revealed that Apple considers Bing an inferior search engine and wouldn't switch to it, even for a huge payment. The judge declared that TikTok and other social media platforms are not competitors to Google Search because they lack the ability to index the entire web. The ruling further stated that AI search technology is not yet advanced enough to replace traditional search engine methods - this was used to justify the final call that Google is a monopoly.
The Blue Screen of Death, a notorious part of Microsoft's history, has a clear authorship for each of its iterations. Steve Ballmer is credited with the text of the error message in Windows 3.1, which was not a true "blue screen of death" as it displayed a black screen with an error message. The Windows 95 kernel error was actually brought to its final form by Raymond Chen. John Vert is the author of the true "blue screen of death" associated with Windows NT.
There was a controversy surrounding Microsoft's commitment to open-source development, specifically regarding the .NET framework. Microsoft was seemingly starting to shift away from open-source practices by removing features like "Hot Reload" from the .NET SDK and making them exclusive to Visual Studio. However, the community's strong reaction to this prompted Microsoft to reverse its decision and bring back Hot Reload as an open-source feature.
This author built a simulated 8-bit computer from scratch in code to gain a better understanding of how CPUs work, specifically how bits move, how an ALU functions, and the basic fetch-decode-execute cycle.
A federal judge has ruled that Google illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising. Google was found to have violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies. The ruling is the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades. Google plans to appeal the ruling.
Chrome is preparing to make Manifest V3 compulsory for extensions that want to run on its platform. Some users recently reported seeing warnings telling them that certain extensions may no longer be supported. V2 extensions started being disabled in early June on the Beta, Dev, and Canary update channels. Users will still be able to manually re-enable V2 extensions for a short time.
This article takes a look at how far the field of aging research has progressed since 2021. Nothing particularly useful has come from sirtuin-focused therapies and this is unlikely to change. The increase in longevity-focused research institutions/grant programs/startups hasn't led to much progress, but it's still very early. Cellar reprogramming has shown promise in animal studies, but no therapies have reached clinical trials yet. There's still a lot we don't know about biological clocks - everyday consumers should probably avoid getting their biological age tested. While epigenetic clocks seem to be useful, their interpretation is a bit complicated.
There are now many targeted therapies and new techniques in the pipeline for treating various types of cancer. This article looks at the history of targeted cancer treatments to see how far the science has come. It took many preclinical studies, genetic sequencing advances, and other breakthroughs to get where we are now. The success of current treatments would not have been possible without all of the research legwork and basic science over the past few decades.
If you're into automation — as a software developer, architect, or digital transformation expert — there's no better place to be than CamundaCon [9]. Level up in technical sessions and business talks (including speakers from Forrester, Capital One, and Walmart), make valuable industry connections, and have some fun. Get your tickets early [9].
Databases contain some immensely powerful and clever abstractions. They aren't that complicated - most of the complexity in them comes from edge cases, often around concurrency. This article looks at how databases store data on disk, with a focus on PostgreSQL. It also provides resources for further research. Understanding how databases work is useful for fine-tuning performance and data recovery.
This article shares a developer's perspective on how to program durable things. The developer found that he ended up with much better programs by giving up tests and versions. Building durably for lots of people is hard - it's much better to focus on a core set of people and features. Overuse of the same tools creates technical debt, making programs unnecessarily complex, less durable, and harder to change when the context shifts.
Billions of dollars have been spent on cookie banner compliance just to annoy users with no material improvement to their privacy. The EU has no mechanism for self-correcting legislative failures. Europe needs to rethink how it legislates tech as the amount of squandered potential is tragic. Very little innovation is happening in Europe and when it does, it's usually shipped to the US or elsewhere as soon as it's ready to make a real impact on the world.
OpenAI is changing the format of its DevDay conference to a series of on-the-road developer engagement sessions. It won't be releasing its next major flagship model during the event. The conference will focus on educating developers about what's available in showcasing dev community stories. The DevDay events will take place in San Francisco on October 1, London on October 30, and Singapore on November 21. Registration costs $450 - applications close on August 15.
Microsoft is now tying its security efforts to employee performance reviews - a lack of security focus for employees could impact promotions, merit-based salary increases, and bonuses.
Instead of buying companies outright, big tech has been using an 'acquihiring' strategy to avoid complications with antitrust regulators - this post describes the process.
Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of fraudulently obtaining $44 million in seed funding by promising to keep OpenAI's technology open-source and prioritize the public good, only to later turn it into a for-profit venture with ties to Microsoft, which Musk claims betrays the original mission and has caused irreparable harm to both his interests and the public.
