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FILEKITTY

FileKitty lets you select multiple files from a directory and merge them into a single file. This is ideal for combining files before using them in a single format or for easily pasting file contents into an LLM to provide context.

MORPHIC

Morphic is an open-source AI-powered search engine with a generative UI.

GOOGLE LAYOFFS CONTINUE AS CUTS HIT FLUTTER, DART, AND PYTHON TEAMS

Google's new round of layoffs affects teams working on Flutter, Dart, and Python. Flutter's co-founder recently left Google, which makes the future of Flutter and Dart more uncertain. The entire US-based Python team has been disbanded, with work potentially shifting to Munich in a cost-cutting move.

EXPLORING LLM WEIRDNESS: HOW WE BUILT IT & WHAT I LEARNED

Josh Watzman, a software engineer at Facebook, and his coworker built an LLM-powered quiz game that became popular online. They found LLM APIs simple to use and found that for a good user experience, it was best to immediately stream LLM responses. Since LLMs are functionally text prediction tools, they are great for language tasks, but not as good for interpreting non-textual information. Interestingly, immediate streaming of LLM responses is crucial for a positive user experience, even if it doesn't reduce overall response time.

ASK HN: HOW DO PEOPLE CREATE THOSE SLEEK LOOKING DEMOS FOR STARTUPS? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Hacker News commenters provide lists of tools and guidelines to create good demos for software products.

THE SHAPE OF AI

UI, UX, and design guidelines for building AI applications.

ONLINE CRYPTOGRAPHY COURSE

Stanford is offering a free online cryptography course.

BULLETPROOF METHOD TO SOLVING PROBLEMS

By simply writing down your problem for a co-worker and hitting send, you'll often magically find the solution yourself.

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AIRBNB'S ICONS ALLOW YOU TO DRIFT OFF IN THE ‘UP' HOUSE OR REST IN PRINCE'S ‘PURPLE RAIN' MANSION

Airbnb's Icons is a new collection of experiences hosted by big names in music, film, television, arts, sports, and more. Current entertainment-focused Icons include a floating replica of the house from 'Up', a night in a VIP lounge with Kevin Hart, and a living room performance from Doja Cat. The experiences are all priced at under $100 per guest. Only a limited number of requests will be selected for each experience via a lottery. Airbnb also rolled out other new features this week, including the ability for groups of guests to more easily book trips together.

EMAIL MICROSOFT DIDN'T WANT SEEN REVEALS RUSHED DECISION TO INVEST IN OPENAI

An email sent to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella by Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer with the subject line 'Thoughts on OpenAI' in mid-June 2019 detailed Scott's concerns about Google's developments in AI and how it might take Microsoft multiple years to even attempt to compete with Google. Microsoft had tried to keep the email hidden, but it was made public as part of the US Justice Department's antitrust trial over Google's alleged search monopoly. Mere weeks after the email, Microsoft had invested $1 billion into OpenAI, and it has increased its investment significantly further since.

TWO GIANTS IN THE SATELLITE TELECOM INDUSTRY JOIN FORCES TO COUNTER STARLINK

Luxembourg-based SES is buying Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined fleet of around 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, more than twice the size of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator. It is expected to close in the second half of 2025 and is pending regulatory approvals. Satellite operators are seeing an uptick in demand, and the US military's appetite for commercial satellite communications is going up. Both companies maintain hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the US government each year.

VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS AND SOFTWARE

Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) reduce the need for gas and oil-based power plants by aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) such as rooftop solar and home/office batteries. These DERs help the grid by reducing or meeting demand through remote control so power plants can avoid having to burn dirty fuels during peak periods. They can also reduce the need for additional electricity grid transmission and distribution. VPPs provide a more predictable and easily managed way of helping the grid stay balanced. This article explains how VPPs work and discusses their future.

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WHAT'S COMING TO POSTGRESQL ? 🐘

PostgreSQL is undergoing a series of transformations that could redefine its role in the database landscape. This article explores some of the developments shaping the future of PostgreSQL. One of the most significant advancements coming to the PostgreSQL ecosystem is the separation of compute and storage. This will bring major benefits such as horizontal scalability, cost-effective scaling, seamless replication, high availability, and improved development experience.

SOFTWARE FRICTION

Friction is everywhere in software development. Two setbacks are more than twice as bad as one setback. Addressing friction can also create other sources of friction. Friction is inevitable and impossible to fully remove, but there are things that can be done to reduce it, and plans can be made more resilient to it. Things that can reduce friction include smaller scopes and shorter iterations, more autonomy, better planning, automation, and using checklists and runbooks.

