Search the archive

USE THE INDEX, LUKE

This is a free online guide to SQL performance optimization, focusing on indexing for developers by explaining index structure, efficient query writing, and common pitfalls.

NO, PRIVACY IS NOT DEAD: BEWARE THE ALL-OR-NOTHING MINDSET

A privacy advocate argues against the "privacy is dead" and "all-or-nothing" mindsets, instead encouraging incremental improvements in personal data privacy.

MY WASHING MACHINE REFRESHED MY THINKING ON SOFTWARE EFFORT ESTIMATION

After installing a washing machine in a new house, which unexpectedly took four hours instead of ten minutes due to unforeseen complications, this dev found it similar to how difficult it is to accurately estimate software development effort due to “unknown unknowns.”

Schedule a demo to learn more

META IS REPORTEDLY WORKING ON HUMANOID ROBOTS THAT HELP WITH CHORES

Meta is reportedly creating a new team within its Reality Labs hardware division that will build robot hardware. The company's long-term goal is to create the platform that the industry uses. It will make the underlying sensors, AI, and software for other companies to put inside their hardware. The core technologies that Meta has invested in and built across Reality Labs and AI are complementary to the development of the advancements needed for robotics.

REDDIT CEO SAYS PAYWALLS ARE COMING SOON

Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman said during a video Ask Me Anything Session recently that the platform is actively testing ways to make some content paid. Reddit is planning to roll out a 'paid subreddit' feature later this year. The paid content model is still a work in progress - there are many issues to work out, such as how paid subreddits will be moderated, as volunteer moderators likely won't want to watch over paid content if they aren't getting paid themselves. It may be possible for Reddit to allow creators to put certain content behind paywalls - lots of creators have their own subreddits, which allow community conversation in a way that comments on Patreon posts don't totally allow for.

MINIATURIZED CRISPR PACKS A MIGHTY GENE EDITING PUNCH

One of the biggest issues with CRISPR-Cas9 is that the system is too large, making it difficult to deliver the gene editor. Mammoth Biosciences' NanoCas is a version of the CRISPR-Cas9 system that is roughly one-third the size of the original, allowing the tool to be used for gene therapy inside muscles, the brain, the heart, and other tissues. The team is already exploring the system's potential for targeting brain diseases. The technology could be modified for use in epigenetic or base editing.

THE BLUE GHOST LUNAR LANDER IS NOW ORBITING THE MOON, TAKING DAZZLING PHOTOGRAPHS

NASA's Blue Ghost lander is now orbiting the Moon as it prepares to make a landing on March 2. The lander holds 10 payloads - a list is available in the article. NASA also launched a rover from a Japanese company along with Blue Ghost that will carry five payloads. The rover will land at the Atlas crater in Mare Frigoris and use its equipment to conduct food production experiments, detect radiation, conduct water electrolysis, and collect regolith.

SUNSETTING CREATE REACT APP

Create React App currently has no active maintainers and there are many existing programs that solve the same problems, so it is being deprecated. It will continue working in maintenance mode. Frameworks like Next.js, React Router, and Expo are recommended for new projects. Links to adoption guides for migrating apps from Create React App to Next.js, React Router, and Expo are available in the article.

FROM WEB DEVELOPER TO DATABASE DEVELOPER IN 10 YEARS

This article details Phil Eaton's journey from a web developer to a database developer and the decisions made along the way. Eaton was a web developer from 2014 to 2012 and a hands-on engineering manager from 2017 to 2021. He tried to start a company in 2021 but left in 2023 to be a co-founder at TigerBeetle. This experience eventually led to him becoming a database developer.

THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW ALTMAN AND MUSK WENT FROM FRIENDS TO BITTER ENEMIES

Sam Altman and Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015. Their relationship soured in 2018, and Musk left after a power struggle. The rivalry intensified when Musk launched his own AI startup, xAI, following the release of ChatGPT. Musk recently followed the Stargate unveiling by making a hostile $97.4 billion bid for the assets of the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. This article looks at Altman and Musk's rivalry through conversations with more than a dozen people familiar with their relationship over the years.

INSIDE AMAZON'S MESSY PUSH TO BRING EVERYONE BACK TO THE OFFICE

Amazon told hundreds of thousands of workers to come back to the office full-time, but it didn't have enough desks to go around. Some employees don't have any teammates in the same location, so they are fighting other employees for private rooms to make video calls. This article looks at how Amazon's policy for employees to return to the office or find somewhere else to work has turned out. The company is short on desks and parking and employees report that the initiative hasn't helped them become more collaborative.

root cause (bad code, failing APIs, etc.) Read the blog

SPACEX IS SO CLOSE TO TURNING ITS ROCKET HEADQUARTERS INTO AN ACTUAL CITY

In December, SpaceX submitted a petition to turn the coastal Texas village where the Starship factory and space port operate into an incorporated city called Starbase.

