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YOUR FINGERPRINTS CAN BE RECREATED FROM THE SOUNDS MADE WHEN YOU SWIPE ON A TOUCHSCREEN

A new side-channel attack can successfully attack up to 27.9% of partial fingerprints and 9.3% of complete fingerprints within five attempts.

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CHATGPT’S GROWTH IS FLATLINING

ChatGPT has seen declining web traffic in five of the past eight months. It is currently down 11% from its May 2023 peak. Its mobile app has seen fewer users than Snapchat added last quarter alone. The competition in the AI space means that OpenAI will have to pump out hits to stay ahead.

APPLE VISION PRO 2 AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AWAY

The second generation of Apple's Vision Pro headset is at least 18 months away from launch. Apple is keenly interested in feedback from customers who choose to return the first-generation headset as it will use the information to perfect the next version of the device. The Vision Pro will likely follow a refresh cycle longer than that of the iPad. There are rumors that Apple may launch a more affordable Vision headset around 2025.

THE QUEST FOR A DNA DATA DRIVE

The rate of information production is increasing faster than the storage density of tape. Using current technologies will mean that, in the coming decades, we will need exponentially more magnetic tape, disk drives, and flash memory - as well as the factories to produce the storage media. DNA is cheap, readily available, and stable at room temperature for millennia. Organizations around the world are already taking the first steps towards building a DNA drive that can both read and write DNA data.

THIS TINY, TAMPER-PROOF ID TAG CAN AUTHENTICATE ALMOST ANYTHING

MIT researchers have developed an antitampering ID tag that is tiny, cheap, and secure. It is several times smaller and significantly cheaper than the traditional radio frequency tags that are used to verify product authenticity. The tags use glue containing microscopic metal particles. This glue forms unique patterns that can be detected using terahertz waves. The system uses AI to compare glue patterns and calculate their similarity. The tags could be used to authenticate items too small for traditional RFIDs.

HTMZ

htmz is a minimalist HTML microframework for creating dynamic web user interfaces. It allows developers to load HTML resources within any element in a page. htmz only requires an inline HTML snippet to work - there are no dependencies and no backend is required.

I'VE PUT A COMPLEX CODEBASE INTO A SINGLE 120K-TOKEN PROMPT, AND ASKED 7 QUESTIONS GPT-4 AND GEMINI 1.5. HERE ARE THE RESULTS!

This Reddit user recently put two complex codebases into GPT-4-Turbo-128K and Gemini 1.5 and asked them questions. The codebases implemented a parallel inet runtime, so it involved some hard compiler stuff. Gemini 1.5 completely outperformed GPT-4-Turbo-128K in the task of understanding the codebases. Most of the questions that GPT-4 got wrong are ones it would have answered correctly in a smaller context. Gemini still struggled to create a complete mental model of the system, but it is extremely good at locating existing information, making long-range connections, and doing some limited reasoning on top of this information.

GROQ IS SERVING THE FASTEST RESPONSES I'VE EVER SEEN

Groq can serve up to 500 tokens per second. It is able to do this because it uses custom hardware that utilizes Linear Processor Units (LPUs) instead of GPUs. LPUs are designed to deliver deterministic performance for AI computations. They offer a more streamlined approach that eliminates the need for complex scheduling hardware, allowing every clock cycle to be utilized effectively. The system ensures consistent latency and throughput. LPUs can be linked together without the traditional bottlenecks found in GPU clusters, making them extremely scalable.

I PRINTED CHOCOLATE ON A 3D PRINTER AND ATE IT

The Cocoa Press is a 3D printer that prints chocolate. It is now available for $3,995 prebuilt after a decade of development. Premade chocolate cores cost $49 per pack of 10. The printer allows users to program the heat of its nozzle to a tenth of a degree. It can create a wide range of shapes and textures, but there are still some problems to work out. This article shares what it is like using the machine. Pictures of chocolate prints made by the machine are available.

NEEDS BEFORE TOOLS: A PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO AI WORKFLOW INTEGRATION

People should be defining problems and then finding the tools to solve those problems.

ENGINEERS ARE NOT A COMMODITY

People have different skills and abilities - thinking of engineers as interchangeable is a mistake.

TAGRISSO-CHEMO CLEARED IN US AS 1ST-LINE LUNG CANCER THERAPY

The use of Tagrisso and chemo together lowered the risk of disease progression or death in patients with EGFR-positive non-small cell lung cancer.

WHY SEQUOIA IS FUNDING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS VIA A NEW EQUITY-FREE FELLOWSHIP

While Sequoia won't recoup its cash directly, it stands to benefit in other ways - many of its investments rely heavily on open-source software.

WE’RE ENTERING A GOLDEN AGE OF ENGINEERING BIOLOGY

For the first time in history, biology has the opportunity to be engineering, not science.

