Google's reimagining Assistant 🤖, Nintendo's next-gen console 🎮, Python removing GIL 👨‍💻

Sign Up|Jobs|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2023-08-01 📱 Big Tech & Startups Google Assistant to get an AI makeover (3 minute read) Google plans to overhaul its Assistant to integrate generative AI features. Work has already started on the mobile version of the product. The project will involve team reorganization and some layoffs. A copy of the email employees received regarding the change is available in the article. Nintendo’s Switch successor is already in third-party devs’ hands, report claims (2 minute read) Nintendo is planning to launch its next console in the second half of 2024. Development hardware for the console is already in some third-party developers' hands. The console will be usable in a portable mode, just like its predecessor, but it will likely go with an LCD screen to keep costs down. There is a need to keep costs down due to other internal upgrades. The device will have a cartridge slot. It is unclear whether the device will feature backward compatibility with Switch games. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Viral room-temperature superconductor claims spark excitement – and skepticism (3 minute read) A claim by a group of South Korean physicists last week may open up a new era for humankind. The team created a purportedly room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. Such a material could have huge implications for energy generation and transmission, transport, computing, and other technologies. There are now several efforts to replicate the work. This article explains the finding, why it is so significant, the controversies around the studies' publication, and the process that the papers need to go through before the findings are verified. SpaceX tested ‘mega-steel pancake’ water deluge system for Starship (2 minute read) SpaceX ran a full-pressure test for its new water deluge system for Starship on Friday. The previous system was not able to handle the orbital flight test in April and the launch pad ended up as a crater. The new system is composed of a very thick perforated steel plate and multiple huge water jets that continually cool it with water. It is unclear how much water is discharged during a full-pressure spray or whether SpaceX will have to apply for an environmental permit for disposing of industrial process wastewater. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science A GIL-less Future for Python Beckons Developers (3 minute read) The Python team has officially accepted a proposal to remove the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and offered a short and long term plan to do so. The GIL is essentially a big lock that only allows one thread to pass through the Python interpreter at a time. It prevents multi-threaded CPython programs from taking full advantage of multiprocessor systems. Removing the GIL will allow developers to work faster by exploiting multiple types of parallelism. However, the community is divided on the issue based on how they interact with Python. LLMFlows (GitHub Repo) LLMFlows is a framework for building LLM applications. It provides a set of abstractions to utilize LLMs and vector stores to build apps without hidden prompts or behind LLM calls. LLMFlows makes the development process easier by ensuring complete transparency for each component. 🎁 Miscellaneous SEC Reportedly Asked Coinbase to Halt All Trading—Except for Bitcoin (2 minute read) The SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase accuses the exchange of trading 13 cryptocurrencies identified as securities and operating as an unregistered securities exchange. It alleges that Coinbase is failing to protect its users with regulatory inspections, required record keeping, and protections against conflicts of interest. The SEC says that Coinbase’s staking program is also an unregistered security. The lawsuit did not include a formal request for companies to delist crypto assets. Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong opted to handle the matter in court as complying would have meant the end of the crypto industry in the US. Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints (20 minute read) Many Tesla drivers have reported getting much less driving range than expected. However, when booking in for a service, Tesla employees would tell them that remote diagnostics indicated their batteries were fine and their bookings were refused. Tesla had deployed a team instructed to thwart customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service as its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners with the same issue. The company had reportedly inflated its in-dash range-meter projections as a lack of range is a primary obstacle for customers looking to purchase an electric vehicle. ⚡ Quick Links New industry report reveals the State of Mobile Experience in 2023 (Sponsor) What’s frustrating mobile app users? Which trends are dominating mobile development? Learn why Mobile App Performance Monitoring is the #1 biggest challenge to mobile engineers. Read the report now The Fall of Stack Overflow, Explained (8 minute read) While it's easy to attribute Stack Overflow's drop in traffic to the rise of generative AI tools, there are many other factors at play. LLM Attacks (GitHub Repo) This repository contains the code for 'Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models', a paper that proposes a simple and effective attack method that causes aligned language models to generate objectionable behaviors. Amazon modifies ad revenue, impressions share policy for international Fire TV apps (3 minute read) International app developers who offer ad-supported streaming video services to Fire TV users will soon have to opt into Amazon's in-house ad publishing service or offer up a cut of their ad revenue. Amazon achieved its ‘fastest Prime speeds ever’ last quarter, plans to double same-day delivery sites (2 minute read) Amazon has delivered more than 1.8 billion units to US Prime members so far this year, with more than half of the orders arriving on the same or next day within the top 60 largest metro areas. China Has Switched On the Largest Wind Turbine Ever (2 minute read) China's MySE-16-260, a 16-megawatt wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 853 feet, will produce enough power for 80,000 residents and reduce CO2 by 61,729 tons. The History of Open-Source LLMs: Better Base Models (23 minute read) Open-source large language models are now used and studied everywhere, but the field of research was heavily criticized for its poor performance in the past. Want more TLDR? We also write newsletters for founders, AI, crypto, and web dev! 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