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INTEL ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT OF CEO PAT GELSINGER

Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired - David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus were named interim co-CEOs, with Holthaus also appointed CEO of Intel Products.

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TESLA FULL SELF-DRIVING (FSD) V13 STARTS INITIAL ROLLOUT

Tesla has started rolling out Tesla FSD V13 to customers. The latest version of the advanced driver-assist system was released with software update version 2024.39.10. The Cybercab units operating at Tesla's 'We, Robot' event in October were supposed to be running near-production AI software expected to ship in FSD V13, so the expectations for the real-word performance of the update are pretty high. The release notes for the update are available in the article.

META PLANS TO BUILD A $10B SUBSEA CABLE SPANNING THE WORLD, SOURCES SAY

Meta is the second-biggest driver of internet usage globally, accounting for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic. The company is planning to build a new major fiber-optic subsea cable extending around the world. The 40,000+ kilometer project could cost more than $10 billion. The project is still in its early stages - plans have been laid out, but physical assets have not. Meta is expected to speak more publicly about the project in early 2025 after confirming plans for the cable.

TESLA OPTIMUS SHOWS OFF NEW UPGRADE

Tesla's Optimus has received new hands. They could theoretically be used with Neuralink's N1 implant. The hands were revealed after Tesla received approval for a new feasibility trial where it will test its brain-to-computer implant with assistive robotic arms. A video showing Optimus catching tennis balls with its new hands is available in the article.

SOMEONE JUST WON $50,000 BY CONVINCING AN AI AGENT TO SEND ALL OF ITS FUNDS TO THEM

Freysa is an AI agent that was released with the sole objective of never transferring money. Anyone was allowed to pay a fee to send a message to the agent to convince it to release all its funds to them. The cost for a message rose exponentially as the prize pool grew, with 70% of the message fees going into the prize pool and the developer taking the rest. It took 483 attempts, with the message fee rising to $450, to finally convince Freysa to release its funds. This post contains an analysis of the winning prompt.

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IF NOT REACT, THEN WHAT?

React is a legacy technology, but it continues to appear in greenfield applications. It is not built to meet current needs or performance standards. This article discusses why developers should stop using React and presents alternative frameworks that work better. Developers building SPAs or islands of client-side interactivity are now spoiled for choice with dozens of contemporary frameworks worthy of their attention, like Svelte, Lit, FAST, Solid, Qwik, Marko, HTMX, Vue, and Stencil.

BUILDING A DISTRIBUTED LOG USING S3 (UNDER 150 LINES OF GO)

This tutorial shows readers how to implement a durable, distributed, and highly available log using S3. It is the third part of a series that also discusses disaggregated storage and zero disk architecture. The code in the tutorial is open source and comes with tests and open issues to contribute.

THE MOST HATED WAY OF FIRING SOMEONE IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER. IT'S THE AGE OF THE PIP

The use of performance improvement plans (PIPs) is on the rise. PIPs usually list tough-to-achieve goals to be completed within 30 to 90 days. Failure to complete the tasks results in termination of employment. They are intended to bring consistency and fairness to the way employees are judged and managed, but both workers and managers dread them. This post presents a guide to PIPs and how to navigate them, as well as alternatives to the practice. One common tactic for employees placed on PIPs is to file for a leave of absence, which stops the clock on the PIP, allowing the employee to job hunt without having to explain a resume gap to prospective new employers.

HOW LIBRA WAS KILLED

Libra was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a stablecoin developed by Meta. The project was announced in June 2019 but eventually killed off due to politics. Meta had addressed every possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and much more. The project was killed through intimidation of captive banking institutions.

OPENAI IS AT WAR WITH ITS OWN SORA VIDEO TESTERS FOLLOWING BRIEF PUBLIC LEAK

OpenAI cut off testing access to its Sora video generation platform after a group of artists in the program shared their access on a usable webpage last week.

THE FASCINATING SECURITY MODEL OF DARK WEB MARKETPLACES

The success of the current most trusted dark web marketplace, which has been chugging along since May 2020, is likely due to its exceptional operational security.

TESLA IS LOOKING TO HIRE A TEAM TO REMOTELY CONTROL ITS ‘SELF-DRIVING' ROBOTAXIS

While Tesla will use AI to power its autonomous fleet, it still needs the ability to access and control the vehicles remotely.

BREAKING DOWN THE DOJ'S PLAN TO END GOOGLE'S SEARCH MONOPOLY

Experts watching the case say that a forced Chrome sale may not be the biggest threat to Google's power.

PRETTY & DENSE

This prompt for Claude makes it produce highly information-dense outputs.

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH CHATGPT AND THE NAME 'DAVID MAYER'?

