TLDR 2023-09-26

ChatGPT vision & audio 🤖, Spotify's AI voice cloning 🗣️, pod living in SF 🛏️

📱
Big Tech & Startups

Amazon to invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic (3 minute read)

Amazon has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, an AI startup. It will initially invest $1.25 billion with the option to increase its investment up to a total of $4 billion. Google, which is also an investor in Anthropic, plans to raise its investment by up to $5 billion over the next two years. Anthropic will use AWS as a primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads as part of the deal. It will provide AWS customers with early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning capabilities.

You can now prompt ChatGPT with pictures and voice commands (3 minute read)

OpenAI is rolling out a version of ChatGPT that allows users to prompt the AI by speaking aloud or uploading a picture. It will be available for paying customers in the next two weeks and for everyone else soon after. The image search feature will include a drawing tool to help make queries more clear. Users will be able to prompt the bot to refine answers.
🚀
Science & Futuristic Technology

Spotify using AI to clone and translate podcasters’ voices (2 minute read)

Spotify has unveiled a new AI-powered feature that translates podcasts into multiple languages using the same voices as those in the show. The feature uses OpenAI's new voice generation technology, which only needs a few seconds of audio to replicate a voice. Voice-translated episodes from select creators are now available on Spotify. A list of all the translated shows currently available can be viewed on Spotify's Voice Translation hub, which is linked to in the article.

Japan pharma startup developing world-first drug to grow new teeth (2 minute read)

A team of scientists led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup has developed a drug that stimulates the growth of new teeth. It aims to put the drug on the market by around 2030. The drug inhibits the protein that suppresses the growth of teeth. Clinical trials for the drug are expected to begin in around July 2024. A trial for children between two and six years old born without some or all permanent teeth is planned for 2025.
💻
Programming, Design & Data Science

Software Packaging Is A Nightmare (13 minute read)

The most common methods for distributing software packages and creating environments to run them in are Share Everything and Share Nothing. Share Everything is the classic model for software environments, but it can be extremely limiting. The Share Nothing approach is more likely to produce consistently working software, but it can lead to a ton of bloat. This article looks at these methods of distributing software packages and lays out an ideal build system approach.

Minum (GitHub Repo)

Minum is a minimalistic experimental web framework. It features an in-memory database with disk persistence, server-side templating, a logging and testing framework, HTML parsing, and more. Minum's compiled size is just 150 kilobytes and it only has 3,757 lines of production code, including required dependencies.
🎁
Miscellaneous

$700 a Month for a Bed-Sized ‘Pod’ in Downtown San Francisco? Techies Are Renting Them (6 minute read)

A pod is a group house structured like a pod hotel - a type of sleeping space invented in Japan designed to cater to travelers on a budget. A recent post by a tech entrepreneur went viral after he posted pictures of the pod he was living in for $700 per month in San Francisco. While the room is very small, it allows the startup founder to live close to the action. Pictures of the pod are available in the article.

The Oppenheimer of Our Age (45 minute read)

Sam Altman claims that the AI that his company is building could destroy humanity. By his own assessment, we should feel good but not great about him being our AI leader. He says that he's neither emotionally nor demographically suited for the role. This article takes a look at who Sam Altman is to give readers a better idea of the kind of person he is. According to Silicon Valley's favorite Buddhist monk, Sam Altman has a 'pure heart'.
Quick Links

The Musk Algorithm (4 minute read)

Elon Musk's algorithm involves questioning every requirement, deleting any part or process if possible, simplifying and optimizing processes, accelerating cycle times, and automating last.

Inside the race to stop a deadly viral outbreak in India (7 minute read)

Nipah is a deadly zoonotic virus that has a fatality rate in humans of between 40% and 75%.

Ditch The Bell (GitHub Repo)

Ditch The Bell is a desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds that allows users to closely configure features of the freedesktop notification specification to unlock the most customizable feed notification experience possible on Linux.

Apple executives break down AirPods’ new features (4 minute read)

The AirPods' new features include Adaptive Audio, Personalized Volume, Conversational Awareness, and Vision Pro connectivity for the AirPods Pro 2.

Reddit will start paying you real money for good posts (2 minute read)

Reddit has announced a contributor program that allows eligible users to convert Reddit gold and karma into fiat currency.

The first foldable PC era is unfolding (5 minute read)

An overview of the current foldable laptop technologies available and a look at what is yet to come.
Get the most important tech, science, & coding news in a free daily email. Read by +1,250,000 software engineers and tech workers.
Join 1,250,000 readers for