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LIMITATIONS OF SCOPED CSS

Scoped CSS is useful, but you can't style children components or slot content.

WHAT I WOULD DO IF I WASN’T AT ARC EVALS

A member of the Alignment Research Center Evaluations Team shares a list of 9 projects that they would consider doing if they weren't in their current position.

MASTODON

WordPress has released ActivityPub 1.0.0 for WordPress, which allows WordPress blogs to be followed by others on fediverse apps and receive replies as comments.

NUE JS

Nue JS is an exceptionally small JavaScript library for building web interfaces.

ARM AND A LEG: ARM'S QUEST TO EXTRACT THEIR TRUE VALUE

Arm is increasing prices to extract value closer to what they actually deliver, a pivot from its previous strategy of discounting prices to secure market share growth.

SPACEX’S STARLINK MADE $1.4 BILLION LAST YEAR

THE MASSES

A NASA ASTRONAUT WILL FINALLY SPEND A FULL YEAR IN SPACE

MODERNA CEO ON AI’S POTENTIAL TO CURE CANCER

PAGEFIND

Pagefind is a fully static search library that aims to make websites with tens of thousands of pages searchable in the browser while consuming as little bandwidth as possible. It exposes a JavaScript search API that can be used anywhere. Pagefind can run a full-text search on a 10,000-page site with a total network payload of under 300kB.

HOW I BECAME AN $800K META STAFF ENGINEER

LONGER DECIDES’

HOW ARE CONSUMERS USING GENERATIVE AI?

GOOGLE IS CUTTING HUNDREDS OF JOBS IN ITS RECRUITING ORGANIZATION

LUNAR

Lunar brings e-commerce functionality to Laravel.

LESSONS FROM 139 YC AI STARTUPS

OMENS OF EXCEPTIONAL TALENT

A collection of signs that someone might have exceptional talent, created more as a brainstorming exercise rather than as a list of requirements.

SOME NOTES ON LOCAL-FIRST DEVELOPMENT

NINE WILD DETAILS FROM THE NEW ELON MUSK BIOGRAPHY

APPLE IPHONE 15 EVENT: THE SEVEN BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENTS

Apple announced its latest iPhone lineup, the Watch Series 9, a second-gen Apple Watch Ultra, a USB-C charging case for the AirPods Pro, and the release dates for its next round of OS updates at its Wonderlust event. The new iPhones will have USB-C and feature the Dynamic Island. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models will include a new Action button that replaces the mute toggle. Many more details about Apple's latest announcements are available in the article.

WHATSAPP IS WORKING ON CROSS-PLATFORM MESSAGING

WhatsApp's latest Android beta update contains a new screen called Third-party chats. The screen is currently not functional and can't be accessed by users. It is a strong clue that Meta is building cross-platform compatibility for encrypted messages. Meta's communication software will need to be interoperable with third-party messaging apps by March 2024 as the company meets the definition of a gatekeeper under the EU's Digital Markets Act.

THIS STUDENT-BUILT EV JUST SET A NEW WORLD RECORD FOR 0–62 MPH

A team of students from the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich, ETH Zurich, and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have built an electric vehicle that can accelerate from 0 to 62 miles per hour in just 0.956 seconds. The student-built EV can do this with just 326 hp over a distance of 12.3 meters. It only weighs 309 lbs. A video of the world record attempt is available in the article.

RESEARCHERS SEQUENCE GENOMES OF RARE PARROT TO HELP IT THRIVE

The kākāpō is a critically endangered species native to New Zealand. While its populations have risen slowly over the last decade, the limited genetic diversity in the species' population has made breeding problematic. Most kākāpō are severely inbred and susceptible to disease and infertility. Researchers are now sequencing the genomes of nearly all existing birds to discover genetic variants in the population to help preserve the species.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND MICROSERVICES

There is no need for every service to be 'micro'. Some startups do fine with just 'services'. Starting with a monolith is fine. Services can be branched from the monolith if they take care of a clearly-identifiable and separately-scalable load. A simple approach is often a more appropriate choice.

WHISPER TURBO

Whisper Turbo is a drop-in replacement for the OpenAI Whisper API. It features a smooth compatibility layer for ingesting audio files and converting them to be Whisper compatible, developer-friendly APIs for one-shot inference and streaming, and an inference framework for fast, cross-platform inference. The project is still currently in alpha.

CHARTER-DISNEY WINNERS AND LOSERS

Disney and Charter Communications have reached an agreement to restore popular channels to the cable operator, ending a blackout that lasted for more than a week. The agreement marks a seminal moment in the relationship between pay-TV providers and entertainment companies. Charter appears to be the winner in the standoff as Disney has been forced to give up its attempt at double-dipping by getting paid by Charter for channels and charging subscribers directly for the same content. However, Disney may end up being the long-term winner. More details about the agreement and its implications are available in the article.

