Microsoft's Copilot key 💻, DeepMind's robot constitution 🤖, terminal smooth scrolling 👨‍💻

Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety of new PCs and laptops 

TLDR

TLDR 2024-01-05

📱

Big Tech & Startups

Microsoft’s new Copilot key is the first big change to Windows keyboards in 30 years (3 minute read)

Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety of new PCs and laptops. The button will provide quick access to Microsoft's AI-powered Windows Copilot experience. It is the first big change to the Windows PC keyboard layout in nearly three decades. The new Copilot key will replace the menu (or application) key. If Windows Copilot isn't available in the user's country, the button will launch Windows Search instead. It is unclear whether Microsoft plans to allow users to use the key in combination with other keys.
Google appears to be working on an ‘advanced’ version of Bard that you have to pay for (2 minute read)

Bard Advanced is an upgraded version of Bard that may soon be available through a paid subscription to Google One. It appears to be powered by Gemini Ultra, an upgrade over the current version of Bard which runs the mid-tier Gemini Pro. There may be a feature that allows users to create custom bots, but it is unclear whether users will be able to share these bots. It is unknown when or if the feature will become official.
🚀

Science & Futuristic Technology

Google wrote a ‘Robot Constitution’ to make sure its new AI droids won’t kill us (3 minute read)

The DeepMind robotics team has revealed three new advances that will help robots make faster, better, and safer decisions in the wild. One involves a system for gathering training data with a set of safety-focused prompts instructing the model to avoid choosing tasks that involve humans, animals, sharp objects, and electrical appliances. The others are a neural network architecture designed to make the existing Robotic Transformer RT-2 more accurate and faster and RT-Trajectory, which adds 2D outlines to help robots better perform specific physical tasks.
Elon Musk: SpaceX needs to build Starships as often as Boeing builds 737s (5 minute read)

Elon Musk recently made a post on X saying that SpaceX might need to make up to 300 spaceships a year to achieve Mars colonization. Establishing a settlement on Mars will require rocket travel to be nearly as routine as air travel. While SpaceX will be able to reuse Starship and its Super Heavy boosters, the parts that travel into orbit won't be able to be reused as often. Ships often have to orbit the planet several times before they line up with pickup sites, so they might only be able to be used once a day.
💻

Programming, Design & Data Science

Terminal smooth scrolling (5 minute read)

Terminal usually draws lines of text at fixed intervals. When scrolling, the sudden jumps are incompatible with how eyes track motion, making it a blurry mess that's hard to read. This blog post discusses how to implement smooth scrolling in Terminal. While smooth scrolling uses a lot more resources, it makes it possible to easily skim text as it scrolls by. A video demonstrating the difference between normal scrolling and smooth scrolling in Terminal is available in the post.
mise-en-place (Website)

mise-en-place manages dev tools like Node, Python, CMake, Terraform, and more. It manages environment variables for different project directories and tasks used to build and test projects. It can also work as a task runner that can replace make or npm scripts.
🎁

Miscellaneous

Amazon Captured 29% of Online Orders Before Christmas (2 minute read)

Amazon's global order volume in the final two weeks before Christmas was up 21% from the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. The company's speedy delivery is a key competitive advantage. 70% of Prime orders in the US arrive within two days, with almost a quarter being delivered within a day. Amazon plans to double its number of same-day delivery facilities in the coming years.
OpenAI’s app store for GPTs will launch next week (3 minute read)

OpenAI's GPT Store will feature custom apps based on its text-generating AI models. Developers will have to review OpenAI's updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines as well as verify their user profiles before they will be eligible for listing in the store. Making a bot doesn't require any coding experience - developers can just type the capabilities they want their bots to offer in plain language and a GPT-building tool will attempt to make it. Bots can be as simple or complex as a developer wishes. It is unclear whether the GPT Store will launch with a revenue-sharing scheme.

