TLDR 2025-04-24
Tesla robotaxi launch π, Gemini usage stats π, 10 years at Figma π‘
Top 7 GenAI Security Practices (Sponsor)
Discover the 7 essential concepts, techniques, and mitigation strategies for securing your AI pipelines.
The task for security teams to secure AI pipelines is no small feat. To help, the Wiz team recently put together the GenAI Security Best Practices Cheat Sheet to provide you with best practices you can adopt to start fortifying your organization's GenAI security posture.
Inside you'll find:
- The top threats to watch out for
- 7 best practices for securing AI pipeline
- Practical examples (with screenshots) using Wiz's AI-SPM
Get the GenAI Cheat Sheet
Tesla begins βFSD Supervised' ride-hail tests with employees in Austin, Bay Area (3 minute read)
Tesla is now testing its autonomous ride-hailing service with employees in the Austin and San Francisco Bay Area. The company has completed over 1,500 trips and 15,000 miles of driving. The robotaxi service will launch in Austin in June with 10 to 20 vehicles set to launch on day one. It will use Tesla's existing portfolio of vehicles rather than the Cybercab concept the company debuted last year. Autonomous vehicle companies in California need a range of permits to operate - Tesla so far only has a permit to test autonomously with a safe driver.
Google reveals sky-high Gemini usage numbers in antitrust case (2 minute read)
Google Gemini reached 350 million monthly active users as of March 2025, with a daily traffic of 35 million users. The number of users has increased significantly since late last year, when the service had tens of millions of users and 9 million daily active users. Despite the uptick in usage, Google is still far from catching up with OpenAI. The company is likely losing money on each user - OpenAI has previously noted that it loses money even on its $200 monthly plan.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
Scientists Say They Found a New Color Humans Have Never Seen Before (4 minute read)
Researchers have figured out a way to artificially expand the natural human color gamut. Humans usually have three different types of cone cells that combine their signals to form the normal color spectrum. The 'green' cones' function overlaps completely with the 'red' and 'blue' cones, meaning there's no wavelength of light that stimulates only the 'green' cones under natural conditions. Shooting a green laser at only the 'green' cones creates a color that the brain is unfamiliar with - the researchers have named the new color 'olo'.
AI Outsmarts Virus Experts in the Lab, Raising Biohazard Fears (5 minute read)
A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for AI Safety, MIT's Medicine Lab, Brazilian university UFABC, and SecureBio claims that AI models can now outperform PhD-level virologists in problem-solving in wet labs, where scientists analyze chemicals and biological material. In the study, virologists scored an average of 22.1% in their declared area of expertise while OpenAI's o3 reached 43.8% accuracy and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro scored 37.6%. The results are concerning to some scientists as for the first time in history, virtually anyone has access to a non-judgmental virology expert that could walk them through complex lab processes to create bioweapons.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
OpenAI makes its upgraded image generator available to developers (2 minute read)
OpenAI's new and improved image generation feature is now available on its API. Developers are able to generate multiple images at a time, control generation quality/speed, and adjust moderation sensitivity. All images will be watermarked with C2PA metadata so they can be identified as AI-generated by supported platforms and apps. It costs around 2 cents to generate a low-quality square image and 19 cents for a high-quality square image.
YAGRI: You are gonna read it (2 minute read)
You shouldn't just store the minimum data required to satisfy the current product spec, you should also store data that you'll highly likely use, such as timestamps and contextual metadata. For example, instead of just deleting rows from a database, engineers should instead store data on who deleted it, how they deleted it, when, and why. While not every bit of data stored will end up serving a purpose, the extra data could end up saving you one day, which makes up for the cost of storing it. While you shouldn't log just everything, people rarely complain about a table having too many timestamps.
10 things I learned from 10 years at Figma (15 minute read)
Claire Butler joined Figma in 2015 as the first marketer and business hire. Since then, the company has grown from nine people coding quietly in a small office attached to a rental its CEO shared with its co-founder to 1,400 employees and millions of users. Butler just left the company - this post contains a succinct list of lessons that Butler learned over the decade.
YouTube turns 20 and is on track to be the biggest media company by revenue (6 minute read)
Twenty years ago, Jawed Karim uploaded a 19-second clip to his new platform YouTube, sparking a new era in online video. Founded by Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley, the service was sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. It has since evolved into a global media juggernaut worth up to $550 billion. YouTube is set to become the biggest media company by revenue this year. A key challenge for YouTube will be the possible remedies the Department of Justice will seek in Google's antitrust case.
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