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OFFICIAL TYPE UNIONS PROPOSAL BY THE C# LANGUAGE DESIGN TEAM

The C# language design team has proposed official type unions in a document detailing how they will be implemented and used.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS NO NEED TO RESTRICT 'OPEN-SOURCE' ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE — AT LEAST FOR NOW

The White House has determined that there is no need to restrict open-source artificial intelligence at this time, citing the potential benefits of open models while acknowledging ongoing concerns about AI safety.

ORCA

A WebAssembly-based stack for cross-platform apps.

PORFFOR

A from-scratch experimental ahead-of-time JS engine.

* Unlimited, parallel test runs

* 24-hour maintenance and on-demand test creation * Zero flakes guarantee

Schedule a demo to learn more

APPLE RELEASES IOS 18.1 DEVELOPER BETA WITH THE FIRST ‘APPLE INTELLIGENCE' IPHONE FEATURES

Apple's newly released developer betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 contain the company's first set of AI features, including a Siri with an updated design and ability to maintain context across multiple requests, new Mail features like smart replay and email summaries, and natural language search in Photos. The features will likely not be rolled out to general users until well into 2025. They will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max or on iPads and Macs with Apple Silicon chips. Beta testers will need to join a waitlist for access to the features.

YOUTUBE'S WAR ON AD BLOCKERS CONTINUES, NOW MAKING ADS TRULY UNSKIPPABLE

Multiple YouTube users are reporting that the site is serving them with blank ads or black screens before a video when they are using an ad-blocker extension. The change makes users wait for their content, partially defeating the purpose of using an ad blocker. YouTube began testing server-side ad injection last month to further render ad blockers obsolete. The solution inserts ads directly into the main YouTube video feed so that ad blockers can no longer distinguish the two pieces of media.

SPACEX MOVING DRAGON SPLASHDOWNS TO PACIFIC TO SOLVE FALLING DEBRIS PROBLEM

SpaceX will begin returning its Dragon crew and cargo capsules to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean sometime next year and end recoveries of the spacecraft off the coast of Florida. This will eliminate the tiny risk that a piece of debris from the ship's trunk section might fall on someone and cause damage, injury, or death. Debris from several Dragon missions have been discovered on properties over the past couple of years. SpaceX is unaware of any structure damage or injuries caused by this debris.

HOW LG AND SAMSUNG ARE MAKING TV SCREENS DISAPPEAR

Both LG and Samsung demonstrated transparent television screens at CES 2024. The companies have very different approaches to the technology - Samsung is betting on microLED screens while LG is pursuing OLED displays. Neither technology is ready yet. This article takes a deep dive into each of these display technologies. It looks at how they work, the problems they face, and the applications of transparent screens.

this quick demo video from Appifre & Isos Technology.

TEA-TASTING

tea-tasting is a Python package for the statistical analysis of A/B tests. It features an extensible API, confidence intervals for both absolute and percentage change, power analysis, and Student's t-test, Z-test, Bootstrap, and quantile metrics out of the box. tea-tasting calculates statistics directly within data backends. It eliminates the need to import granular data into a Python environment.

FASTHTML

FastHTML is a framework for fast scalable web applications with minimal compact code. Its apps are just Python code, so developers can use the framework with the full power of the Python language and ecosystem. FastHTML is powerful and expressive enough to build advanced interactive web apps and it features an intuitive syntax that makes it easy to build complex apps quickly.

GHOSTERY'S CEO SAYS REGULATION WON'T SAVE US FROM AD TRACKERS

Ghostery was launched in 2009 to help people understand and block all the ways that advertisers were tracking them. The world of online advertising has changed dramatically since then. 15 years later, Ghostery has been downloaded more than 100 million times and has 7 million monthly active users. This article contains an interview with the company's CEO, Jean-Paul Schmetz, where he discusses the company's strategy, the state of ad tracking, and why regulation isn't the most effective path to protecting online privacy.

