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THE GOLDEN AGE OF KOTLIN AND ITS UNCERTAIN FUTURE

If Kotlin doesn't make a significant move by 2025, its popularity will decline and reach a critical point.

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OPENAI’S CUSTOM GPT STORE IS NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS

OpenAI's GPT store has finally launched after a months-long delay. The store allows users to share custom chatbots, bringing more potential use cases to ChatGPT and expanding OpenAI's ecosystem. OpenAI says that more than 3 million bots have been created by users since the announcement of the GPT Builder program in November. Only people who subscribe to OpenAI's paid tiers will be able to make and use custom GPTs.

TESLA’S REVAMPED MODEL 3 SEDAN HAS NOW GONE ON SALE IN THE US

Tesla has started selling a restyled version of its Model 3 in North America. Codenamed Highland, the restyled Model 3 went on sale in China in September 2023 and in Europe last October. Changes to the federal tax credit for clean vehicles may have delayed the introduction of the vehicle in the US. The Model 3 is no longer eligible for the credit. A gallery of images showing what's changed is available.

SPACEX TARGETS FEBRUARY FOR THIRD STARSHIP TEST FLIGHT

SpaceX expects to conduct the third integrated test flight of its Starship vehicle in February. Securing an updated FAA launch license is key to driving the schedule for the test flight. The company aims to be ready for the test by the end of January. It is still working on corrective actions identified from the second Starship test flight in November.

GETTING UNDER THE SKIN

Three scientists are engineering skin microbes into a diffuse network of continuous glucose monitors and insulin factories inside the body. The approach could provide a new option for people living with diabetes and create fierce competition in the largely monopolized insulin industry. This article discusses the insulin industry, how the scientists developed their treatment, and the road ahead for the research.

THOUSANDS OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERS SAY THE JOB MARKET IS GETTING MUCH WORSE

Software engineering has been seen as one of the safest havens in the American job market for much of the 21st century. There are a growing number of signs that the field is starting to become less secure and comfortable. An industry-wide downturn and the looming threat of AI is spurring growing competition for software jobs. Many people believe that their companies will hire fewer people because of AI moving forward.

DOES DNA HAVE THE EQUIVALENT OF IF-STATEMENTS, WHILE LOOPS, OR FUNCTION CALLS? HOW ABOUT GOTO?

While DNA is not analogous to computer code, biological systems have some pathways that operate in similar ways to computers. 'If' statements are similar to transcriptional activators, transcriptional repressors can act as 'while' statements, and there are codes that make other sections dispensable, kind of like a GOTO statement. There are no equivalents of function calls as all events happen in the same space and there is always a likelihood of interference.

CES 2024: THE WEIRDEST TECH, GADGETS, AND AI CLAIMS FROM LAS VEGAS

CES 2024 is now in full swing in Las Vegas. This article contains a list of the eight strangest gadgets, tech, and claims from the show so far. The entries include AI-powered birding binoculars, a BlackBerry-style keyboard for iPhones, a router that looks like a picture frame, and an AI assistant that can call emergency services. Each entry includes a description of the technology along with media and links for more information. The show will end on Friday.

AMAZON CUTS HUNDREDS OF JOBS IN PRIME VIDEO AND MGM STUDIOS

Amazon sent a note to staff on Wednesday notifying them of the job cuts. The company is making the cuts to prioritize its investments for long-term success. It has been monitoring every aspect of its business over the past year to identify opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing its investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact. A copy of the memo sent to employees is available in the article.

simple UI, bulk editing.) See how OneSchema works

RABBIT SELLS OUT 10,000 UNITS OF ITS R1 POCKET AI COMPANION IN ONE DAY

People can still preorder the R1 device from Rabbit's website, with an expected delivery date between April and May.

GRADING COMMANDBAR’S YC APPLICATION

Getting into YC isn't an indicator that your idea is worth working on for an entire summer/winter - it's an indicator that the idea is decent enough to back you as a founder and allow you to explore the idea intensely for a few weeks or pivot until you find the right product.

AFTER ITS IMPRESSIVE FIRST FLIGHT, HERE’S WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE VULCAN ROCKET

United Launch Alliance's second Vulcan launch will carry the Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spacecraft into orbit.

SEC APPROVES RULE CHANGES THAT PAVE THE WAY FOR BITCOIN ETFS

The first funds are poised to begin trading today.

OPENTOFU STABLE GA RELEASE: GET READY TO INSTALL!

OpenTofu is an alternative to Terraform and a logical choice for anyone adopting an infrastructure-as-code approach for the first time.

I QUIT MY JOB TO WORK FULL TIME ON MY OPEN SOURCE PROJECT

A look at how a developer built their company to the point where they were able to quit their job.

