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PLASMO

The Plasmo Framework is a browser extension SDK. It has first-class TypeScript and React support, comes with various storage and messaging APIs, and handles various pain points of building browser extensions.

UNEEBEE

Uneebee is an open-source platform for creating interactive courses similar to those in Duolingo. It’s built in Elixir and Erlang.

GSPLAT.JS

gsplat.js is an easy-to-use, general-purpose, open-source 3D Gaussian Splatting library that provides functionality similar to three.js but for Gaussian Splatting.

MICROSOFT HIRES FORMER OPENAI CEO SAM ALTMAN

Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI on Friday and was hired by Microsoft late Sunday night. Satya Nadella announced that Altman, along with Greg Brockman and other OpenAI team members, will be leading an advanced AI research group within Microsoft.

FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS MAKE BAD GRAPHS

This is an opinionated essay about good and bad data visualization practices. The essay covers various types of graphs, such as pie charts, bar plots, heat maps, and more. One of the rules is that bar plots should not be used for mean separation.

HOW WE WORK ASYNCHRONOUSLY

Posthog, a fully remote company, works completely asynchronously. This post shares various tips on how Posthog does it successfully, such as valuing transparency, always sharing context, writing in public, reducing work in progress, and more. The post shares concise specifics and examples for each point.

7 BOOKS THAT CHANGED ME THE MOST AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER

7 categories of books valuable for software engineers, such as Smart Brevity for writing and A Philosophy of Software Design for software development.

TOP TECH COMPANY ENGINEERING BLOG POSTS

A comprehensive list of tech company engineering blog posts, grouped by topics including tech stack upgrades, backend scaling, and debugging stories.

WHY I TEND NOT TO USE CONTENT NEGOTIATION

Content negotiation is a feature of HTTP that allows a client to negotiate the content type of the response from a server. It is typically not the right approach to returning both JSON and HTML for most applications.

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.

SPACEX'S 2ND STARSHIP LAUNCH ON NOV. 18

SpaceX is planning its second Starship launch on Saturday. The launch was originally scheduled for Friday but it was postponed so SpaceX could replace a grid fin actuator on the launch stack. The flight will aim to send Starship's upper stage partway around Earth, with a splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. This article goes into detail about how the test will work.

WHY SQLITE DOES NOT USE GIT

SQLite uses Fossil instead of the Git version control system. Fossil is a version control system specifically designed and written to support SQLite. This article details why SQLite built Fossil. It also provides a guide on how to use Fossil.

NAVIGATING AROUND IN YOUR SHELL

Terminal is great for getting things done fast. This blog contains a guide on how to navigate through the shell quickly. It covers the basics, useful aliases, globs, how to use bookmarks, and more.

A FAILED AI GIRLFRIEND PRODUCT, AND MY LESSONS

Inspired by Stanford's Western Town paper, which used a framework combining memory, reflection, planning, and action to facilitate interactions between GPTs, this developer decided to use a similar framework to build an experience similar to what's depicted in the movie 'Her'. This blog post details the lessons the developer learned throughout the process. In the end, the project failed due to several reasons. The chatbots would just wait for users’ inputs rather than reaching out and content moderation policies crippled the bots’ functionality.

WE ARE DROWNING IN GOOGLE'S MAGNANIMITY

The idea of Objectives and Key Results seems simple - any problem can be made solvable by the careful setting of Os and KRs. However, many startups fail to implement the system. The system may work fine for a large company like Google, with its particular needs and structure, but it causes confusion for everyone else. This may be by design: OKRs may in fact be a subtle ploy to keep startups off balance.

THE LACK OF COMPENSATION IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS UNSUSTAINABLE

Companies can contribute to open source projects with money, developer time, or both.

PIPELESS

Pipeless allows developers to easily create, deploy, and run computer vision applications.

GOOGLE’S REVISED CHROME EXTENSION STANDARD LOOSENS RESTRICTIONS ON AD BLOCKERS

Google will transition to Manifest V3 with some key changes, one being improved content filtering support for the Declarative Net Request API used by ad-blocking extensions.

RETOOL STATE OF AI REPORT 2023

Retool surveyed over 1,500 tech people in a variety of industries to find out how they're actually using and building with AI.

MICROSOFT TEAMS IS ABOUT TO GO 3D WITH VR MEETINGS

Microsoft Mesh, the company's mixed reality platform, is being integrated into Teams to allow coworkers to meet together in a virtual space - VR headsets are not required.

WHAT IF MONEY EXPIRED?

A look at what money is and what would happen if currency expired.

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DEEPMIND AND YOUTUBE PARTNER ON MUSIC SYNTHESIS

DeepMind has been working on music synthesis for a number of years and now just announced a powerful new system. Interestingly, much of the boost came from a data partnership with revenue sharing. Meaning it trained on artists’ music for a better performing model while ensuring that the artists were compensated. The model will be available in a number of forms, one of which is via YouTube Shorts Studio.

META ANNOUNCES VIDEO EDITING AND CREATION MODELS

Oftentimes when you generate an output image with a generative model, it isn’t quite what you were looking for. However, editing that image with the same model is extremely challenging. Meta had a key insight that treating all generations as instructions allows editing capabilities to emerge. This, coupled with the new simplicity of the model architecture, is quite a nice step forward.

MICROSOFT LAUNCHES A DEEPFAKE CREATOR

Microsoft launched Azure AI Speech text-to-speech avatar at the Microsoft Ignite 2023 event, allowing users to create photorealistic avatars that can speak scripted text in various languages using text-to-speech technology.