ChatGPT seems to crash whenever it tries to mention David Mayer de Rothschild, heir to the famed Rothschild banking family.

ELON MUSK SEEKS TO BLOCK OPENAI'S FOR-PROFIT CONVERSION AGAIN

Elon Musk's legal team has filed a motion to prevent OpenAI from transitioning to a for-profit model citing alleged antitrust violations and financial risks. The motion claims CEO Sam Altman's actions could leave the company unable to pay damages if Musk wins his lawsuit.

PERPLEXITY MULLS GETTING INTO HARDWARE

Perplexity's CEO plans to develop a "simple, under $50" AI device for voice-to-voice interactions. This aligns with a broader trend of AI startups exploring hardware to enable new interactions, although historical challenges in AI hardware highlight risks. Perplexity, with substantial funding, aims to avoid pitfalls faced by others like Humane's Ai Pin.

INFLECTION AI CEO SAYS IT'S DONE TRYING TO MAKE NEXT-GENERATION AI MODELS

Inflection AI shifted its focus from developing cutting-edge AI models to providing AI tools for enterprise customers, leveraging current AI models. It has acquired three AI startups to strengthen offerings and is open to licensing models from former competitors. CEO Sean White says the company is focused on practical applications over frontier model development, highlighting on-premise AI solutions for enterprise data security.

INTELLECT-1 RELEASE: THE FIRST GLOBALLY TRAINED 10B PARAMETER MODEL

INTELLECT-1 is a 10B parameter model trained on 1T tokens with hardware distributed around the globe. The benchmarks are reasonable, and the MFU of 30%+ is amazing given the distributed nature of training. If the results hold, this is a substantial improvement for decentralized large model training.

DETECT AND LEARN UNSEEN OBJECTS

This new framework pushes object detection into open-world scenarios by teaching AI to identify and learn from objects it hasn't seen before.

MAKING UNDERWATER IMAGES CLEAR

HUPE is an AI-powered method that improves underwater image clarity while preserving details critical for other tasks like object detection.

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MAPPING THE IONOSPHERE WITH THE POWER OF ANDROID

Google researchers were able to accurately map the Ionosphere by using GPS fluctuations and some clever algorithmic work. The task is usually expensive and time consuming. This effort can assist with various climate solutions.

INTRODUCING LTNTORCH

Logic Tensor Networks (LTN) merge deep learning with logical reasoning, allowing neural models to learn by optimizing a knowledge base of logical formulas.

REFINING PRETRAINING DATA PROGRAMMATICALLY

ProX is a framework that treats data refinement as a programming task, allowing models to apply fine-grained operations to individual examples at scale. It improves the quality of pre-training corpora by using small language models to generate programs.

CHATS WITH VIDEOS IN REAL TIME

MMDuet is a novel "video-text duet" interaction format for VideoLLMs that allows AI to provide real-time responses as videos play. The approach mimics a dialogue where both users and AI can exchange messages during playback.

BUILDING LLMS IS PROBABLY NOT GOING BE A BRILLIANT BUSINESS

LLM makers like OpenAI face significant challenges due to industry structure, notably NVIDIA's pricing power as the key chip supplier and high buyer price sensitivity and competition. Many AI companies raise substantial capital but struggle with profitability, similar to historical tech firms like Netscape. Despite this, the technology itself may still advance. AI businesses might succeed by leveraging existing models rather than developing new ones.

ROX

A new AI-native CRM, Rox, aims to disrupt Salesforce by leveraging AI's ability to manage unstructured data and integrate with data warehouses. Rox's strategy focuses on enhancing top sales performers through AI-powered agents while securing customer data for future AI developments. Investors have shown confidence with $50M in funding, betting on Rox as AI capabilities continue to improve.

PLAYAI RAISES $21M FUNDING AND RELEASES A NEW VOICE MODEL

PlayAI raised $21 Million to advance voice-first AI interfaces and models and introduced Play Dialog, a state-of-the-art multi-turn speech model.

ANTHROPIC SAYS CLAUDE AI CAN MATCH YOUR UNIQUE WRITING STYLE

Anthropic's Claude AI now offers customizable response styles, allowing users to adjust tone and length for different writing tasks.

CONVERTING GPT TO LLAMA

This repository contains code for converting a GPT implementation to Meta AI's Llama.

SPOT ETH ETFS CLOCKS HIGHEST DAILY INFLOW DAY: ‘ALT ROTATION HAS BEGUN'

US Spot Ethereum ETFs hit a record high in daily inflows of over $330 million, surpassing the previous Nov 11 high of $295.5 million. BlackRock's Ethereum Trust (ETHA) is responsible for the vast majority of inflows. It now has over $2 billion in total inflows since its launch on July 23. The Friday inflows were higher than BTC ETF flows for the first time, potentially indicating that Wall Street is joining the “alt rotation.”

