Search the archive

WHAT HAS CHANGED IN CPU CORES IN M3 CHIPS?

This article compares M1 and M3 chips to find out what's changed between them so readers can better choose the right chip for their next Apple silicon Mac.

BARD CAN NOW WATCH YOUTUBE VIDEOS FOR YOU

Bard's YouTube extension can now handle complex queries about specific video content.

OPENAI: THE BATTLE OF THE BOARD

This article attempts to piece together what happened with OpenAI over the weekend.

SAM ALTMAN RETURNS TO OPENAI; BOARD MEMBERS OUSTED

Sam Altman is returning to OpenAI as CEO. There will be a new initial board with Bret Taylor as Chair. The other members will be Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo.

BINANCE CEO STEPS DOWN; CRYPTO PLATFORM HIT WITH RECORD $4.3 BILLION IN DAMAGES

Changpeng Zhao will step down as the CEO of Binance after the company pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and other charges. Binance will pay more than $4.3 billion to settle the charges. Zhao also agreed to a $50 million fine as part of the settlement. Richard Teng, Binance's head of regional markets, will take over as CEO. Zhao will remain as a shareholder. There were no allegations related to the misuse of customer funds or market manipulation.

SOLAR-POWERED JAPANESE TINY VAN ‘PUZZLE’ UNVEILED AHEAD OF NORTH AMERICAN SALES

HW ELECTRO is a Japanese automaker that plans to bring kei cars to the US. Kei cars are pint-sized vehicles designed to fit into a local regulatory window that allows for much smaller and lighter cars and trucks to operate legally on roads. The PUZZLE is an electric van built on Japan's tiny car legacy. HW ELECTRO plans to start selling the PUZZLE in 2025. Pictures of the vehicle are available in the article.

IN THE GUT’S ‘SECOND BRAIN,’ KEY AGENTS OF HEALTH EMERGE

Breaking down foods requires coordination across dozens of cell types and many tissues. The gut has its own network of nerve cells that can function nearly independently from the brain. Just like the brain, it is made up of two types of nervous system cells, neurons and glia. A new study has identified a new subset of glial cells that senses food as it moves through the digestive tract and signals the gut to contract and move it along its way.

AN INTERACTIVE GUIDE TO CSS GRID

CSS Grid gives developers access to a ton of tools for developing sophisticated and fluid layouts. It is surprisingly complex and may take some time for developers to truly feel comfortable with. This tutorial shares the biggest lightbulb moments one developer experienced when learning CSS Grid. It covers the fundamentals of the layout mode and shows readers how to do some pretty cool stuff with it.

THE ROOTS OF TODAY'S MODERN BACKEND ENGINEERING PRACTICES

This article looks at how practices that were considered cutting-edge on the back end have changed and where the field is headed to in the future. It was written by an industry veteran who has done it all and is still active in the game. The article covers what it was like to be an early Amazon employee back in 1997 and the changes that they have seen since then.

BEFORE ALTMAN’S OUSTER, OPENAI’S BOARD WAS DIVIDED AND FEUDING

Sam Altman and OpenAI's board of directors have been bickering for more than a year, with the tension getting worse once OpenAI became a mainstream name. His firing was the result of a long-simmering boardroom tension. The situation highlights the rift between business people who want to make money from AI technology and the researchers who worry that what they are building could eliminate jobs or become a threat to humanity. This article looks at Altman's firing and the conflicts within OpenAI over the years.

THE SAM ALTMAN DRAMA POINTS TO A DEEPER SPLIT IN THE TECH WORLD

The recent events at OpenAI are the most dramatic manifestation of a wide divide in Silicon Valley. Doomers believe that AI poses an existential risk to humanity and thus advocate for stricter regulations. Boomers stress the potential of AI to turbocharge progress and want looser regulations. This article discusses the split in views between the two groups and how this rift may affect the future of AI.

GOOGLE MULLED OFFERING PAID-FOR NO-LOGGING PRIVATE SEARCH SUBSCRIPTION

Google leaders proposed a subscription-based private Search service in 2018.

INTRODUCING STABLE VIDEO DIFFUSION

Stable Video Diffusion is a foundation model for generative video based on Stable Diffusion.

FOR GOOD FIRST ISSUE: INTRODUCING A NEW WAY TO CONTRIBUTE

For Good First Issue is a curated list of open source projects recognized as digital public goods that need help.

HOW I (KIND OF) KILLED MERCURIAL AT MOZILLA

Firefox development is moving from Mercurial to Git as supporting both platforms placed a significant burden on a team that was already stretched thin in parts.

NVIDIA’S REVENUE TRIPLES AS AI CHIP BOOM CONTINUES

This article looks at Nvidia's performance over the last quarter and its plans for the future.

IMF SAYS CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCIES CAN REPLACE CASH: ‘THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO TURN BACK’

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund said that central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash, offer resilience in more advanced economies, and improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts.

