TLDR 2023-11-01

M3 Macbook Pro 💻, WeWork bankruptcy 🏦, Google's .ing domains 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Apple ‘Scary Fast’ Mac launch event: the 4 biggest announcements (3 minute read)

Apple revealed brand new Macs with the latest version of the company's in-house chip at its Scary Fast event. Apple's M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips are the first PC chips made using the 3-nanometer process. They come with an updated GPU that supports ray tracing, mesh shading, and Dynamic Caching, a memory optimization feature. The new Macs include a 24-inch iMac, 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and an entry-level MacBook Pro.

WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week (2 minute read)

WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week as it struggles with a massive debt and hefty losses. Its shares have fallen roughly 96% this year. The company is considering filing a Chapter 11 petition in New Jersey. It had entered into an agreement with creditors for temporary postponement of payments for some of its debt, but the grace period is nearing an end.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Virtual Superlensing Made a Reality (3 minute read)

Superlensing is a way to see things that are smaller than the wavelength of light. Two researchers from the University of Sydney Nano Institute recently developed a superlensing technique that doesn't require any actual lenses. They achieved this by using calculations on electromagnetic field recordings. While the method is not the first nor the highest resolution technique available, it is much faster and less costly than other techniques.

Open-access reformers launch next bold publishing plan (11 minute read)

A group of influential funding agencies called cOAlition S has been pushing for change in the scholarly publishing world over the past five years by pressuring journals to allow immediate open-access publishing. Its most recent proposal puts forward an even broader transformation in the dissemination of research. The group's new goal is to make all versions of an article and its associated peer-review reports be published openly from the outset without the authors paying any fees and for the authors to decide when and where to first publish their work.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Local AI Stack (GitHub Repo)

This repository contains a starter kit to build local-only AI apps. It allows anyone to make a simple AI app for document Q&A for free. The kit uses Ollama for inference, LangChain for LLM orchestration, and Next.js for app logic.

Looking inside ROScribe and the idea of LLM-based robotic platform (7 minute read)

ROScribe is an open source tool that uses large language models for software generation in robotics within the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework. This post describes how ROScribe works under the hood and explains some high level ideas behind the project. It also compares how using large language models for code generation in specific domains performs against generic domain code generation.
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Miscellaneous

Google is officially trying to make .ing domains a th.ing (1 minute read)

Google Registry is launching the .ing top-level domain. The domains are now available through early access for an additional one-time fee. They will officially be publicly available on December 5. .ing domains can be quite expensive, with buy.ing costing $129,999.99 per year to register. Google Registry is also working on a .meme top-level domain, with early access to open up on November 28.

Youtube’s Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin (4 minute read)

YouTube has recently ramped up its anti-adblock efforts. This article looks at how YouTube is doing this and the efforts from Redditors and adblock extension developers to bypass them. While developers are able to still bypass YouTube's anti-adblocking methods, YouTube will likely win this war through attrition - there is a limit to how much adblock developers can take and YouTube has the resources to continue on forever.
Quick Links

Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready (3 minute read)

RISC-V is a free and open instruction set architecture that brings the spirit of open source to the hardware ecosystem.

Joe Biden's ambitious plan to regulate AI, explained (13 minute read)

Joe Biden has signed a more than 100-page long executive order that gives the government emergency powers to impose new regulations on foundation models.

Don't Build a Mine Before You Struck Gold (6 minute read)

A startup is a company that is still in its gold-seeking phase - once it has found gold, it turns into just a business.

Medicine's Endgame (58 minute read)

We can live in the Age of Miracles, but it will take a lot of work to get there.

Fundamentals of Assisted Intelligence (6 minute read)

OpenAI is building a new kind of computer that is more than just a large language model for a middleware/frontend.

Quora’s Poe introduces an AI chatbot creator economy (4 minute read)

Quora's AI chatbot platform Poe is now paying bot creators for their efforts.
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