AMAZON PAID ALMOST $1 BILLION FOR TWITCH IN 2014. IT'S STILL LOSING MONEY

Twitch remains unprofitable despite periods of explosive popularity. Its biggest users are paying less and growth in new users and engagement has slowed. Staff are concerned about potential upcoming layoffs this fall following an annual operational review. Investors are worried that Twitch is at risk of becoming a 'zombie brand'. Amazon remains confident in Twitch's potential.

APPLE SAYS ITS AI MODELS WERE TRAINED ON GOOGLE'S CUSTOM CHIPS

Apple detailed its reasons for using Google's homegrown Tensor Processing Unit for training in a recent technical paper.

A FEW BLOCKBUSTER PODCASTS ARE MAKING ALL THE MONEY

Big brands like BMW, DraftKings, and Home Depot have started advertising on podcasts over the past year.

RUNNING ONE-MAN SAAS, 9 YEARS IN

A look at how Healthchecks.io, a one-man business with 652 paying customers and $14,043 in monthly recurring revenue, operates.

ATTRIBUTION IS DYING. CLICKS ARE DYING. MARKETING IS GOING BACK TO THE 20TH CENTURY

Attribution fundamentally doesn't work anymore, so marketing investments should be made based on knowing the audience and where/how they can be influenced.

GPT-5: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

This article looks at GPT-5, what we can expect from next-gen models, new features that are appearing on the horizon, business pressures on OpenAI, and the technical constraints the company's engineers are facing.

THE DOCUMENTATION TRADEOFF

It's not how much documentation you have, it's whether you have communicated clearly.

Start deploying enterprise today

META RELEASES SAM 2

Real time promptable segmentation for videos and images from Meta.

APPLE SAYS ITS AI MODELS WERE TRAINED ON GOOGLE'S CUSTOM CHIPS

Apple said that the artificial intelligence models underpinning Apple Intelligence, its AI system, were pre-trained on processors designed by Google.

ANTHROPIC FACES BACKLASH FOR EXCESSIVE WEB SCRAPING

Freelancer.com and iFixit CEOs criticized Anthropic for excessive and unauthorized web scraping by its ClaudeBot, which disrupted their sites. Anthropic claims to respect the robots.txt file and says it will investigate the issue.

SMALL MOLECULE OPTIMIZATION WITH LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS

Two new language models were able to achieve an 8% improvement on the Practical Molecular Optimization benchmark by collecting a dataset of 100m molecules (40B token equivalent).

THE LARGER THE BETTER? IMPROVED LLM CODE-GENERATION VIA BUDGET REALLOCATION

Using smaller models multiple times can improve code generation performance with a very similar inference cost.

SELF-DIRECTED SYNTHETIC DIALOGUES AND REVISIONS TECHNICAL REPORT

300k+ dataset of conversations and critiques to be used for open models. The dataset was mostly created using synthetics and is a powerful example of synthetic data working with open models.

ACCDIFFUSION

A method that dramatically improves high resolution image synthesis by diffusion models.

MOBILE AR WITH ROBUST DEPTH ESTIMATION

HYBRIDDEPTH is a depth estimation pipeline designed to tackle mobile AR challenges like scale ambiguity and hardware diversity.

ENHANCING VISION TRANSFORMERS WITH NON-CAUSAL STATE SPACE MODELS

The Visual State Space Duality (VSSD) model is a new approach that improves vision transformers by addressing their high computational demands.

APPLE FOUNDATION LANGUAGE MODELS

Apple has outlined the basics of its language models for its newly announced “Apple Intelligence” initiative.

CHALKBOARDS AND WHAT THEY CAN TEACH US ABOUT GENERATIVE AI

This article reflects on using generative AI as a teaching tool, arguing the technology should be analyzed beyond its technical aspects, with consideration for its alignment with educational values. The author, while open to using AI, is cautious about its impact and emphasizes the need to articulate why certain tools are implemented in the classroom. The discussion draws parallels between traditional tools like chalkboards and AI, considering both for their cultural significance and pedagogical implications.