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THE RABBIT R1 IS AN AI-POWERED GADGET THAT CAN USE YOUR APPS FOR YOU

The Rabbit R1 is a $199 standalone device about half the size of an iPhone powered by a 'Large Action Model'. It has a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a rotating camera for taking photos and videos, a scroll wheel/button for navigation, 128GB of storage, and a battery that lasts all day. The device runs on Rabbit OS, which features a universal controller for apps that can control music, order items from the internet, send messages, and more. It is trained on how to use existing apps for itself and has a dedicated training mode for users to teach it tasks, so developers don't have to do anything to support the device. A 26-minute-long introduction video from Rabbit about the device is available in the article.

CES 2024: AMAZON UNVEILS MATTER CASTING STANDARD AS INTEROPERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO AIRPLAY

Matter Casting is a casting feature that will initially only support streaming content from Amazon's Prime Video app to Echo Show devices. The feature will support Fire TV in the coming months and a range of video services later in the year. Matter Casting is designed to be interoperable across platforms. While both Apple and Google worked with Amazon on the Matter Home standard, neither company has announced any plans to support Matter Casting.

POTENT PSYCHEDELIC DRUG BANISHES PTSD, SMALL STUDY FINDS

A small trial on military veterans suggests that ibogaine, a potent psychedelic drug, could be used to treat traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study found that veterans with TBI symptoms such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression had the symptoms decrease by more than 80% on average after treatment. Ibogaine seems to have a broad, dramatic, and consistent effect. The data supports launching rigorous trials to test the drug.

HOW MICROSOFT FOUND A POTENTIAL NEW BATTERY MATERIAL USING AI

Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a new battery material using AI and large-scale cloud computing. The material is a new kind of solid-state electrolyte. It could lead to batteries that are less likely to burst into flames compared to lithium-ion batteries. While the material still needs to be tested to see whether it is a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries, the finding demonstrates AI's potential for speeding up material discovery.

SPIN

Spin is a bash utility that improves the Docker experience. It can replicate any environment on any machine and centralize infrastructure from a single configuration file. Spin dramatically improves the developer experience when working with Docker using officially supported features and best practices.

AI GATEWAY

AI Gateway is an interface between apps and hosted large language models. It streamlines API requests to LLM providers using a unified API. AI Gateway is fast, with a tiny footprint, and it can load balance across multiple models, providers, and keys. It has fallbacks to ensure app resiliency and plug-in middleware as needed.

IT’S HUMANS ALL THE WAY DOWN

People think that AI is going to replace a lot of jobs because everyone thinks that everyone else's job is easy. The desire to remove humans from the equation is based on ignorance. Even with the wildest of innovations, people still matter, and this can't be avoided. People want to appeal to other humans and be seen and understood.

NVIDIA’S G-SYNC PULSAR IS ANTI-BLUR MONITOR TECH AIMED SQUARELY AT YOUR EYEBALL

Nvidia’s G-Sync Pulsar uses a novel algorithm to reduce motion blur and pixel ghosting. The technology can help with the visual discomfort caused by some strobing effects. It will require monitors to have Nvidia's chips built into them. The first monitor with the feature is the Asus ROG Swift PG27 Series G-Sync, which will be available later this year.

CES 2024: GOOGLE AND SAMSUNG TEAM UP FOR A NEW WAY TO SHARE FILES ON ANDROID

Quick Share for Android is a unified method of sharing for Android and Chromebook devices developed through a collaboration between Google and Samsung.

PYTHON 3.13 GETS A JIT

The addition of a Just in Time compiler, which compiles code on demand as it is run, could be one of the biggest changes to the CPython Interpreter since the Specializing Adaptive Interpreter was added in Python 3.11.

AI TOOLKIT

AI Toolkit is a header-only C++ library that brings finite state machines, behavior trees, utility AI, and goal-oriented action planning to game NPCs.

TWITCH PLANS LAYOFFS THAT WILL HIT 35% OF STAFF

The layoffs will affect roughly 500 jobs - in 2023, Twitch lost several top executives, announced that it would exit South Korea, and laid off 400 other employees.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE WEBSITES GONE?

People now get content served to them via algorithms rather than searching out content for themselves and sharing it with friends.

THE FLIGHT OF THE WEIRD NERD FROM ACADEMIA

Intellectuals are being poached from academia by simple market forces and replaced with people who stay in academia due to an inability to thrive in corporate settings for various reasons.

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APPLE VISION PRO AVAILABLE IN THE U.S. ON FEBRUARY 2

Apple's Vision Pro headset will be available beginning on Friday, February 2 at all US Apple store locations and the US Apple Store online. Pre-orders for the device will begin on Friday, January 19. More than 1 million apps across iOS and iPadOS will work automatically on the Vision Pro since visionOS leverages existing developer frameworks. The Vision Pro will be available starting at $3,499 with 256GB of storage.