DISNEY STAR TURNED SPACE CEO: BRIDGIT MENDLER LAUNCHES SATELLITE DATA STARTUP BACKED BY MAJOR VCS

Northwood aims to mass-produce ground stations that connect to satellites in space.

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MICROSOFT-BACKED OPENAI VALUED AT OVER $80 BILLION IN LATEST DEAL

OpenAI has finalized a deal that values it at more than $80 billion. The deal involves the sale of existing shares through a tender offer headed by venture firm Thrive Capital. It allows employees to liquidate their shares in the company. OpenAI was valued at approximately $29 billion early last year.

REDDIT HAS A NEW AI TRAINING DEAL TO SELL USER CONTENT

Reddit has signed a deal with an unnamed large AI company for access to its user-generated content platform. The deal is worth about $60 million annually. It is still subject to change as Reddit's plans to go public are still in the works. Companies like OpenAI and Apple are also seeking to make deals with other platforms to use their data to train AI models.

NEW FDA-APPROVED DRUG MAKES SEVERE FOOD ALLERGIES LESS LIFE-THREATENING

The FDA has approved an antibody drug called omalizumab (brand name Xolair) as an injection to lessen allergic reactions to foods in people ages 1 and up. The drug works by binding to a class of antibodies called immunoglobulin E, preventing them from triggering an allergic response. It doesn't eliminate food allergies, but it will help reduce the health impact if accidental exposure occurs. The drug's effects are not universal - in studies, around 17% of the people receiving the drug showed no significant improvement in their sensitivity to allergy-triggering food.

SOFTBANK FOUNDER REPORTEDLY AIMS TO RAISE $100 BILLION TO BUILD AI CHIP COMPANY THAT WOULD RIVAL NVIDIA — PROJECT IZANAGI MIGHT LEVERAGE ARM DESIGN

Project Izanagi is a new chip venture from Softbank's founder that aims to compete with Nvidia in the artificial intelligence processor space. The project seeks to complement Softbank's Arm Holdings, which designs processor architectures. It is unclear whether the AI processors designed by Project Izanagi will rely on technologies developed by Arm. The project may affect Arm's plans to create reference chip designs for various workloads. It is separate from any collaboration with OpenAI.

MAGIKA

Magika is an AI-powered file type detection tool. It uses a custom Keras model that only weighs around 1MB to enable precise file identification within milliseconds when running on a single CPU. Magika achieves over 99% precision and recall. It is used at scale at Google to improve users' safety by routing files to the proper security and content policy scanners.

PWAS WON'T REPLACE NATIVE IOS APPS

Supporting progressive web apps (PWAs) on iOS takes a lot of time and effort. While there is support for push notifications, there are a lot of missing features and other issues. This article discusses issues and bugs discovered when developing a PWA for iOS. Companies building PWAs on iOS should not expect them to come close to a native experience. Apple's choice to restrict PWA use in Europe is concerning.

HOW CHINA BUILT BYD, ITS TESLA KILLER

BYD, China's leading electric vehicle company, has posted two years of million-car growth in sales. The company was originally a battery manufacturer when it showed off its first model in 2007. It passed Tesla in worldwide sales last year and is currently building assembly lines in Brazil, Hungary, Thailand, and Uzbekistan. This article looks at the company, how it started, and its journey to where it is now.

INTERVIEW: FIGMA’S CEO ON LIFE AFTER THE COMPANY’S FAILED SALE TO ADOBE

Figma's CEO Dylan Field offered employees severance if they wanted to leave the company after its blockbuster sale to Adobe was blocked by regulators. 4% of employees took him up on the offer. While Figma appears to be in a stronger position than when it first agreed to sell to Adobe in 2022, Field also lowered the company's internal valuation to $10 billion - the same number it was in 2021. Field wants to use Adobe's $1 billion breakup fee to look at new areas for Figma to expand to.

RAISING CHILDREN ON THE EVE OF AI

The future is hard to imagine, but we shouldn't be afraid of it.

META’S LLM FOR SOFTWARE TESTING WORK IS SUPER EXCITING

Meta’s TestGen-LLM tool uses large language models to automatically improve existing human-written tests.

I WORRY OUR COPILOT IS LEAVING SOME PASSENGERS BEHIND

GitHub Copilot may be making accessibility on the web even worse than it already is.

MUSE RETROSPECTIVE

Muse started as a project that aimed to invent a new computing environment that would better serve people doing important knowledge work like scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, designers, and architects.

ANDROID 15’S FIRST DEVELOPER PREVIEW HAS ARRIVED

The first official glimpse of Android 15 includes a lot of under-the-hood tweaks to strengthen communication between hardware and software.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAAS AND WHAT'S NEXT

What was once high-tech will eventually become background infrastructure - SaaS will eventually become the infrastructure for artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, and reforming manufacturing and space.

