Google's account purge 🗑️, Meta's open coding AI 🤖, taste testing synthetic salmon 🍣

Sign Up|Jobs|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2023-08-21 📱 Big Tech & Startups Google’s plan to purge inactive accounts isn’t sitting well with some users (3 minute read) Google will delete user accounts that haven't signed in for more than two years starting in December. It claims the move is for security reasons, but the company is currently in cost-cutting mode. Some people have criticized Google for not making its communications more clear. The new policy doesn't apply to schools or businesses using Google accounts or paying subscribers. Meta's Next Big Open Source AI Dump Will Reportedly Be a Code-Generating Bot (2 minute read) Meta's next AI release will reportedly be a coding machine. It may be released as soon as next week. Code Llama will be open source and available for free. It will be based on Llama and suggest code to developers automatically as they type. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology I try synthetic salmon and enter the “uncanny valley” of taste (4 minute read) New School Foods is a Toronto-based startup that has been developing a salmon substitute with the same taste and texture as the real thing. The company aims to see its products enthusiastically adopted by non-vegans. New School treated several journalists to a tasting dinner in late June. This article details what the experience was like and how New School creates the plant-based substitute along with some photos. How Modernity Made Us Allergic (43 minute read) Allergies have grown worse over the last few decades. The number of allergy sufferers is likely to continue growing. There are multiple theories about the causes. The environment and the makeup of our nose, gut, and skin microbiomes have a large role in influencing the rise of allergies. This article looks at how modern living is likely at the root of the recent rise in allergies. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science TypeScript is Surprisingly OK for Compilers (14 minute read) TypeScript might actually be OK as a compiler. This post walks readers through an experiment in writing a tiny typechecker in TypeScript. TypeScript is surprisingly productive due to its great tooling and how powerful the language is at runtime and compile time. It allows developers to get fancy with types yet also be dynamic if they want to use high-order code. TypeStat (GitHub Repo) TypeStat converts JavaScript into TypeScript and modifies TypeScript types in existing code. It can add and remove types without changing runtime behavior. It can also infer types and annotate missing nulls and undefineds. 🎁 Miscellaneous Meta threatens to fire workers for return-to-office infractions in leaked memo (4 minute read) Meta told employees that repeated violations of the new three-day-a-week office attendance requirement could cause them to lose their jobs. The new rule goes into effect on September 5. Employees averaged 2.2 days a week in the office in June. Those who were hired on a remote work arrangement are allowed to stay fully remote as long as they don't come into the office more than four times every two months outside major events. New Intel GPU drivers help address one of Arc’s biggest remaining weak points (6 minute read) Intel has put a lot of work into improving its Arc drivers since they launched around a year ago. It has just released several improvements to its DirectX 11 drivers. Several games now run about 19% faster on average than they did last October. The improvements make Arc GPUs almost as performative as the GeForce RTX 3060 in DirectX 11 games, but they are more than competitive in DirectX 12 games. ⚡ Quick Links YC Library (Website) The YC Library contains videos, podcasts, and essays for startup founders. Why You (Probably) Don’t Need to Fine-tune an LLM (14 minute read) A base model is sufficient and adaptable to most use cases. Russia’s first lunar mission in decades crashes into the moon (5 minute read) Russia's Luna 25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after communication was interrupted - it had reported an emergency situation the day before as it was trying to enter a pre-landing orbit. Short session expiration does not help security (5 minute read) Session tokens are pretty secure and attacks that are prevented by short session timeouts are really rare. Amazon relies on ‘serendipity’ for office return; employees want data (11 minute read) The head of Amazon's cloud computing business told employees to think about the serendipitous things that could happen when returning to office rather than give them data to back up the decision to require workers to come back to the office, saying that such data was hard to come by. Ask vs guess culture (9 minute read) Guess culture stops working at some point - leaning into ask culture will help you get more out of situations. Want more TLDR? We also write newsletters for founders, AI, cybersecurity, crypto, and web dev! TLDR Talent is our exclusive community where we help world-class tech talent and get intros to companies of their choice, along with a number of exciting startups and tech companies curated by TLDR. We give you full control of the process, you can specify if you’re actively searching or passively interested only if something amazing comes along. 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