Meta has announced a program to award groups using its models for good with $2m to help develop these tools for economically and socially impactful projects.
Keep your business on 24/7 with genAI. Synthflow's simple no-code builder lets you set up human-sounding AI voice assistants [11] that can handle call center tasks: real time booking, appointment setting, transferring between agents, and more. Pay as low as $0.08 per minute
This project introduces a method to balance computational loads during large-scale 3D parallel training of vision-language models, addressing the imbalance caused by differing data distributions and model architectures.
BYU chemical engineering professor Matt Memmott has developed an AI algorithm that could reduce the nuclear reactor design and licensing process by a decade, cutting costs significantly. His team's research shows AI can optimize complex nuclear design problems much faster than traditional methods, with one example reducing design time from six months to just two days. The findings aim to accelerate nuclear power production to meet rising energy demands and maintain affordable power costs.
This blog explores the dichotomy of love and hate for AI, emphasizing its pivotal role in progress while also acknowledging the distrust and dissatisfaction people have with Big Tech. Disdain for generative AI stems from its perceived shortcomings and the high-cost, low-return reality emphasized by tech leaders' actions. Ultimately, the misaligned efforts of technologists risk a widespread aversion to AI, well beyond generative models, threatening the potential of beneficial AI applications.
OpenAI has announced that this year's DevDay conference will shift from a major event to a series of smaller, on-the-road developer sessions, focusing on updates to APIs and developer services rather than unveiling a new flagship model.
Tezi raised $9M in seed funding led by 8VC and Audacious Ventures to develop Max, an AI-driven recruiting agent that autonomously manages end-to-end hiring processes.
Bitcoin hit its lowest price since February, and the rest of the market saw greater than 20% decreases in one of the biggest selloffs since FTX. Investors are reacting to several events, including Jump Crypto liquidating hundreds of millions of dollars of assets, the increasing chances of a Kamala Harris presidency, and a sharp decline in Japan's stock market. There are also fears about an impending recession, and ETHE investors are selling their positions in the Grayscale trust.
Public Citizen and Molly White filed a complaint to the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) claiming that Coinbase violated campaign finance laws by donating $25 million to the pro-crypto group Fairshake Super PAC while negotiating government contracts with the DOJ. The complaint argues that Coinbase is a federal contractor due to its current work with the US Marshal Service (a unit within the DOJ), and is thus breaking "pay-to-play" laws.
Brevis is an EigenLayer-secured ZK coprocessor that enables smart contracts to read historic onchain data. It allows dapps to introduce features like intent-based active liquidity management, loyalty trading programs, and account reputation. Its decentralized prover network and Brevis coChain allow for efficient and trust-minimized ZK-proof validation.
This thread highlights some of the most innovative rollups with technological and cultural differentiations from Ethereum. It includes a chain for halal finance, one with an MEV-free crosschain DEX, and another with EVM and SVM apps running in parallel. There are also L2s requiring all users to KYC and designed for banks.
Cross-L2 interoperability problems require considerable effort, but we should quickly achieve a seamless UX across Ethereum-based rollups. Work is being done on chain-specific addresses, cross-L2 sends using liquidity providers, L2 light clients, and replayable account state updates. In Phase 2 of the roadmap, shared key management and proof aggregation will further improve the experience.
Bitcoin's service is the trustless storage of wealth without relying on a centralized intermediary. Like a company offering a service, if more people want BTC's service and buy the asset, the price increases, and vice versa. There is no centralized entity to collect this value - it accrues to prior BTC holders.
Friday saw terrible macro signals, including the 10-year Treasury rate falling 40bps and poor equity performance, but there will likely be a rate cut in September, and it is still an election year. Jump Crypto sold hundreds of millions of ETH in a short period, contributing to the rapid price decline, and the negative ETF flows are hurting the market in the short term but necessary for new capital flows in the long term. Though a democratic election is perceived to hurt crypto, the Middle East tensions may not matter in the long term, and the Mt Gox and Genesis distributions are nearly complete.
Blackbird aims to recharge the restaurant industry by integrating a crypto-based reward system ($FLY) that rewards users for dining check-ins, creating an interconnected, circular economy among participating restaurants. Although the app has been praised for its simple, consumer focused UX, many restaurant operators are hesitant about the crypto aspect, preferring traditional loyalty methods. Most restaurants do not currently accept $FLY, which could limit the app's impact. However, restaurant operators frequently praise the app's ability to help them better understand and reward customer loyalty.