MICROSOFT HIRES FORMER OPENAI CEO SAM ALTMAN

Microsoft has hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to lead its new advanced AI research team. Altman will be the CEO of this new group. The new team will include some key OpenAI talent. Former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear has been named as interim CEO at OpenAI. Altman had been negotiating a return to OpenAI, but the company's board refused to step down and let him return. Microsoft still has a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI and will remain committed to its partnership with the company.

HUNDREDS OF OPENAI EMPLOYEES THREATEN TO RESIGN AND JOIN MICROSOFT

Most of the staff at OpenAI have threatened to resign from the company and join Microsoft. Microsoft has assured OpenAI staff that there are positions for all OpenAI employees in its new advanced AI research team should they choose to join. Over 650 out of a total of 770 OpenAI staff have signed a letter saying they will leave if the board doesn't reinstate Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and then resign. The board seems to have decided to remain in place - they have named a new CEO, Emmett Shear.

NYC WILL SOON BE HOME TO 15 ROBOT-RUN VEGETARIAN RESTAURANTS FROM CHIPOTLE’S FOUNDER

Kernel, a new endeavor from the founder of Chipotle, is a vegetarian fast-casual restaurant that will be operated mostly by robots. There are plans to open at least 15 locations with the first opening by early 2024. The remainder will be on track for New York City in the next two years. Each location will employ three workers who will receive more pay and better benefits than people working at other chains.

‘ELECTROCALORIC’ HEAT PUMP COULD TRANSFORM AIR CONDITIONING

A new type of heat pump developed by materials scientists at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology in Belvaux uses electric fields and a special ceramic to warm or cool air. The technology combines a number of existing techniques and could be potentially competitive with heat pumps without the need for refrigerants in a smaller space. It still needs to be refined further before it is ready for commercialization.

THOSE WHO HAVE MAINTAINED FORKS OF OSS AT WORK, WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE LIKE? (LOBSTERS THREAD)

This thread looks at the experience of those who have maintained open-source software at work, particularly those with forks of abandoned projects and forks that diverged from upstream. The replies in the thread are long and detailed.

A GUIDE TO LLM INFERENCE AND PERFORMANCE

Using the full power of the GPU during LLM inference requires knowing if the inference is compute-bound or memory-bound. Calculating the operations per byte possible on a given GPU and comparing it to the arithmetic of a model's attention layers reveals where the bottleneck is. This information can be used to pick an appropriate GPU for model inference and use techniques like batching to better utilize GPU resources.

OPENAI’S MISALIGNMENT AND MICROSOFT’S GAIN

OpenAI fired Sam Altman on Friday. Altman was quickly hired by Microsoft. This has caused a talent drain within OpenAI, with a good portion of it going to Microsoft. The situation highlights the problems of running a non-profit organization. This article looks at OpenAI's non-profit model, the issues within OpenAI, Microsoft's involvement, and how these recent events will change the AI landscape.

A SECRET GOOGLE DEAL LET SPOTIFY COMPLETELY BYPASS ANDROID’S APP STORE FEES

Spotify doesn't pay any commission fees when it uses its own payment processor on Android. It only pays a 4% fee when users choose to use Google as their payment processor. Google fought to keep the terms of its deal with Spotify secret during its antitrust trial as it could damage negotiations with other app developers who might want more generous fees. Spotify's unprecedented popularity was enough to justify a bespoke deal.

CRUISE CO-FOUNDER RESIGNS FOLLOWING CEO EXIT

Cruise's co-founder and chief product officer Daniel Kan has resigned just a day after the company's CEO Kyle Vogt announced his resignation.

WHO IS EMMETT SHEAR, OPENAI’S THIRD CEO IN THREE DAYS?

Emmett Shear is the co-founder of the video game live-streaming company Twitch.

YOUTUBE IS REPORTEDLY SLOWING DOWN VIDEOS FOR FIREFOX USERS

Some Firefox users are experiencing a five-second delay when loading YouTube videos.

FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS MAKE BAD GRAPHS

This opinionated essay talks about good and bad practices in data visualization with examples and explanations.

THE COST OF INDEX EVERYTHING

More information isn't always better - index size is a trade-off against retrieval quality.

SAM ALTMAN IS STILL TRYING TO RETURN AS OPENAI CEO

Multiple sources say that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are willing to return to OpenAI if the remaining board members who fired Altman stepped aside.

the solution. Get it for free here

A TIMELINE OF SAM ALTMAN’S FIRING FROM OPENAI — AND THE FALLOUT

Sam Altman was fired as CEO of OpenAI late Friday. The company's president and co-founder Greg Brockman and three senior OpenAI researchers resigned following Altman's departure. The situation is fast-moving. This article presents a timeline to make it easier to follow what's happening.

SPACEX LAUNCHES STARSHIP FOR THE SECOND TIME, GOING FARTHER THAN EVER BEFORE

SpaceX flew Starship for the second time on November 18. While both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage had to be blown up mid-air, the test was still a huge success for SpaceX. It appears that the new water deluge system successfully protected the launch infrastructure. The hot staging separation technique was also successful. A video of the test is available in the article.