FIGURE AI IS IN TALKS TO RAISE $1.5B AT 15X ITS LAST VALUATION

Figure's founder last month said that the company has signed on a second commercial customer that sees the potential to ship 100,000 humanoid robots.

WE WERE WRONG ABOUT GPUS

Fly.io's Fly GPU Machines enabled GPUs, but the project didn't live up to expectations - developers don't want GPUs, they want working large language models.

MUSK'S XAI DISCUSSING $10 BILLION RAISE AT $75 BILLION VALUATION

Investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Valor Equity Partners are still in talks to participate in the transaction - terms of the round have yet to be finalized and could still change.

THE GREAT AI UI UNIFICATION

OpenAI will likely replace its model-picker dropdown with an input box with no options - users would simply type something and ChatGPT will figure out their intent.

META CONFIRMS ‘PROJECT WATERWORTH,' A GLOBAL SUBSEA CABLE PROJECT SPANNING 50,000 KILOMETERS

Meta has confirmed that it is working on a 50,000 kilometers-long, $10 billion+ subsea cable project to connect up the globe in the world's longest subsea cable project.

GROK 3 IS SET TO BE RELEASED ON MONDAY

xAI's Grok 3, trained with 200 million GPU-hours, introduces enhanced reasoning, self-correction, and synthetic data training. It is set to be released on Monday.

ANTHROPIC AND UK GOVERNMENT SIGN AI COLLABORATION MOU

Anthropic has partnered with the UK government to explore AI applications in public services, emphasizing responsible deployment, economic growth, and scientific research using its Claude model.

OPENAI REVISES CHATGPT POLICIES TO PROMOTE INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM

OpenAI has updated its AI training policies to reduce content restrictions, emphasizing neutrality, truth-seeking, and offering multiple perspectives on controversial topics.

CODEI/O: CONDENSING REASONING PATTERNS VIA CODE INPUT-OUTPUT PREDICTION

CodeI/O improves reasoning in large language models by converting code into an input-output prediction format. This enhances performance across various reasoning tasks by teaching universal reasoning principles without relying on code syntax. Further refinement through multi-turn revision boosts accuracy by verifying predictions.

PRE-TRAINING WITH CONTINUOUS CONCEPTS

CoCoMix is a pretraining framework that enhances next-token prediction by integrating continuous concepts learned from a sparse autoencoder. It improves sample efficiency, outperforming standard methods in language modeling and reasoning tasks. Additionally, it enhances interpretability by allowing direct inspection and modification of predicted concepts.

A MULTIPLE INSTANCE LEARNING FRAMEWORK

A new multiple instance learning framework for whole slide image classification introduces a dual-scale vision-language approach, using a prototype-guided patch decoder and a context-guided text decoder to enhance model performance on pathology tasks.

SELF CONTAINED FSDP IMPLEMENTATION (GITHUB FILE)

A single 500 line implementation of data parallel that gets 48MFU.

90% FASTER B200 TRAINING

Together AI shares their great work improving training kernels. They use TorchTitan as a testing ground and find huge improvements by targeting the architecture.

A ZERO-SHOT GRAPH ANOMALY DETECTION MODEL

A new graph foundation model, AnomalyGFM, improves zero- and few-shot anomaly detection by learning graph-agnostic representations, enabling better generalization across diverse datasets.

TRADING WITH LLMS

Researchers integrate reinforcement learning and large language models to enhance risk-sensitive trading strategies, extending CPPO with LLM-generated risk assessments and trading recommendations, tested on Nasdaq-100 financial data.

GOOGLE AND IRELAND CELEBRATE INSIGHT AI SCHOLARSHIP

Google hosts Irish officials to celebrate the Insight AI Scholarship, supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds in advancing AI and digital skills.

BOLT.NEW INTRODUCES AI APP GENERATION FOR IOS AND ANDROID (25 MINUTE VIDEO)

StackBlitz, better known for its AI tool Bolt.new, released an AI mobile app developer in partnership with Expo. Users can describe their app idea in natural language, and Bolt's AI will generate code for full-stack iOS and Android apps in real-time.

DEEPSEEK TOOL PROMPTS (GITHUB PR)

DeepSeek doesn't use system prompts, but they do use search and other prompts.

ANTHROPIC CALLS FOR URGENCY IN AI GOVERNANCE

At the Paris AI Action Summit, Anthropic emphasized the need for democratic nations to lead AI development, mitigate security risks, and manage economic disruptions caused by advanced AI models.

OPENAI'S OPERATOR AGENT HELPED ME MOVE, BUT I HAD TO HELP IT, TOO

OpenAI's Operator is a promising AI agent that can automate online tasks but currently requires significant human assistance.