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MICROSOFT’S GAMING CHIEF ON XBOX GAMES COMING TO PS5, NEXT-GEN HARDWARE, AND MORE

Microsoft is bringing four Xbox-exclusive games to PS5 and Nintendo Switch. The move is part of an 'Xbox Everywhere' effort that will likely see even more games arriving on rival consoles. While there are risks to going fully multiplatform, Microsoft sees an opportunity to make more money on rival consoles to support its game creation. This article contains an interview with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer where he talks about the future of Xbox gaming, regulatory efforts against Apple that could affect the Xbox business, and next-gen Xbox hardware.

GEMINI 1.5 IS GOOGLE’S NEXT-GEN AI MODEL — AND IT’S ALREADY ALMOST READY

Google has launched Gemini 1.5, making it available to developers and enterprise users ahead of a full consumer rollout. The new Gemini is apparently on par with the high-end Gemini Ultra that Google recently launched. It was created using the Mixture of Experts technique, making the model both faster for users and more efficient for Google to run. Gemini 1.5 has a context window of 1 million tokens, equivalent to tens of thousands of lines of code. Google researchers are currently testing a 10 million context window.

LENOVO'S TRANSPARENT LAPTOP CONCEPT IS SOMETHING ELSE

Lenovo is reportedly working on a transparent laptop. The company might unveil the laptop at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which starts on February 26. Transparent display technology is a rising trend, with several companies showing off semi-transparent TVs at this year's CES. A render of Lenovo's rumored transparent laptop is available in the article.

MOON COMPANY INTUITIVE MACHINES BEGINS FIRST MISSION AFTER SPACEX LAUNCH

Intuitive Machines' inaugural moon mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Thursday morning. The company's IM-1 lander is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads to the Moon. It will spend about eight days traveling before descending to the Moon's surface on February 22. If all goes well, Intuitive Machines aims to operate the lander on the surface for up to seven days. This is the second mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

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UV

uv is an extremely fast Python package installer and resolver designed as a drop-in replacement for pip and pip-compile. It is disk-space efficient and has a global cache for dependency deduplication. uv has been tested at scale against the top 10,000 PyPI packages. It supports advanced features such as dependency version overrides and alternative resolution strategies.

ARE THERE ANY GOOD REASONS TO USE C++ OVER RUST FOR NEW PROJECTS TODAY? (LOBSTERS THREAD)

This thread discusses contexts where using C++ makes more sense than using Rust, things people new to Rust should watch out for when starting new projects, and things that those considering making Rust their go-to language should be aware of. It increasingly looks like Rust can solve all of the problems that C++ can without losing performance while gaining better memory safety guarantees and better type invariance guarantees. However, there are still several reasons to stick with C++, for example, Q2 and Unreal Engine require C++ and platform support for Rust is still limited.

BLUESKY AND MASTODON USERS ARE HAVING A FIGHT THAT COULD SHAPE THE NEXT GENERATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

A developer recently released a bridge to connect Bluesky's AT Protocol with Mastodon's ActivityPub. The networks use two different protocols, meaning that their users can't natively interact. The release appeared to be controversial - it triggered an intense debate on the project's GitHub issue page. Integrating the protocols together could mean that users' posts show up in places they didn't anticipate. The way that these protocols interact with one another could set the stage for the next era of the internet.

APPLE CONFIRMS IT’S BREAKING IPHONE WEB APPS IN THE EU ON PURPOSE

Apple says it broke progressive web apps (PWAs) in the iOS 17.4 beta due to complexities involved with the Digital Markets Act's requirement to allow different browser engines. PWAs typically allow web apps to function and feel like native iOS apps. They now open like a bookmark saved to the Home Screen. PWAs no longer have dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term storage. The changes will apply to all users in the EU beginning in March.

OPENAI’S NEW SORA MODEL CAN GENERATE MINUTE-LONG VIDEOS FROM TEXT PROMPTS

Sora will be made available to a small group of academics and researchers who will assess its potential for harm and misuse.

WHO CAN USE THIS COLOR COMBINATION?

WhoCanUse is a tool that helps designers understand how color contrast can affect different people with visual impairments.

NGINX CORE DEVELOPER QUITS PROJECT IN SECURITY DISPUTE, STARTS “FREENGINX” FORK

freenginx will be run by developers, not corporate entities, freeing it from arbitrary corporate actions.

SAM ALTMAN OWNS OPENAI'S VENTURE CAPITAL FUND

OpenAI put the fund into Altman's name 'temporarily' to get it started quickly - it has been well over a year since the fund's launch.

APPLE DEVELOPING AI TOOL TO HELP DEVELOPERS WRITE CODE FOR APPS

Apple is working on an AI tool for Xcode similar to GitHub Copilot.

PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA IS CLOSE TO CREATING CANCER VACCINES

He did not specify which types of cancer the proposed vaccines would target.

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