SCIENTISTS 3D PRINT A ROBOTIC HAND WITH HUMAN-LIKE BONES AND TENDONS

One of the reasons robots seem to move differently from living creatures is due to their lack of bones and flexible tissues. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and US-based startup Inkbit have figured out how to 3D print a robotic hand with an internal structure composed of human-like bones, ligaments, and tendons. The technique can create robots that outperform hard robots in terms of flexibility and overcome the design and scale-related issues faced by soft robots. A picture of the 3D-printed robot hand is available in the article.

WHY SUPERCONDUCTOR RESEARCH IS IN A ‘GOLDEN AGE’ — DESPITE CONTROVERSY

Superconductivity research is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance fueled in part by the new capabilities of computer simulations to predict the existence and properties of undiscovered materials. Scientists have unearthed several families of materials over the past few years that could have revolutionary properties. This article covers some of the history behind superconductivity research and the current state of the field.

VICTOR MONO

Victor Mono is a monospaced font with optional semi-connected cursive italics and program symbol ligatures. It features a slender, crisp, and narrow typeface with a large x-height and clear punctuation. Victor Mono comes in seven weights and Roman, Italic, and Oblique styles. Examples are available on the site.

ALL OF THE WRITING I DID IN A WEEK AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Empathy and communication are less obvious skills that are helpful for working as a software engineer. One of the ways software engineers communicate is through writing. This article takes a look at all of the writing that a software engineer working at the Cloud Gateway team at Netflix does in a single week. In a week, the engineer wrote zero emails, a few dozen lines of code, a handful of Jira tickets, a couple of investigation and debugging docs, a few technical docs, and hundreds of Slack messages. An ergonomic keyboard is a very worthwhile investment.

A TIMELINE OF THE OPENAI BOARD

OpenAI's board has undergone numerous changes over the years, especially recently. These changes weren't big news, so they didn't spark the concerns that they maybe should have. This blog post goes through the Internet Archive and OpenAI's non-profit filings to try to make sense of OpenAI's governance. It attempts to chronicle the composition of OpenAI's board, point out conflicts, and show what led to Sam Altman being fired. It should be noted that the people involved in this act of corporate governance are roughly the same people trying to position themselves to govern policy on artificial intelligence.

HERE IS HOW FAR WE ARE TO ACHIEVING AGI, ACCORDING TO DEEPMIND

The path to achieving artificial general intelligence remains a topic of debate among scientists. A team of scientists from Google DeepMind has proposed a new framework for classifying the capabilities and behavior of AGI systems and their precursors. It is critical for the AI research community to explicitly reflect on what it means when discussing AGI. This article explores the framework, which includes criteria for measuring artificial intelligence, a matrix that measures performance and generality, and another matrix for measuring autonomy and risk.

BUSINESS LOBBY ATTACKS AS NEW YORK NEARS A NONCOMPETE BAN, RARE IN THE US

Companies using noncompete agreements to trap workers in their jobs prompted New York legislators to pass a bill last June that bans noncompete agreements.

ON VALUE IN A POST-SCARCITY WORLD

A look at what a post-Artificial General Intelligence or post-Artificial Super Intelligence world actually means.

WHY APPLE IS WORKING HARD TO BREAK INTO ITS OWN IPHONES

This article takes a look at Apple's approach to iPhone security.

AN ATTEMPTED TAXONOMY OF WEB COMPONENTS

This page contains a collection of web components for readers to learn from.

ASK HN: IS UNLIMITED PTO A SCAM (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Workers with unlimited PTO arrangements feel safer taking less time off compared to employees in jobs with fixed vacation days.

RANSOMWARE GANG FILES SEC COMPLAINT OVER VICTIM’S UNDISCLOSED BREACH

The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware operation has filed a US Securities and Exchange Commission complaint against one of its victims for not complying with the four-day rule to disclose a cyberattack.

APPLE ANNOUNCES THAT RCS SUPPORT IS COMING TO IPHONE NEXT YEAR

Apple has announced that it will adopt the Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging standard. The feature will launch for iOS later next year. It will bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users. iMessage will continue to exist as the messaging platform used for all communication between iPhone users.

AMAZON WILL ALLOW AUTO DEALERS TO SELL CARS ON ITS SITE, STARTING WITH HYUNDAI

Amazon will allow auto dealers to sell cars through its site starting next year with Hyundai. Shoppers will have the option to pick up their vehicles or have them delivered by a local dealership. They will be able to search for available vehicles in their area and then check out using their preferred payment or financing method. Shares of used car dealers fell following the announcement of the new service.

“MAKE IT REAL” AI PROTOTYPE WOWS DEVS BY TURNING DRAWINGS INTO WORKING SOFTWARE

tldraw's new Make it Real feature lets users draw an image of software and bring it to life using AI. It uses OpenAI's GPT-4V API to visually interpret vector drawings into functioning Tailwind CSS and JavaScript code. It can replicate user interfaces and even create simple implementations of games. A live demo of the feature is available online, but it requires an OpenAI API key. Users can opt to run the code locally.