OpenAI ChatGPT 🤖, Neuralink show and tell 🧠, resources for engineering management 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2022-12-01

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Big Tech & Startups

Elon Musk claims Neuralink is about ‘six months’ away from first human trial (3 minute read)

Neuralink may be implanting one of its devices into someone's head within the next six months. Elon Musk says that he plans to get the device implanted into his own head at some point. The device will be upgradeable. Neuralink has submitted most of the paperwork required for human clinical trials to the FDA. The company is now looking to fill jobs as it moves from prototype to product.

ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue (3 minute read)

ChatGPT is a model from OpenAI that interacts in a conversational way. It was trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback on Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure. The model still has some limitations, such as writing plausible-sounding but incorrect answers and being excessively verbose. A link to the free research preview is available in the article.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Fusion power is 'approaching' reality thanks to a magnetic field breakthrough (2 minute read)

Researchers at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have used a new magnetic field set up to more than triple the energy output of fusion reaction hotspots. The magnetic field traps heat within the hotspot, boosting the energy yield. While the finding makes ignition considerably more achievable, the output is still far less than required to create self-sustaining reactions.

Alzheimer's drug lecanemab hailed as momentous breakthrough (5 minute read)

Lecanemab is the first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's. It attacks the beta amyloid that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Lecanemab only has a small effect and it only works in the early stages of the disease. Despite this, leading researchers are calling the findings 'momentous'. Other therapies so far have had a 100% failure rate.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Benthos (GitHub Repo)

Benthos is a stream processor that can connect various sources and sinks in a range of brokering patterns and perform hydration, enrichments, transformations, and filters on payloads. It features a powerful mapping language and it is easy to deploy and monitor. Benthos can be extended easily through custom plugins written in Go.

Engineering management (GitHub Repo)

This repository contains books, videos, presentations, podcasts, and other resources on engineering management and tech leadership. It covers topics such as antipatterns, delegation, hiring, incident prevention and response, training, and much more.

Snyk Capture the Flag 101 Workshop | On-Demand (Sponsor)

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Miscellaneous

Disney’s new neural network can change an actor’s age with ease (3 minute read)

A new neural network created by Disney researchers can alter the visual age of actors in videos. It allows producers to make actors appear younger or older through an automated process. The technique is less costly and time-consuming than traditional methods, which involve 3D scanning and modeling or a frame-by-frame retouching of the actor's face. A video with examples of clips generated by the neural network is available in the article.

ChatGPT (GitHub Repo)

OpenAI has released ChatGPT. The model is able to remember what users said earlier in the conversation, allows users to provide follow-up corrections, and is trained to decline inappropriate requests. This Twitter thread provides examples of outputs from ChatGPT. While the model provides fast and high-quality responses, it still struggles with some tasks, such as solving mathematical problems.

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Quick Links

Make your app secure + compliant without being a security expert (Sponsor)

Pangea provides plug-and-play security via APIs — embed them in your application’s runtime code (easily). Explore them now for free!

Alleged benchmark test of Apple's unreleased 'M2 Max' chip surfaces on the web (2 minute read)

The test results indicate that the new chip may not be much of an upgrade.

Trusted Language Extensions for PostgreSQL (GitHub Repo)

Trusted Language Extensions for PostgreSQL allows developers to extend and deploy new PostgreSQL functionality with lower administrative and technical overhead.

Sony is getting into the metaverse with a new motion-tracking system (2 minute read)

Sony's Mocopi is a portable and lightweight motion capture system that can be used to control digital avatars in real time.

Spyware vendor Variston exploited Chrome, Firefox, and Windows zero-days, says Google (3 minute read)

Variston, a Barcelona-based company, exploited several zero-day vulnerabilities in browsers to plant spyware.

How We Built Fly Postgres (13 minute read)

Fly Postgres allows users to spin up a Postgres database or a whole cluster with just a couple of commands.

DoorDash lays off 1,250 employees (1 minute read)

DoorDash is laying off 1,250 corporate workers as part of a continued cost-cutting effort.

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OpenAI ChatGPT 🤖, Neuralink show and tell 🧠, resources for engineering management 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2022-12-01

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Apple Apps of the Year 📱, SpaceX's moon mission 🚀, AWS re:Invent announcements 👨‍💻

Tesla Model 3 redesign 🚗, new GPT-3 released 🤖, lessons from being laid off 👨‍💻

20K iPhone workers resign 📱, multicolor Twitter checkmarks 🐦, current state of job hunting 👨‍💻

Tesla self-driving launches 🚗, effective obesity drug 💊, mastering the command line 👨‍💻

Google's AI coding moonshot 🤖, iPhone factory riots 📱, hacking a Fastly subdomain 👨‍💻

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