Boring Company tunnel network 🚇, Google revamps AI search 🔎, patterns for LLM engineering 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Musk’s Boring Company gets OK to dig 68 miles of tunnels under Las Vegas (2 minute read)

The Las Vegas City Council voted last month to approve the Boring Company's plans to dig more tunnels under the city. The project will create 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations served by Tesla vehicles able to carry three passengers at a time. Mayor Carolyn Goldman says that while there are concerns about the plan, hotels are begging for transportation options. The Boring Company claims it has transported 1.15 million passengers since its Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened in 2021, with a peak capacity of 4,500 people per hour.

Google’s AI search is getting more video and better links (2 minute read)

Users will start seeing more multimedia in the summary box on top of their search results when using Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE). While SGE is still an experimental product, it's likely the future of Google Search. With SGE, Google is no longer just trying to find relevant links - it's trying to generate true, relevant, and helpful information. Users have reported being impressed with how useful SGE is, but complain that the service is still too slow.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scramble to Validate Superconductor Breakthrough Confirms Zero Resistance, With a Catch (5 minute read)

This article covers recent developments in the race to validate a recent claim about a major breakthrough in material physics and discusses some of the reasons why the finding still hasn't been confirmed. It's only a matter of time before LK-99's superconductivity claims are fully confirmed or denied. Independent research teams have already synthesized the material and have found some interesting properties. No team has completely confirmed the findings yet.

Meta releases open source AI audio tools, AudioCraft (3 minute read)

AudioCraft is a suite of generative AI tools from Meta for creating music and audio from text prompts. It allows content creators to generate complex audio landscapes, compose melodies, and simulate entire virtual orchestras by inputting simple text descriptions. AudioCraft uses AudioGen for audio effects and soundscapes, MusicGen for musical compositions, and a neural network-based audio compression codec. A link to Meta's blog post about AudioCraft, which contains several samples generated with the tools, is available in the article.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

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Design Patterns for LLM Systems & Products (65 minute read)

This post discusses practical patterns for integrating large language models into systems and products. It draws from academic research, industry resources, and practitioner know-how. The post looks at seven key patterns that cover a spectrum of improving performance vs reducing cost/risk and closer to the data vs closer to the user.

I'm betting on HTML (4 minute read)

HTML is more important now than ever. The language is now able to display content aesthetically without the heavy use of CSS and it allows developers to properly tag data in a machine-readable format. This article presents several examples of novel but useful HTML UI elements without any styling. Links to the MDN documentation for the elements are provided.

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Miscellaneous

Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (19 minute read)

Many founders in the early 2010s thought that working within a thriving social scene of peers would help them percolate ideas as they built their startup, but there are no famous success stories from people who tried. Working in solitude allows for serious work to be done. Being in an environment where the opinions of others matter can kill ideas quickly. This essay analyzes the working notes of several highly creative individuals to distill different approaches to developing a creative state.

Worldcoin says will allow companies, governments to use its ID system (3 minute read)

Worldcoin will let other organizations use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology. Its digital identity system can be used by companies to provide services without the need for gathering personal data. Regulators from several countries are looking into whether Worldcoin's system is safe and stable. One of Worldcoin's possible applications is for use as infrastructure for governments or other entities to provide universal basic income.

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Quick Links

Elon Musk says he’s going to talk to Tim Cook about adjusting the Apple tax (1 minute read)

Musk says he wants to change Apple's 30% tax so that it doesn't affect creator payouts.

Google is finally separating Chrome from ChromeOS for easier updates (2 minute read)

Chrome 116, which is currently in beta, contains flags that split up ChromeOS and Chrome browser by default, allowing Google to update each one independently.

DotDict (GitHub Repo)

DotDict is a Python library that makes chained attributes possible without having to explicitly define new levels.

Apple's limited in-person Vision Pro developer labs are poorly attended (1 minute read)

The sessions are currently only available in Cupertino in the US and it isn't clear whether Apple is limiting attendance.

Steve Wozniak's startup wants to 'ride share' satellite data (2 minute read)

Privateer's new initiative will match customers who want to access the same data and then share the cost for access to that data.

City of Hope scientists develop targeted chemotherapy able to kill all solid tumors in preclinical research (3 minute read)

The drug, which is undergoing Phase 1 clinical trials in humans, targets a protein that, in its mutated form, is critical in DNA replication and repair of all expanding tumors.

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Boring Company tunnel network 🚇, Google revamps AI search 🔎, patterns for LLM engineering 👨‍💻

TLDR 2023-08-03

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Meta's AI chatbots 🤖, superconductor replication efforts ⚡, state of GPUs 👨‍💻

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

iPhone 15 details 📱, DeepMind's robotics AI 🤖, Elon Musk's history with X 🏦

iPhone Action Button 📱, StackOverflow's AI 🤖, inside Twitter 🐦

SpaceX launching heaviest satellite 🛰️, Meta VR loses $7B 💰, WordPress in the browser 👨‍💻

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