THE WAY THAT JENSEN HUANG RUNS NVIDIA IS WILD

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes that the flattest organization is the most empowering one, so there are no 1:1s in the company and everything happens in the group setting. There are no status reports within Nvidia - Huang believes that these are too refined by the time they get to him. Anyone in the company can email Huang with whatever is on top of their mind and he will read it. The company doesn't have any formal planning cycles, but strategy meetings are open to all employees. Nvidia is optimized for attracting amazing people and allowing information to travel as quickly as possible.

CHINA AI & SEMICONDUCTORS RISE: US SANCTIONS HAVE FAILED

US sanctions aimed at limiting Chinese firms' ability to manufacture high-end chips have clearly failed as China is rapidly developing exascale supercomputing capabilities - the country has announced its intent to become the world leader in AI by 2030.

OFF

Unity is implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that charges developers a flat fee any time a game using Unity software is installed starting from January 2024 - these fees will only be applied to games that meet certain criteria.

LEARNED

This article looks at how a team built out a tool that no one wanted, the lessons the team learned while building the tool, and why the team decided to shut down the service.

APPLE’S VISION PRO HEADSET IS ON TRACK TO SHIP EARLY NEXT YEAR

Tim Cook announced that production of the Vision Pro headset is on track and that the iPhone 15 Pro will be able to capture spatial video for the headset at the Wonderlust launch event.

THE RULES OF MARGIN COLLAPSE

Margin collapse is when adjacent margins overlap in CSS - understanding the rules behind this mechanism can make writing CSS clearer and less surprising.

CENTURY

The Justice Department claims that Google abused its monopoly power in its search engine business in the first major monopoly case to make it to trial in decades.

URGENCY’ AT X, FORMERLY TWITTER

Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk is set to be published today. This article contains a story adapted from the book about how X moved its server farms from Sacramento to Portland. Musk's advisors told him that it would take many months to move the servers, but Musk decided that they were wrong and opted to move the servers using cheap contractors. They managed to move the servers in under a week, but the exercise destabilized X for the next two months. Musk later admitted that the rushed move was a mistake.

Nvidia says that TensorRT-LLM, an open source software library, will double the H100's performance for running inference on leading large language models. The software is now available in early access. It will be integrated into the Nvidia NeMo LLM framework as part of the Nvidia AI Enterprise software suite when it is released to the public next month. TensorRT-LLM will also support Nvidia's A100, L4, L40, L40, and Grace Hopper Superchip GPUs.

SCIENTISTS FIGURED OUT HOW TO WRITE IN WATER

A team of German physicists has figured out a method for writing on water. The method involves putting ink directly into water using a microbead made of an ion-exchange material as a pen. The bead writes by altering the local pH value of the water, attracting ink particles to those areas. The method is at a proof of concept stage - future iterations may be able to generate highly complex patterns in fluids. Examples of images drawn in water using the method are available in the article.

WI-FI CAN READ THROUGH WALLS

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara have developed a technique that can read letters through walls with Wi-Fi. The technique focuses on tracing the edges of objects. It is able to capture details not previously possible with other Wi-Fi imaging techniques. The approach may open up new directions for Wi-Fi imaging.

DOMAIN REGISTRARS WHICH DEVELOPERS RECOMMEND

Google Domains was one of the most popular domain registrars, with 10 million domains registered globally. Users who do nothing will be migrated to Squarespace. Domain names are easily transferable, so users have a choice of where to transfer their domains to. This article looks at which domain registrars other techies recommend. It provides an overview of each registrar with an analysis of their offerings.

7 SIMPLE HABITS OF THE TOP 1% OF ENGINEERS

This article looks at the habits of successful engineers and explains how these habits make those engineers more successful. Examples include sticking to a consistent standard and style of coding to make code easier to read and understand, deep domain knowledge in at least one field, and good self-marketing. The article delves deep into coding habits and how to write good code.

WHY THERE’S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BE A CREATOR

The health of the creator economy is judged by the likelihood of someone being able to earn a minimum viable living through being creative. There has never been a better time for creators to be creators. While it may be harder than ever for a creative to earn millions every year, it's easier than ever to make $50,000. Technology has driven the costs of tools down and platforms make it easy to monetize content. It may still not be easy, but there has never been a better time to try.

WHY NVIDIA’S AI SUPREMACY IS ONLY TEMPORARY

Nvidia's top spot in the AI world is far from secure. It is currently winning as almost nobody is running large machine learning apps, the competition hasn't matured, researchers have the purchasing power, and because of the focus on training models. In the near future, inference with CPUs will dominate over training with GPUs, engineers will have more purchasing power, and the focus will be on application costs. The winners of this shift will likely be traditional CPU platforms like x86 and Arm.

AWESOME BUN

This repository contains a curated list of resources related to Bun, an incredibly fast JavaScript runtime, bundler, transpiler, and package manager all in one.

The McDermitt Caldera could contain around 20 to 40 million metric tons of lithium.

E2EE ON THE WEB: ISOLATING PLAINTEXT

It would be better to improve code integrity/provenance/auditability for end-to-end encrypted web applications rather than trying to isolate plain text from application code.

VALE

Vale is a cross-platform and highly customizable command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose.

BIOGRAPHY OF MUSK

A look at the relationship between two people who have both held the title of 'Richest Person in the World'.