TLDR 2024-01-31

GPT mentions šŸ¤–, Vision Pro reviews šŸŒŽ, Apple's rules for EU devs šŸ‘Øā€šŸ’»

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Big Tech & Startups

ChatGPT users can now invoke GPTs directly in chats (2 minute read)

Paid ChatGPT users can now bring third-party apps powered by OpenAI's AI models into a conversation by typing '@' and selecting a GPT from the list. The selected GPT will have a full understanding of the conversation. Different GPTs can be tagged for different use cases and needs. OpenAI plans to eventually introduce monetization for GPTs, but the company may have to get traffic up first. Moderation of GPTs is proving to be a challenge to OpenAI.

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until itā€™s not (45 minute read)

Apple's Vision Pro marketing shows people using the device all the time: at work, while doing laundry, and even when playing with the kids. The device aims to layer apps and information over the real world, augmenting reality. While the device is amazing at times, it contains a series of large tradeoffs that are impossible to ignore. The device can be heavy on users' faces, messes up users' hair, and is more cumbersome to carry around than a laptop. After several days of use, this reviewer questions whether these tradeoffs are worth it.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Researchers Approach New Speed Limit for Seminal Problem (4 minute read)

The traveling salesperson problem asks for the ideal route through a list of locations, minimizing mileage. It is notoriously difficult, but a mathematical model called linear programming is able to approximate the problem as a set of equations and find the best solution. Integer linear programming (ILP) is a variant of linear programming that optimizes for problems solving whole-number amounts. A researcher from the University of Washington has combined geometric tools to create a new, faster algorithm for solving ILP in almost the same time as a trivial binary case. It is the first major improvement to ILP solvers in nearly 40 years.

Why Farcaster Frames are important (7 minute read)

Facebook's somewhat-forgotten Open Graph Protocol has been resurrected to power Frames inside Farcaster. Farcaster is a social network protocol built on the blockchain. Frames provide an easy way to run apps while users are still inside other apps. They make it possible to have a real and universal graph of user actions across consumer apps.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Foundations (GitHub Repo)

Foundations is a modular Rust library designed to help scale programs for distributed production-grade systems. It features logging, distributed tracing, metrics, memory profiling, service configuration with documentation, and a CLI helper that takes care of configuration loading. Foundations enables engineers to concentrate on core business logic rather than the intricacies of production operation setups.

Proton (GitHub Repo)

Proton is a streaming SQL engine powered by ClickHouse. It can help developers solve streaming data processing and routing and analytics challenges and send aggregated data to downstream systems. Proton is fast, lightweight, and the best streaming SQL engine for Kafka or Redpanda. A demo video is available.
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Miscellaneous

Reading the fine print of Appleā€™s DMA rules: 25 things app developers need to know (9 minute read)

The EU's Digital Markets Act requires Apple to make changes to increase competition in the app industry. Several large companies have come out against Apple's changes, which seem to be designed to ensure Apple's ability to profit from apps continues regardless of how they're discovered and installed. This article covers details about Apple's new rules that developers should know. The article will be updated as more is uncovered from within Apple's documents.

Should 4 People Be Able to Control the Equivalent of a Nuke? (9 minute read)

Artificial General Intelligence will be an evolution of AI that can understand, learn, and apply intelligence to a wide range of problems. It will enable solutions to complex global issues, but also potentially lead to consequences as impactful and irreversible as those of nuclear war. While this is something the OpenAI board takes very seriously, the events in late November, which resulted in the previous six-person board of directors dropping down to one holdover member and two new people, are troubling. It is still unknown why the board did what they did. This article looks at the impacts of the November event and AI governance in general.
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Quick Links

Why the AI Boom is a Windfall for Tiny Anguilla (3 minute read)

Anguilla is reaping millions from .ai website registrations.

React Email 2.0 (5 minute read)

React Email 2.0 features a re-imagined preview experience, massive performance improvements, new components, deployment to Vercel, and better support for monorepos.

How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent (9 minute read)

This blog post presents a list of things anyone can do to make meaningful contributions at work and do important work.

The case forā€”and againstā€”rapid AI-driven growth (14 minute read)

Human-level AI will likely have a huge economic impact.

How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech (16 minute read)

Anyone working with software that interoperates with Big Tech platforms outside of official APIs or services is at risk of receiving a cease-and-desist letter even if they don't see what they're doing as adversarial to the platform.

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x (2 minute read)

The proposal means the new top-level domain may never be delegated in the global domain name system root.
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