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Some strange metals carry currents through them without electrons. A new quantum phenomenon is likely responsible for electricity flow within metals. Currents move more like liquids than a collective movement of electrons when moving through these metals. Research is starting to show that there is a different phase of matter within these materials.
It can be difficult to establish causality in biology. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that something can be an important factor but not a cause of a disease. In biology, 'X causes Y' tends to many 'X is necessary and sufficient for Y'. We have to start thinking of systems where we can talk about causation in a more realistic way to make progress in biology.
This post walks through the pieces needed to implement web push notifications. It includes a minimal working example with a Node.js backend. The post explains how Web Push works and provides code for those looking to implement it.
Vitalik Buterin believes in a future that is vastly brighter than the present thanks to radically transformative technology. He rejects the idea that we should keep the world roughly the same as today but be less greedy with more public health care. Some technologies will reliably make the world better than other types of technology - we need active human intention to choose the directions that we want as the best outcome will not be achieved automatically.
Big Tech employs a lot of engineers, some of whom do very little. Some say that companies do this to keep talent off the market, but that might not be the case. Large projects sometimes require a lot of people to be idle - even if they don't seem like they're doing anything at the moment, they might play a critical role in the process later. Prestige and budgets are also factors that can also lead to idle engineers.
The Artificial Intelligence Mathematical Olympiad Prize is a $10 million challenge fund that aims to spur the development of a publicly-shared AI model capable of winning a gold medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Reddit is considering going public as early as the first quarter.
Consumers have become more strategic over the past year with their spending so they can maximize discounts.
Create a market economy so that the best content gets promoted, not just content from large accounts or shallow engagement bait.
Towards Monosemanticity claims to have gazed into an AI and seen its soul - this article looks at how the AI company/research lab recently out of Anthropic achieved this.
It might seem too early to consider changing an organization to accommodate AI, but there is a strong possibility that it will quickly become too late.
Tesla has started releasing its Full Self-Driving v12 update to employees. The biggest difference with the update is how vehicle controls will be taken over by neural nets rather than being hardcoded by engineers. Tesla may be able to push the update to customers by the end of the year. Elon Musk has previously said that he believes that Tesla will achieve true self-driving capability by the end of the year.
Google will start deleting inactive Google accounts from December 1. Accounts are deemed inactive if the user hasn't logged on for at least two years. Gmail addresses for deleted accounts cannot be used again when creating a new Google account. Users just need to sign into their accounts to preserve them.
SpaceX plans to test Starship for the third time in December. There are now three ships in final production. SpaceX launched the second Starship test on November 18. The ship successfully performed a hot-stage separation, but it exploded after it completed a flap and boostback burn.
Researchers used an algorithm to sort through millions of genomes to find new rare types of CRISPR systems that could eventually be adopted into genome-editing tools. Single-celled bacteria and archaea use CRISPR systems to defend themselves against bacteriophages. The algorithm helped scientists identify the code for an entirely unknown CRISPR system that targets RNA. Researchers will be able to use the algorithm to look for other types of protein across species.
Developers should always use a Cryptographically Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator (CSPRNG) when choosing a Pseudorandom Number Generator. While people typically say to only use CSPRNGs when doing cryptography and need security against adversarial attackers, they are really the only thing that makes sense to use. This article talks about why developers should only use CSPRNGs by comparing them with other random number generation methods. CSPRNGs are better by definition as given the first n bits, there is no efficient algorithm that will predict the next bit with a success rate non-negligibly better than 50%.
RAGs is a Streamlit app that lets users create RAG pipelines from data sources using natural language. Users just have to describe the tasks and parameters they want from their RAG systems. The RAG can be queried and it will answer questions over the data.
It's difficult to commodify technical work. Despite the crazy infrastructure that allows us to mass produce things, in many cases, individual people make the machine run. Society runs on commodification, but anyone who thinks that it can run on pure commodification, without any understanding of the human complexities of the people around them, is wrong.
Binance and its CEO recently pleaded guilty to operating the world's largest criminal conspiracy to launder money and paid more than $4 billion in fines. This article looks at the history of Binance to see what led to this outcome. The ruling settles a long-running investigation involving the DOJ, CFTC, FinCEN, and assorted other parts of the US regulatory state. However, it importantly doesn't resolve the SEC's parallel action, which includes charges of operating an unregistered exchange, misrepresenting trading controls, and the unregistered offer and sale of securities.
The US government and Intel have started training a one trillion parameter model called ScienceGPT.
The traditional strategy of mastering a single tool may no longer be optimal - in the world of AI, it is better to embrace new tools and discard old ones and focus on things that are stable around the rapidly shifting software foundation.
AI helps developers skip steps in the workflow.
Users should be able to build projects without installing any extra tools or content - if it's something the build needs, then it belongs in version control.
There is less competition and teams are more motivated.
This thread contains a lot of information and resources for older tech workers who want more comfortable jobs.
SpaceX is planning to sell shares next month in a deal that prices them around the same level as summer 2023. The launch appears to confirm that Elon Musk is not considering a near-term IPO for its Starlink satellite division. It was reported earlier this month that Musk was discussing a possible IPO for as early as late 2024, but he has denied these reports. Starlink reported $1.4 billion in revenue and a loss for the year in 2022, but it achieved breakeven cash flow this year.
Instagram now allows all users to download public Reels to their devices. Users were previously only able to save them to the Instagram app for later viewing. Downloaded Reels will have an Instagram watermark with an account name, just like on TikTok. Reels that use licensed audio clips will not have any audio in the downloaded clip.