WAYMO’S DRIVERLESS CARS ARE FINALLY READY FOR THE HIGHWAY

Waymo's fully driverless vehicles will soon start carrying passengers to and from their destinations on Phoenix's freeways. The company will start by offering driverless rides to just employees and their friends before opening up the service to other paying passengers. Waymo will use the data and feedback collected from these passengers to improve the service as it increases the number of miles it drives on highways. Using highways will allow Waymo to provide faster routes, especially for customers traveling to Phoenix's airports.

FROM LG TO SAMSUNG, TRANSPARENT LED DISPLAYS THAT PROJECT FILMS ON GLASS SHAKE UP CES 2024

LG and Samsung have unveiled transparent LED displays that project movies and images on glass-like holograms. LG's Signature OLED TV has a single see-through glass display that uses wireless AV transmission and reception technology to eliminate all kinds of wires other than the power source around the transparent screen. Samsung's transparent MICRO LED display can animate motionless surroundings and objects. Pictures and videos of both displays are available in the article.

SCIENTISTS RESTORE VISION IN MICE, ACHIEVE 170-FOLD GENE EDITING BOOST

Scientists at MIT and Harvard have designed tiny virus-like particles that can carry prime editors into mouse cells with a high success rate to correct a genetic disorder. The technique improves the editing process by 170 times in human cells. It was able to correct genetic mistakes and restore vision when tested on mice with genetic eye problems without creating any unintended changes.

ATTACKS ON MACHINE LEARNING MODELS

This blog attempts to shine a light on the topic of attacks on machine learning models. It aims to inform readers about neural network attacks, a topic worthy of attention for those deploying machine learning models in production. Machine learning models are just as susceptible to attacks as other systems, but they are extra hard to protect as they have both code and data vulnerabilities. Current defenses are not enough, and real fixes may require massive changes to model development. As long as model development involves pattern matching, attacks can never be truly prevented.

WHAT PWA CAN DO TODAY

This site presents a showcase of what's possible with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) today. PWAs are websites that can be installed on devices to provide an app-like experience. The site itself is a PWA, so it can be installed onto the home screen of any mobile device or on any desktop. Example features include media capture, face detection, authentication, notifications, speech recognition, and multitouch detection.

CUTTING-EDGE TECH IS AT CES 2024. THESE ARE OUR FAVES TODAY

This year's CES underscores how people are increasingly craving more niche devices and longing for the past. It also highlights the ways that AI is becoming more integrated into people's lives. This page presents the best tech highlights as they are announced this week in Las Vegas. The devices so far include a phone that folds backwards, a gaming laptop that weighs only 3.6 pounds, a thermometer that checks blood oxygen and heart rate readings, and a 115-inch 4K LCD TV that's up to five times brighter than most TVs.

STATE OF AI & PREDICTIONS FOR 2024

This article shares thoughts on the state of AI along with some predictions on where the technology is going. It looks at where products built with AI models are today, focusing on products, markets, and people. The article doesn't cover the technical details of architectures and the infrastructure of AI. This year, open source models will catch up with proprietary models and help push inference to edge devices everywhere.

THEY’RE NOT CHEAP, BUT NVIDIA’S NEW SUPER GPUS ARE A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Nvidia's new Super GPUs use the same architecture and support all the same features as their non-Super versions but with bumped specs and tweaked prices that make them more appealing.

MISSING THE POINT OF WEBASSEMBLY

Webassembly is a fundamental abstraction boundary that divides computing systems into pieces.

AMERICA’S FIRST LUNAR LANDER IN A HALF-CENTURY WON’T REACH THE MOON

The Peregrine lander appears to have a propellant leak that will prevent it from reaching the Moon.

TWILIO CEO LAWSON STEPS DOWN AFTER BRUISING ACTIVIST BATTLES

Jeff Lawson will be replaced by Khozema Shipchandler, a longtime Twilio executive, a move that is unlikely to placate activists who are pushing for the divestiture of the business and possibly the sale of the whole company.

AN OVERVIEW OF DISTRIBUTED POSTGRESQL ARCHITECTURES

There are many types of distributed PostgreSQL architectures, each with a different set of tradeoffs - even with state-of-the-art tools, deploying a distributed database system is never a solved problem.

AFTER TAKING CREDIBILITY HIT, CARTA ANNOUNCES IT IS EXITING THE SECONDARIES BUSINESS: “WE HAVE DECIDED TO PRIORITIZE TRUST”

Carta claims that the revenue derived from secondary trading on the platform is minuscule compared with its other business offerings.