SENTENCE ALIGNMENT FOR LARGE DOCUMENTS

SentAlign is a new tool for aligning sentences in large parallel documents, capable of handling thousands to tens of thousands of sentences efficiently.

IMPROVING VIDEO QUESTION ANSWERING WITH A NEW METHOD

Researchers found that Large Language Models sometimes make errors in Video Question Answering (VideoQA) by depending too much on the language and ignoring the actual video content. To solve this, researchers introduced a new approach called Flipped-VQA, which makes these models better understand the relationship between videos, questions, and answers, leading to more accurate results.

A DATASET TO UNDERSTAND STUDENT BEHAVIOR

Researchers have expanded the SCB-ST-Dataset4, which captures activities like hand-raising, reading, and writing to better understand and detect students' classroom behaviors using deep learning.

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DEEP DIVE: DEVELOPER’S GUIDE TO PRODUCTION LLMS

Building tools with language models is an emerging engineering discipline that spans high performance computing, GPU orchestration, and monitoring.

ACCELERATING SEGMENT ANYTHING WITH PURE PYTORCH

AI EXPLOITS

A collection of real-world AI/ML exploits for responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities.

MUSIC CONTROLNET

ControlNet was a novel way to give fine-grained control to image synthetics models. Now there is a somewhat analogous model for music generation that lets you control a number of features like speech and pitch.

THERE’S A MODEL FOR DEMOCRATIZING AI

OpenAI's call for proposals on implementing democratic processes in AI decision-making appears restrictive and seems to prefer handling sensitive political issues without taking responsibility, potentially limiting the scope and effectiveness of democracy in AI governance.

COPILOT IS AN INCUMBENT BUSINESS MODEL

The Copilot AI business model enhances existing workflows for efficiency without creating new markets or disrupting lower ends, but its true disruptive potential lies in reimagining workflows, a challenge that could unlock significantly larger market opportunities.

GOOGLE IS EMBEDDING INAUDIBLE WATERMARKS RIGHT INTO ITS AI GENERATED MUSIC

Google DeepMind's AI Lyria model will use SynthID to watermark audio tracks generated using its technology, making them identifiable as AI-created without affecting the listening experience, even after compression or other modifications.

GPT-4 TURBO NOTE TAKER (PRODUCT)

Let AI automate your meeting notes using GPT-4 Turbo.

YOUTUBE WILL SHOW LABELS ON VIDEOS THAT USE AI

YouTube is implementing new guidelines requiring creators to disclose the use of AI in their videos, including both AI-altered and entirely synthetic content.

BLACKROCK FILES SPOT ETHEREUM ETF APPLICATION WITH SEC

A week after its registration showed up on Delaware’s site, BlackRock has officially filed for a spot Ethereum ETF with the SEC. The trust aims to mirror Ethereum's price performance, giving investors easy exposure to the asset in their brokerage accounts. Coinbase will be the trust’s custodian. This comes as BlackRock continues to wait for approval of the Bitcoin Spot ETF it filed in June.

TETHER PLANS MAJOR EXPANSION INTO BTC MINING WITH $500M INVESTMENT

Tether, the firm behind USDT, is investing around $500 million to bring a Bitcoin mining facility online, according to incoming CEO Paolo Ardoino. The ambitious expansion includes the construction of new mining facilities in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador, aiming to work up to 1% of BTC mining's total computing power. Tether also plans to increase its direct mining operations to 120 MW by year-end, reaching up to 450 MW by 2025's end.

LIQUID DELEGATE A PREMIERE MARKETPLACE FOR TOKENIZING & TRADING ASSET UTILITY

A new platform called Liquid Delegate has been launched, providing a marketplace for tokenizing and trading asset utility. It accommodates various asset functionalities including gaming, event ticketing, airdrop access, and social media authentication. The platform introduces Delegate Market, ensuring zero counterparty risk. Users can tokenize, transfer, and trade delegate tokens while maintaining control of the spot asset. Participating projects receive a share in trading fees to incentivize their partnership.

COINBASE BOOSTS COMMERCE PRODUCT WITH 'ONCHAIN PAYMENT PROTOCOL' ON ETHEREUM, POLYGON, AND BASE

Coinbase has enhanced its Commerce product with a new open source Onchain Payment Protocol. Aimed at facilitating a better payment experience, the feature supports Ethereum, Polygon, and Base ecosystems for now. The upgrade also addresses common problems merchants and customers face such as crypto volatility. By offering automatic crypto conversion to USDC, Coinbase is making the product more user-friendly and efficient.

MEV ON SOLANA

This post provides a good overview of the MEV landscape on Solana. Present strategies include atomic arbitrage, liquidations, and NFT mints. MEV on Solana is still in the early stages compared to the EVM ecosystem, with strategies differing from those on Ethereum due to Solana's continuous block building and propagation. The growth of Solana's DeFi ecosystem could lead to more complex MEV extraction tactics and increased validation centralization, which may challenge network decentralization.

LAYER 3S IN CRYPTO: WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW THEY IMPROVE SCALABILITY

Layer 3 protocols are designed to provide advanced scalability and allow developers to create application-specific blockchains. They aim to solve issues of scalability, interoperability, and customization. Notable examples include Orbs, Arbitrum Orbit, and zkSync Hyperchains. Primarily, they work atop existing Layer 2 solutions, inheriting the security of the Layer 1 blockchain while enhancing the overall functionality and flexibility for developers.