A study on mouse embryos grown in space suggests that the radiation and weightlessness of space might not pose immediate obstacles to mammalian reproduction. While the study only isolates one part of the complicated process of reproduction and development, it provides a starting point for biologists. Future alterations to the procedure could potentially increase the success rate. The absence of perfectly sterile conditions in space probably affected the experiment results.
Scientists from the University of Texas and the University of Delaware have discovered a memory system that allows E. coli to remember past experiences for several hours and generations. The scientists have yet to identify the molecular mechanism behind the memory system or its inheritability, but there is strong evidence to suggest that there is a level of persistent conditioning at play. It is related to the level of intracellular iron in the bacteria. Iron is connected to multiple stress responses in bacteria, so a memory system that uses it makes a lot of evolutionary sense.
A short pull request might not offer a comprehensive view of the changes, but an excessively large PR can overwhelm viewers and make it challenging to identify issues or provide meaningful feedback. This article analyzes the PRs of around 30,000 developers to see how the size of PRs correlates with lead time, comments received, and change failure to try to find what statistically is the best size and examine what affects it. It will look at the stats from various angles to see how this correlation varies by company, developers, and other factors.
Every software giant has some skeletons in their development closets. Projects may start with the best intentions, but harsh realities make it challenging to maintain the original vision of a project. Large releases are less about achieving perfection and more about managing controlled chaos. The IT world is messy and every product, no matter how successful, has its hidden weaknesses. The key to a successful product is not the absence of problems, but the ability to handle them efficiently.
Tech giants understand that what makes the magic happen is the people they employ. They are able to offer demanding challenges, handsome rewards, and glowing prestige to attract talent. Small businesses can also compete in this arena. This article looks at the tech giants that attract the most talent from their competitors and where that talent goes next.
This thread contains a discussion of software that developers are grateful for and the reasons that make the software great. Popular mentions are the Linux kernel and various flavors of Linux, shells in general, ffmpeg, Firefox, and Emacs.
A list of the best Black Friday deals available now.
This introduction to large language models discusses what they are, where they are headed, comparisons and analogies to present-day operating systems, and some of the security-related challenges in the field.
Colossal Biosciences' quest to revive the Dodo involves building environments to help the bird population flourish before they can be released into the wild.
Mohammad Moniruzzaman allegedly showed off source code he stole from a former employer during a Microsoft Teams call with the same company.
Outflows from Binance have amounted to more than $1 billion, not including bitcoin, and liquidity has dropped 25% since CEO Changpeng Zhao stepped down.
Tesla has open-sourced all of the design and engineering of the original Roadster. This includes everything from Owner's Manuals to Circuits and Connectors. The next-gen Roadster is now several years behind schedule. The release of the design may be a hint that the next-gen Roadster is close to being produced. Elon Musk had said earlier this year that the final design and engineering of the Roadster will be completed by the end of 2023, so the vehicle should reach production by the end of 2024.
OpenAI researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery they said could threaten humanity days before Sam Altman's ouster. The letter and algorithm were key developments that contributed to the decision. The development could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for artificial general intelligence. This article collates some of the rumors about what the breakthrough may be.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will be launching a pair of Mars probes for NASA on its first mission. The mission is a relatively low-cost one, with a budget significantly less than any mission NASA has sent to Mars in recent history. It aims to measure plasma and magnetic fields around Mars. Mars launch windows typically come every 26 months, so if the mission doesn't launch by late 2024, the next opportunity will be in late 2026.
A new study found that virtual meetings exhaust the brain more than face-to-face conversations. The rise in remote work and online learning has revealed a phenomenon called Zoom fatigue, a feeling of exhaustion linked with videoconferencing. It results in a deterioration in the quality of communication and collaboration and can impact both professional and personal relationships. The absence of nuanced nonverbal cues makes it challenging for participants to fully engage and connect in a meaningful way.
This article looks at different ways to obfuscate email addresses from bots on websites. The author set up live examples for each obfuscation technique to test how effective they were in blocking spam. It covers obfuscation techniques for both clickable links and plain text.
Developers need to write robust software to handle request failures or they might be presented to users as errors. One of the most common techniques for handling a failed request is to retry it. This post presents a visual exploration of the different methods for retrying requests and demonstrates why some common approaches are dangerous. It aims to present readers with a solid understanding of what makes safe retry behavior and what doesn't.
This blog post was written by someone who worked at Google for 18 years starting in October 2005. They experienced the early post-IPO Google and watched the company throughout the years as it received criticisms for actions that were sincerely intended to be good for society. The culture at Google has changed significantly since it started. The deterioration of its culture will eventually become irreversible as the people who are needed to act as a moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organization without a moral compass.
Anyone who has spent enough time working on spreadsheets will have experienced similar issues. There are similar problems when programming, except there's usually a way to solve them. Spreadsheets are used for storage, presentation, and computation. They are like regular programs in many ways. This article looks at problems with spreadsheets and ways to overcome them.
Block will cut hundreds of employees over the next year by firing underperforming workers quickly.
Sonos is months away from releasing a high-end wireless headphone and reportedly working on a set-top box that would allow users to watch video from a wide range of streaming apps.
This article contains internal memos from both Microsoft CTO and EVP of AI Kevin Scott and CEO Satya Nadella about the recent OpenAI drama.