TLDR 2025-01-29

With AI-assisted coding, it's trivial to ship a SaaS in days. But what happens when you release that app into the wild?

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Apple has been working with SpaceX and T-Mobile US to add support for the Starlink network in its latest iPhone update. T-Mobile this week enabled a small number of iPhones as part of its beta test of the Starlink service. Users in the program have access to a new toggle switch in their iPhone cellular data settings to manage the satellite feature. T-Mobile is aiming to support the vast majority of modern smartphones when the service fully launches.

China's DeepSeek is led by Liang Wenfeng, a math geek who caught the investing bug. Liang's hedge fund, High-Flyer, manages around $8 billion, making it one of China's largest quantitative funds. He has been described as a hands-on leader who sometimes sleeps in the office with colleagues as they rush to get projects done. Liang keeps a low profile and was surprised to see DeepSeek turn into a frenzy overnight. DeepSeek's sudden popularity caught the company off guard, making Liang work with his team to address the demand before taking a break for the Lunar New Year holiday in China.

Scientists used an AI model to simulate 500 million years of molecular evolution, which resulted in the code for a previously unknown glowing protein similar to those found in jellyfish and corals. While the simulated protein only exists in computer code, the model used to create it may help in the development of new medicines. The model, called ESM3, doesn't design proteins within the usual constraints of evolution - it is a problem-solver that fills in gaps of incomplete protein code. ESM3 learns fundamental biology and then creates functional proteins outside the space explored by evolution.

Boom Superconic's XB-1 demonstrator plane went supersonic in the skies over California's Mojave Desert on its 12th test flight. It cleared Mach 1 and stayed supersonic for around four minutes, reaching Mach 1.1. This is the first time a supersonic engine has come from something other than a nation-state. Boom already has customers waiting for its technology when it matures. The company is doing some work with the US Air Force, but it remains focused on making supersonic passenger travel a reality again.

Goose is an open source AI agent built to automate tasks. It can be powered by a range of large language models and features a user-friendly desktop interface and command-line interface. Goose is designed to enhance productivity and workflows by taking instructions and then doing the work for users. Its first use cases are engineering focused, but the community has been exploring other non-engineering use cases.

This thread details a $6,000 setup for running the full DeepSeek-R1 model locally. The setup requires two CPUs and 768GB of RAM across 24 RAM channels. It doesn't include a GPU, though a GPU can be added for faster generation speed. The build described in the thread can generate six to eight tokens per second, depending on the specific CPU and RAM speed purchased. A video of the build running inference is available in the thread.

The news that a Chinese startup could build artificial intelligence models as good as OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost tanked the stock market and sent Silicon Valley into a panic. DeepSeek's achievement was a testament to China's ability to innovate, especially when faced with efforts to limit the country's access to the most advanced technologies. The company's rise may be putting it in an awkward position - China has been cracking down on the tech sector in recent years as it is wary of tech companies' growing influence. Investors are hoping the government will refrain from interfering with DeepSeek.

DeepSeek's app shot to #1 on the US App Store recently and is getting around 300,000 global daily downloads. It may be the first non-GPT-based assistant to get mainstream usage in the US. Released on January 11, many users see it as a free version of OpenAI's premium models. This article looks at DeepSeek's rise, why its app is currently topping the charts, DeepSeek's business model, the company's impact on the stock market, and much more. DeepSeek's open source software means that anyone can run the technology on their own computer, so it is unlikely that the US government will be able to block it in any reasonable way.

A loose transcript of a talk by Victor Shepelev, principal engineer at Hubstaff and a Ukrainian actively serving the Armed Forces, presented at the EuRuKo conference in September 2024.

Discovery coding is when developers try to understand a problem by writing code first rather than attempting to design processes or thinking beforehand.

'Boring' technologies that have been around for a long time and battle tested are great for building apps.

Openvibe is an app that integrates multiple open social networks, including Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and Threads.

Two vulnerabilities that open up Macs, iPhones, and iPads to side channel attacks have been discovered in later generations of Apple A- and M-series chip sets.

Sorting in JavaScript requires a suitable comparator - mistakes virtually guarantee that some arrays will sort incorrectly.