TLDR 2024-07-25

With governments and auto companies racing to switch to renewables, electric vehicles will soon be the only cars - and almost all of them run on lithium batteries.

Not since the invention of the steam engine has a fuel technology promised such a globally transformative impact - and presented such an investment opportunity.

U.S. DoE and General Motors-Backed EnergyX has designed patented technology that can extract up to 300% more lithium than traditional methods. Predicted to dominate extraction in the near future, huge excitement has surrounded the launch of their most recent open-to-the-public investment round.

This century will be defined by lithium. Don't miss your chance to invest in the future.

Apple Maps is now available on the web. The web version, which is in beta, has most of the functions of the iOS version of the app. It is currently only available in English and is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad and Chrome and Edge on Windows. Apple plans to launch additional features as well as support for other languages, browsers, and platforms.

Reddit has started to block its site from appearing in search engines other than Google. The site has updated its robots.txt file to block all bots from scraping any part of it. It claims the change was being made following an increase in commercial entities scraping the site. Reddit and Google announced a new deal earlier this year allowing Google to use Reddit data to train AI models.

Australian scientists have genetically engineered black soldier flies to eat organic waste and produce ingredients for making everything from lubricants to biofuels to high-grade animal feeds. The fly larvae can eat double their body weight a day, consuming waste faster than microbes. They are harvested once they turn into pupae. The scientists have created a company to commercialize their work - they hope to have their first genetically engineered flies for use in waste facilities by the end of the year.

There are many natural and man-made threats that could knock out Earth's global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). There were numerous aviation-related incidents from the Baltic to the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea in 2024. The US Air Force has a novel backup system that uses cellphone towers to calculate a plane's position. The system is able to track planes for horizontal distances of more than a hundred kilometers at altitudes up to 23,000 feet with precision in single-digit meters.

Designers who can code are more likely to sketch out their ideas than use Figma. AI will make this workflow more accessible to those who can't code. This will cause Figma to fall into an awkward middle ground. Figma has its users because it takes most people too long to code their designs - AI can turn wireframes into frontend code, extrapolate design systems, and create visuals from screenshots and mood boards. This may cause designers to skip using tools like Figma on the road to shipping software.

This article discusses the results of the 14th annual Stack Overflow Developer Survey. This year's most popular technologies are JavaScript and PostgreSQL. Rust and Markdown are the most admired. Developers are frustrated with technical debt at work, but they don't see AI as a threat. While most developers use or plan to use AI tools, many don't trust the accuracy of the technology.

QA Wolf raised a US$36 million Series B financing round to accelerate its expansion into native mobile testing.

They have launched mobile testing, with all the same capabilities they offer for web apps: 15-minute QA cycles with fully parallel runs, PR testing, and 24-hour maintenance.

Get fast, reliable, and comprehensive regression testing for your mobile app.

📱Save a spot on the waitlist

The first-ever Olympic Esports Games will be held in 2025. The games are planned for an initial run of 12 years, with events held regularly. They will remain distinct from the Olympic Games in both financing and organization. The International Olympic Committee will now begin work on selecting a host city, venues, dates, and games for the event.

AI job interviews have grown in popularity. The industry is still small and the jobs affected are often large-scale roles where companies need to sift through thousands of applicants at once. Companies in favor of the practice claim that it is less biased as the systems assess candidates on merit without prejudice or mood affecting the decision. Critics say that bias can creep in through the training data. Some candidates are turning to AI themselves - entrepreneurs are now peddling AI services to help people answer interview questions in real time.

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Companies in banking, healthcare, and travel were likely hit the hardest.

Large language models are being commoditized to sell more servers, to inspire users to create more content, and as a way to disrupt competition with AI startups.

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch have developed a nasal spray that contains antibodies that selectively target and clear away tau tangles, abnormal clumps of tau proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease, helping to restore cognitive function.

Ballmer was good at normal business stuff, and while he was not a product visionary, his choices set Microsoft up for success.

OpenAI reportedly has 350,000 servers containing Nvidia A100 chips for inference running at near full capacity.

Mistral Large 2, which has 123 billion parameters, has been released as 'open' for non-commercial research use - those wanting to use it for commercial application will need to obtain a separate license and usage agreement from Mistral.