GOOGLE LAYS OFF HUNDREDS OF 'CORE' EMPLOYEES, MOVES SOME POSITIONS TO INDIA AND MEXICO

Google has laid off at least 200 employees from its Core teams. The reorganization will involve moving some roles to India and Mexico. The Core unit is responsible for building the technical foundation behind Google's flagship products and for protecting users' online safety. The Core layoffs also include the governance and protected data group, which will be at the center of regulatory challenges facing the company. Affected employees have access to outplacement services and will be able to apply for open roles within Google.

MAGIC MACHINES

Programmers tend to assign more trust to computers run by anyone but themselves. It's a lack of confidence in their own abilities that leads programmers to think that the people operating their cloud computers are smarter or better than they are. There are no magic machines and no magic operators: all systems have the same kind of potentially faulty bits and brains. It's all just computers and people.

ANTHROPIC RELEASES CLAUDE AI CHATBOT IOS APP

Anthropic has launched an iOS mobile app for its Claude 3 AI language models and introduced a new subscription tier designed for group collaboration.

GOOGLE PULLS RISC-V SUPPORT FROM GENERIC ANDROID KERNEL

Google says due to the rapid rate of iteration, the company is not yet ready to provide a single supported image for all vendors.

CHROME'S NEW BUILT-IN AI IS THE BIGGEST UPDATE TO THE BROWSER IN OVER 15 YEARS

Gemini can now be accessed in the Chrome desktop browser by typing @gemini into the address bar.

THE FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM PROJECT

Fermat's Last Theorem is the claim that some abstract equations have no solutions in positive integers.

PLEASE DON'T SHARE OUR LINKS ON MASTODON: HERE'S WHY!

Mastodon is a federated platform, so requests to generate link previews are initiated across many connected instances, increasing the load on the website's server in a big way.

GOOGLE PAID APPLE $20 BILLION IN 2022 TO BE DEFAULT SAFARI SEARCH ENGINE

Court documents that Google provided in its antitrust dispute with the US Department of Justice show that the company was paying Apple 36% of the total revenue it earned from searches conducted on Safari.

COREWEAVE RAISES $1.1B

Coreweave is a GPU provider that rents out super clusters. This recent funding brings them to a $19B valuation.

HOW FIELD AI IS CONQUERING UNSTRUCTURED AUTONOMY

Field AI, founded by former NASA JPL leader Ali Agha, specializes in autonomous robots that operate in unstructured environments without needing maps, GPS, or human supervision. Using advanced AI models developed from DARPA challenges, the company's robots can adapt to new and changing conditions, significantly enhancing their utility in industrial and construction settings.

AMAZON Q, A GENERATIVE AI-POWERED ASSISTANT FOR BUSINESSES AND DEVELOPERS

AWS has launched Amazon Q, a generative AI assistant aimed at improving software development and decision-making by leveraging a company's internal data. Amazon Q facilitates coding, testing, and app development for developers, while offering data-driven support for business users through natural language interaction. The service also includes Amazon Q Apps, enabling the creation of custom AI applications without coding expertise.

DEEPDIVE: A TRANSFORMER WALK-THROUGH, WITH GEMMA

KAN: KOLMOGOROV-ARNOLD NETWORKS

Multi-Layer Perceptrons are used widely in AI today, including in the Transformer between Attention layers. However, they use fixed activation functions. This paper suggests using learned activation functions on edges using the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation (functions can be represented by a superposition of simpler functions). In this case, the researchers replace weights with splines. The architecture is much more complicated, but has some interesting properties that potentially make it more interpretable.

REKA VIBE-EVAL

Reka trains large foundation models and has quickly caught up to some of the best players despite having a fraction of the funding. It has released a subset of its internal evaluation suite, which it uses to determine how strong its models are.

RETRIEVAL-AUGMENTED LANGUAGE MODELS: A SURVEY

This survey paper delves into the world of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models (RALMs), highlighting their evolution, structure, and diverse applications in NLP tasks such as translation and dialogue systems.

3D RENDERING WITH MEMORY-EFFICIENT TECHNIQUES

Lightplane Renderer and Splatter components is a new method that dramatically reduces memory usage in 2D-3D mappings. The Lightplane Renderer skillfully generates images from neural 3D fields, while the Lightplane Splatter efficiently projects these images into 3D Hash structures.