JAVIER MILEI BACKTRACKS ON $4.4B MEMECOIN AFTER 'INSIDERS' POCKET $87M

In a now-deleted tweet, president of Argentina Javier Milei endorsed the LIBRA memecoin, a private project dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy. The token reached a $4.4 billion market cap before crashing 95%. Onchain data analysis revealed alleged insider trading activity through manipulated liquidity pools and block 0 purchases, with “insiders” reportedly extracting $87 million as retail investors poured $1.1 billion into the token through nearly 75,000 buy orders. The incident's fallout caused a contagion effect in the broader memecoin market, with the TRUMP token falling by $500 million within 30 minutes of Libra's collapse.

ABU DHABI'S SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND DISCLOSES $463M BITCOIN ETF HOLDINGS

Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund has disclosed $436 million in Bitcoin ETF holdings, highlighting a global trend of institutional investment in cryptocurrency. This move aligns with other nations, like Norway and Singapore, embracing Bitcoin ETFs, while speculation grows about the U.S. following suit under President Trump's pro-crypto stance.

PUMP.FUN DOUBLES DOWN ON MEMECOIN CRAZE BY STARTING MOBILE APP AS NEW TOKEN LAUNCH HITS RECORD

Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun has announced a new mobile app allowing users to create Solana-based tokens easier than ever, despite facing a recent class-action lawsuit over securities law violations. CoinGecko COO Bobby Ong reports that there were 600,000 token launches in January, a 12-fold increase from the previous year, and attributes this surge to platforms like Pump.fun. The proliferation of new tokens has raised concerns about market fragmentation, with Ong warning that the increasing dispersion of liquidity and trader attention could prevent significant price movements typical of previous market cycles.

BNB CHAIN'S $4.4M MEME LIQUIDITY SUPPORT PROGRAM

BNB Chain is launching a $4.4M Meme Liquidity Support Program to boost top-performing memecoins on BSC by adding permanent liquidity to their pools. With daily and weekly rewards based on market cap, price increase, and trading volume, this initiative aims to strengthen the memecoin ecosystem and drive sustained growth.

EVALUATING A TOKEN SALE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE

This guide to evaluating token sales breaks down the assessment into four areas: product analysis, team expertise, tokenomics, and community metrics. The methodology assigns scores from 0-5 to each criteria, and uses Kinto's upcoming launch as an example. According to the framework, projects below 3.5 warrant cautious investment, while scores above 4.0 indicate strong potential. Only 30% of January's token sales achieved positive ROI.

REASONS TO HAVE HIGHER L1 GAS LIMITS EVEN IN AN L2-HEAVY ETHEREUM

This article explores why increasing Ethereum's L1 gas limits remains valuable, even in a rollup-centric future. It highlights key benefits like improved censorship resistance, cheaper cross-L2 transfers, mass exit security, and efficient keystore operations, suggesting that a 10x L1 scaling would enhance Ethereum's overall usability and resilience.

LIMITATIONS OF SCALING BLOCKCHAINS AND WHICH VMS ARE THEORETICALLY THE FASTEST

The Sonic (formerly Fantom) team discovered that database optimization yielded an 800% performance increase, while parallel transaction execution only provided a 30% improvement even under perfect theoretical conditions. The findings challenge common assumptions about blockchain scaling, revealing that single high-throughput servers (like Solana and Megaeth) can achieve superior performance compared to multi-server consensus systems. Sonic deliberately optimizes for mesh networks to facilitate intercommunicating programs, and the research concludes by suggesting that traditional performance assumptions about blockchain scaling methods may need reassessment.

A VISUAL GUIDE TO SEQUENCING MECHANISMS

This article breaks down the different sequencing mechanisms in blockchain, explaining how transactions are ordered and how value accrues to different actors. It explores traditional, centralized, and application-specific sequencing models, highlighting the growing trend toward app-specific solutions.

HOW DOES SPOT BTC TRADING ON HYPERLIQUID WORK EXACTLY AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Hyperliquid enables spot BTC trading on-chain by issuing UBTC, a tokenized Bitcoin representation, which can be withdrawn using a guardian-secured verification system that executes a 1:1 peg with BTC reserves.

MEMECOINS VS. CASINO ROULETTE

A comparison of expected value (EV) after multiple rounds showed that casino roulette has a higher "return-to-player" (97.3%) than flipping memecoins (94.5%), which only gets worse when MEV sandwiching (89.5%) and insider costs (84.5%) are factored into the equation.

MEMCOINS AND US SPENDING HABITS

A study found that every $1 spent on gambling reduces long-term investments by $0.99, hitting poorer households hardest.

JUPITER ON $LIBRA

Jupiter addressed concerns about its involvement in the $LIBRA launch, clarifying that while some team members were aware of an upcoming Argentina-related token, they had no insider access to launch details.

WHATSAPP GETS A CHAT REDESIGN

Chat themes are now available in WhatsApp, allowing users to customize their experience with Light and Dark presets or personal images. The update also includes adjustable brightness and outgoing message colors. Themes apply across chats but can be customized per chat.