THE EVOLUTION OF SAAS PRICING IN THE AI ERA

The traditional seat-based pricing model in SaaS is becoming obsolete with AI's capability to automate tasks. Companies are increasingly adopting work-based or outcome-based pricing models, which charge based on the amount of work AI performs or the outcomes achieved. While incumbents are still relying on seat-based pricing, startups are leveraging new models for competitive advantage and to reflect AI's value more accurately.

install --cask warp;_ or **download Warp for Mac

A NEW BENCHMARK FOR AUTONOMOUS AGENTS

AppWorld Engine is a sophisticated execution environment that features nine daily apps and 457 APIs.

CRASH COURSE IN DEEP LEARNING (FOR COMPUTER GRAPHICS)

This article covers the construction and use of multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs), a type of fully connected neural network used in deep learning.

AIRTABLE'S NEW COBUILDER UNLOCKS INSTANT NO-CODE APP CREATION

Airtable's Cobuilder is the fastest way to build no-code applications.

COMP DOWN 6.7% AFTER SUPPOSED 'GOVERNANCE ATTACK' ON COMPOUND DAO

COMP has suffered a ‘governance attack' after a group known as the Golden Boys passed a proposal to distribute $24 million in COMP to a new protocol controlled by their multi-sig. They had two prior proposals fail, but a third went through after there was insufficient support to veto the proposal. The leader of the Golden Boys, Humpy, previously executed a similar attack on Balancer in 2022. The Compound forums state that Humpy will cancel the proposal in exchange for the protocol sharing fees with COMP holders.

POTENTIAL ISSUES WITH SENATOR LUMMIS' BITCOIN RESERVE PROPOSAL

Lummis' plan would see the US Treasury revalue its gold, which is officially valued at 1/6th its market value, and a small portion of it to purchase $64 billion worth of BTC. However, any money spent from the Treasury General account adds as much to bank reserves, and the Fed must pay interest on those reserves. Since BTC and gold are non-interest bearing, additional operation expenses could prevent the Fed from remaining self-financing.

ROLLUP-CENTRIC CONSIDERATIONS OF BASED PRECONFIRMATIONS

Taiko Labs' Gwyneth is designed to improve L2 block building profitability and timeliness using preconfirmations. Its approach addresses decentralized proposal challenges like profitability issues and timing games. The design suggests a just-in-time market for exchanging L1/L2 block space, execution tickets, and leader elections.

HERE'S EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT $RAGE

The largest perpetual aggregator on HyperliquidX, $RAGE, is launching with a $10 million market cap, over $880 million in volume, and more than 4,000 users. Key details include its tokenomics with a $30 million fully diluted valuation, public sale without cliffs or vesting, airdrop and private investor allocations, and a unique "Rage Quit" feature to enhance community ownership by allowing recipients to forfeit a portion of their allocation to reduce inflationary pressure.

EVERYTHING ABOUT SOLANA'S CONSENSUS MODEL

This detailed infographic explains the complex details of Solana's consensus. Each 2-3 days, the leaders for each slot and the rewards pool are determined, after which blocks are proposed every 400 milliseconds. Non-conflicting transactions are processed in parallel and conflicting ones sequentially after being scheduled by the prio graph scheduler.

USEFUL ETHEREUM DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

This thread highlights libraries, frameworks, and additional tools like compilers and test suites for Ethereum dapp development. It includes 13 tools, including tevm for transaction simulation, halmos for formal verification, and EQL for querying blockchain data.

THE SLOW DEATH OF ON-CHAIN DEFI

This thread discusses the decline of on-chain DeFi, attributing it to security vulnerabilities and the rise of CeDeFi protocols. Key issues highlighted include the increased reliance on centralized off-chain infrastructure, the trend towards centralization and control by developers, and the dominance of powerful intermediaries or "solvers," which ultimately undermine the decentralized vision of DeFi by creating centralized storefronts that prioritize user experience and profitability over true decentralization.