CLIP PRETRAINED MAMBA MODELS

The new Mamba model, trained using contrastive language-image pretraining (CLIP), shows impressive efficiency and performance in zero-shot image classification.

3D GENERATION WITH THE MICRODREAMER ALGORITHM

Researchers have developed an innovative 3D generation algorithm, dubbed MicroDreamer, which significantly accelerates the process by reducing the number of function evaluations required.

GPT-2?

A mysterious AI model named gpt2-chatbot, displaying capabilities akin to GPT-4.5, has emerged on lmsys.org, prompting speculation of it being an unofficial OpenAI test for their next iteration. Key identifiers such as response quality, OpenAI-specific traits, and rate limits suggest a high level of sophistication, potentially hinting at a discreet benchmarking initiative by OpenAI. Investigations and discussions around gpt2-chatbot's origins and capabilities are ongoing in the AI community.

A.I. START-UPS FACE A ROUGH FINANCIAL REALITY CHECK

High-profile AI startups like Inflection AI, Stability AI, and Anthropic are facing financial pressures as they struggle with the high costs of developing generative AI models. While OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has shown revenue growth, competitors like Anthropic and Stability AI grapple with substantial gaps between revenue and operating expenses. Microsoft's investment in AI hints at the tech industry's belief in AI's long-term profitability, despite the current challenges in monetizing these expensive technologies.

Contentful Studio

NOUS HERMES PRO (HUGGING FACE HUB)

The next version of Hermes is available, trained on top of Llama 3 with a newly cleaned dataset. This model excels at function calling and would make a useful agent.

DATABONSAI

Databonsai is a Python library that uses LLMs to perform data cleaning tasks.

GPT-4 CAN EXPLOIT REAL VULNERABILITIES BY READING ADVISORIES

OpenAI's GPT-4 can autonomously exploit certain real-world vulnerabilities with a high success rate when using CVE descriptions, potentially surpassing tools like vulnerability scanners.

$175BN IN BTC HELD BY ETFS, COUNTRIES, AND PUBLIC + PRIVATE COMPANIES

A report by VanEck reveals that approximately $175 billion worth of bitcoin is held by ETFs, nations, and both public and private companies, which makes up about 15% of the total Bitcoin supply. This holding demonstrates increasing institutional interest and acceptance of bitcoin as a viable store of value, with more involvement from hedge funds, asset managers, and endowments.

JACK DORSEY'S BLOCK FACES SCRUTINY FROM FEDERAL AUTHORITIES OVER NON-COMPLIANT CRYPTO SERVICES

Block, the parent company of Square and Cash App, is under investigation over alleged sanctions, violations, and other regulatory issues. Whistleblowers complained that the company processed transactions linked to sanctioned countries and terrorist organizations, with thousands of suspicious transactions going unreported. Block states that it did not intentionally or knowingly violate sanctions.

HOW REDSTONE WILL CHANGE THE GAME

Redstone is an OP Stack Layer 2 and part of the Optimism Superchain ecosystem that just went live. It was created by Lattice, the company behind the MUD framework for building complex onchain apps centered primarily around gaming and autonomous worlds. Over the next few months, Redstone, which was made to realize MUD's potential, will deploy several games, including onchain Minecraft, a multiplayer real-time strategy game, a sci-fi horror, and the traditional suite of DeFi products.

INTRODUCING AAVE 2030

Aave V4 introduces the Unified Liquidity Layer, which allows for a more flexible approach to managing liquidity that builds upon a base layer while allowing modification at the module layer. It adjusts interest rates and liquidity premiums based on market conditions and collateral risk to provide fairer pricing for lenders and borrowers. The ultimate goal is to create a chain-agnostic liquidity protocol facilitating cross-chain liquidity and an expansion of its GHO stablecoin. Aave is also rebranding with a new logo and design.

SELL IN MAY & GO AWAY

Seasonality has a statistically significant impact on returns in both traditional and crypto markets. Over the past five years, buying BTC in October and selling in April netted 1,449%, while buying in May and selling in September led to -29%. Retail and institutional sentiment is waning this May, as evidenced by trading volume, volatility, and ETF outflows. Macroeconomic conditions are also driving liquidity away from all markets, which the Treasury could solve by injecting up to $1.4 trillion of liquidity into risk assets.