Apple's top apps of 2023 📱, ChatGPT's laziness 🤖, Blue Origin relaunch 🚀

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Big Tech & Startups

Apple spotlights the top apps and games of 2023 on the App Store (2 minute read)

Apple's top apps and games of 2023 features year-end charts localized for users in more than 35 countries and regions. It is currently available in the App Store's Today tab. The list includes the top free and paid apps and games and the best apps and games of the year selected by the App Store Editorial team. A list of the year's most downloaded apps and games in the US is available in the article.

As ChatGPT gets “lazy,” people test “winter break hypothesis” as the cause (4 minute read)

Some ChatGPT users started to notice that the AI was becoming more lazy in late November. The chatbot was reportedly refusing to do some tasks or returning simplified results. OpenAI has admitted that it's an issue, but it hasn't identified why. People usually slow down in December and put bigger projects off until the new year - the 'winter break hypothesis' says that ChatGPT has learned this and may be getting lazier because of it. The theory has yet to be proven. OpenAI is working on a potential fix.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Bezos’ Blue Origin aiming to make long-awaited return to launch next week (2 minute read)

Blue Origin has announced that it will fly an uncrewed mission as early as December 18. The mission will carry 33 science and research payloads, as well as other cargo. New Shepard has been grounded since September 2022 as it has been implementing changes recommended by the FAA. Blue Origin's license will expire in August 2025 and is limited to launches from Blue Origin's West Texas facilities only.

‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware (3 minute read)

Researchers have built a hybrid biocomputer by combining laboratory-grown human brain tissue with conventional electronic circuits. The biocomputer can complete tasks such as voice recognition. The study confirms some key theoretical ideas that could eventually make a biological computer possible. The technology could be used to model and study neurological disorders or integrated into artificial intelligence systems.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Announcing Nuekit (3 minute read)

Nuekit is a static site generator and web application builder. It features universal hot-reloading for content, layouts, styling, and reactive islands. Nuekit provides client-side routing for both websites and single-page applications.

UniDep (GitHub Repo)

UniDep is a command line interface tool that provides unified Conda and Pip dependency management. It allows projects to manage dependencies using a single requirements.yaml file for both Conda and Pip dependencies. UniDep can install Conda Pip, and local dependencies with a single command.

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Miscellaneous

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: the post-trial interview (23 minute read)

Epic Games won its fight to break Google's control over Android apps on Monday. It was Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's idea to challenge Google in court. This article contains an interview with Sweeney where he discusses why he sued Google, what he learned, and his plans for what's next. Sweeney and Google CEO Sundar Pichai have already started discussions, but they have yet to reach a settlement.

AI, and everything else (30 minute read)

This is Ben Evans’ annual presentation about important trends in tech. It discusses how AI has taken over the tech world and its effects on the economy. The presentation covers topics like regulation, platform shifts, problems in the field, AI use cases, and more. AI enables new kinds of companies and businesses to exist - this is similar to how cars changed how society organized itself.

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Quick Links

E3 is officially dead (4 minute read)

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, has officially been canned - the industry no longer needs the event to show off their upcoming games.

chDB (GitHub Repo)

chDB is an embedded OLAP SQL Engine that has input and output support for more than 60 formats.

Google Fiber’s 20-gig service is coming to these cities for $250 a month (1 minute read)

20-gig installations will start in Q1 of 2024 - all other Google Fiber pricing will stay the same.

Cloud engineer gets 2 years for wiping ex-employer’s code repos (2 minute read)

A cloud engineer that worked for First Republic Bank caused an estimated over $220,000 in damages after being fired for connecting a USB drive containing pornography to company computers.

Expo Router v3 beta is now available (8 minute read)

Expo Router is a routing library for Universal React Native applications - the v3 beta offers a new experimental system for building server endpoints.

Bureaucratic Leverage (9 minute read)

Bureaucratic leverage is the ratio of work produced for external entities to do relative to the amount of work directly done by the bureaucracy.

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Apple's top apps of 2023 📱, ChatGPT's laziness 🤖, Blue Origin relaunch 🚀

TLDR 2023-12-13

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

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