BITCOIN IS FLYING HIGH—THESE COUNTRIES ARE CONSIDERING A NATIONAL RESERVE

As Bitcoin approaches $100K, several countries, including the United States, Brazil, Poland, and Russia, are exploring establishing a national Bitcoin reserve to improve economic resilience and diversify reserves, an approach El Salvador pioneered. Recent proposals and legislation highlight growing global interest in incorporating Bitcoin into national strategies, though implementation remains uncertain.

CURVE + ELIXIR + BLACKROCK: A $533M BRIDGE BETWEEN TRADFI AND DEFI

Curve Finance, Elixir, and BlackRock have partnered to integrate BlackRock's $533M tokenized fund (BUIDL) into DeFi to enable vetted participants to mint deUSD, a yield-bearing synthetic dollar. Curve, which hosts the majority of deUSD liquidity, is positioned as the central hub for stablecoin trading, bridging TradFi and DeFi to create more stable, liquid markets.

HYPERLIQUID'S NATIVE TOKEN DEBUTS AT FULLY DILUTED $4.2B MARKET CAP

Decentralized perpetuals exchange and L1 blockchain HyperLiquid recently airdropped its HYPE token, with 31% of the supply allocated to former traders. Unlike recent airdrops, it immediately jumped in value to a fully diluted valuation of over $4 billion. The token is used to secure the network via proof of stake and to pay transaction fees.

THE 5 LEVELS OF SECURE HARDWARE

This framework by Paradigm proposes five evolutionary levels of secure hardware development. The industry is currently at level 3, which offers strong developer experience and GPU support for applications like private ML inference but still relies on a proprietary manufacturing process. The progression ranges from basic oracle/bridge applications in Level 1 to Level 5's vision of heterogeneous open, secure hardware networks capable of handling sensitive global-scale operations like voting systems. Current tech enables practical applications with hardware attestation, but Level 5 requires significant advances in open manufacturing processes and hardware interconnectivity, with tradeoffs between security, performance, and developer experience.

WHAT IS IT ALL FOR? ON INFRA FATIGUE AND THE PATH FORWARD FOR L1S

The crypto industry has an issue with over-investing in infrastructure at the expense of consumer applications. Current L1 and L2s achieve only a few hundred TPS compared to the 10,000+ TPS needed for mainstream adoption. While infra investment has enabled improvements like cheaper transactions, future development should focus on creating entirely new design spaces rather than marginal improvements to existing solutions. Successful L1s should enable transformative applications through significant performance improvements.

MECHANICS BEHIND DEBANKING

Debanking is when a bank closes all of a customer's accounts, often without providing a clear reason. This practice has gained attention due to allegations that U.S. regulators pressured banks to sever ties with certain industries, notably tech and crypto firms, effectively restricting their access to financial services.

THE NEXT STEP FOR AI AGENTS

AI agents are experiencing a transformative “DeFi Summer” moment, with growing attention and capital inflows driven by agents' ability to learn, adapt, and potentially integrate into every aspect of life, from trading to personal productivity. However, for AI agents to achieve the next 100x improvement, they must become highly personalized while ensuring privacy and security of user data. Solutions like Nillion's encrypted, privacy-enhancing technology offer a path forward for secure personal data integration.

BASE CONFIRMS THERE WILL BE NO TOKEN

Base has confirmed that there are currently no plans for a network token.

HYPERLIQUID WAS THE BEST-EXECUTED AND MOST REWARDING AIRDROP

Hyperliquid's airdrop and token generation event (TGE) set a new standard by genuinely rewarding early users with incentives like significant token drops and evolving engagement mechanics.

AI AGENT SWARMS COULD MIRROR FIVERR

An AI agent swarm could function as a marketplace like Fiverr, where AI agents autonomously offer personalized services such as trading, research, communication, and task automation on behalf of users.

HOW LIBRA WAS KILLED

The demise of Meta's ambitious Libra project, a blockchain and stablecoin system that aimed to revolutionize global payments, came not from regulatory non-compliance but from political resistance, with pressure from top U.S. officials to halt the initiative.

INTRODUCING FRAMES

Runway's new image generation model, Frames, offers unparalleled stylistic control and fidelity. It enables precise aesthetic design, ensuring consistent creativity across projects. With gradual access via Gen-3 Alpha and API integration, Frames supports seamless workflows. Example worlds include cinematic portraiture, retro anime, and dynamic landscapes, showcasing versatility.