TLDR 2025-01-01

Apple's iPhone 16 brings parity between regular videos and slow motion in terms of image quality and dynamic range. It also introduces a new feature that allows users to adjust the quality of the audio on videos they record by moving around a few sliders in the Photos app. This article looks into how Apple designed these features. It takes a tour through Apple's labs to see how the company tests and calibrates its technology.

X is launching a platform payment system called X Money this year. The platform will have its own currency. It is unknown how it will tie into fiat currency. Elon Musk's influence means that the platform may involve crypto integration.

OpenAI presented o3 the Friday before Christmas. o3 improves on some of the most challenging benchmarks and represents substantial progress in general-domain reasoning with reinforcement learning. It potentially ranks as one of the best competitive programmers in the world. This article looks at o3, its strengths and weaknesses, how o3 impacts the AI industry, and much more.

Ocean exploration organization Deep has embarked on a multiyear quest to enable scientists to live on the seafloor at depths of up to 200 meters. It aims to develop and test a small modular habitat called Vanguard this year. The underwater shelter is capable of housing up to three divers for up to a week. It is a stepping stone to a more permanent modular habitat system called Sentinel set to launch in 2027. Deep aims to have a permanent human presence in the ocean by 2030.

The GPT-4 barrier was comprehensively broken in 2024 - some of those models can run on consumer laptops. Last year saw prices crash thanks to competition and increased efficiency, with models developing more capabilities. A lot happened in the world of large language models last year - this article provides a review of the things researchers figured out in the last twelve months.

Most people who use software have to just trust that the manufacturer is honest. There is no practical way to determine whether software really does what the manufacturer says it does, even if it is open source. While there are some technologies that have the potential to reduce the amount of trust required, there isn't any plausible way to reduce things down to the level where there aren't a number of single points of trust. This problem isn't likely to be solved anytime soon.

The US Treasury Department disclosed on Monday that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had breached its network via a third-party provider. Details of the hack remain scant, but it is known that the hackers accessed some unclassified documents. Chinese officials have denied the state's involvement in the attack. China's hacking capabilities have increased over the last decade as the country built up its talent.

The mid-range smartphone segment, which includes devices between $200 to $600, will plummet to a projected 23% in 2027 from 35% in 2021. The demand for the range has declined due to a lack of revolutionary technology upgrades and a more conservative consumption of middle class amid macro challenges. Premium devices are expected to account for 74% of industry revenues by 2027, up from 56% in 2021. The used and refurbished phone markets have grown.

A look at the weird AI benchmarks the internet has invented, like Connect 4, Minecraft, and Will Smith eating spaghetti.

A look over the major AI/ML projects that Austin Z. Henley, Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, worked on during his 25-year career.

10 big things that could happen this year according to M.G. Siegler, a writer and investor from London.

The Pace Layering framework is great for thinking about how different ecosystems and emergent forces interact.

'Glue work' is the large amount of unglamorous work that every team needs in order to be efficient.

The second season of 'Squid Game' ranked as the number one most-watched show on Netflix in 92 countries.