Quick Links

OpenAI’s news publisher deals reportedly top out at $5 million a year (2 minute read)

OpenAI offers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license copyrighted news articles to train its AI models.
The Random Transformer (44 minute read)

This blog post provides an end-to-end example of the math within a transformer model with lots of simplification and reduced dimensions.
Nvidia Super refresh confirmed for CES 2024 — Gigabyte teases GeForce RTX 40-series Super GPUs (2 minute read)

It is likely that Gigabyte's Aorus Turkey graphics board will essentially confirm Nvidia's RTX 40 Super launch.
Tesla adds Powerwall, solar, and charger to its API for devs (2 minute read)

The release is aimed at increasing the value of Tesla's distributed energy assets and growing the deployment of its energy storage products.
When "Everything" Becomes Too Much: The npm Package Chaos of 2024 (5 minute read)

An npm package called 'everything' released in the new year that depended on every other public npm package, creating millions of transitive dependencies, caused storage space to run out and system resource exhaustion for anyone that installed it.
The Pulse: Will US companies hire fewer engineers due to Section 174? (18 minute read)

Section 176 of the US tax law made it so all costs related to R&D cannot be expensed, making bootstrapped software businesses completely unsustainable.

Want the best of TLDR? 🏆

Refer a friend to TLDR using the referral link below, and we will send you the TLDR Hall of Fame, our 50 best stories of all time!

Your Referral Link - https://tldr.tech/tech?ref=1239101

Want more TLDR?

We also write newsletters for founders, AI, information security, design, marketing, crypto, and web dev!

We help cutting edge companies hire world class technical talent through our job listings. If you're hiring software engineers, AI/ML engineers, product managers, designers or other tech talent, click here to learn more.
If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us.

If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email!

Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni and Stephen Flanders

If you don't want to receive future editions of TLDR, please click here to unsubscribe.

 

Older messages

Apple Vision Pro Safari 🌎, open source mobile robots 🤖, predictions for 2024

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Recently leaked videos show how much multitasking users can expect to accomplish with Apple's Safari web browser inside of visionOS Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With Drata TLDR

SpaceX launches cell satellites 🛰️, impending Bitcoin ETF 🪙, LLMs and programming in 2024 👨‍💻

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

SpaceX has launched its first batch of six Starlink satellites designed to enable direct-to-cell internet service from space Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2024-01-03 📱 Big Tech &

Amazon's silent layoffs 💼, AI learnings in 2023 🤖, GitHub Copilot Chat launches 👨‍💻

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Many teams at Amazon have been in a hiring freeze for over a year and the employees that were left after the layoffs in 2023 are now leaving Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2024-01-02 📱

Inside Apple's gaming push 💻, Vitalik's Ethereum manifesto 🪙, impactful prompts across domains 🤖

Friday, December 29, 2023

Apple's hardware can finally go toe to toe with some of the best PCs Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2023-12-29 📱 Big Tech & Startups Inside Apple's Massive Push to Transform

Tesla's Model Y upgrade 🚗, gen AI short films 🤖, new age of CSS 👨‍💻

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Tesla is already preparing to produce the 2024 refresh Model Y at Gigafactory Shanghai Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2023-12-28 📱 Big Tech & Startups Tesla Giga Shanghai to release

You Might Also Like

Import AI 395: AI and energy demand; distributed training via DeMo; and Phi-4

Monday, December 23, 2024

What might fighting for freedom in an AI age look like? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

LockBit Ransomware Developer Charged for Billions in Global Damages

Monday, December 23, 2024

THN Daily Updates Newsletter cover The Data Science Handbook, 2nd Edition ($60.00 Value) FREE for a Limited Time Practical, accessible guide to becoming a data scientist, updated to include the latest

Re: How to know if your data has been exposed

Monday, December 23, 2024

Imagine getting an instant notification if your SSN, credit card, or password has been exposed on the dark web — so you can take action immediately. Surfshark Alert does just that. It helps you stay

Christmas On Repeat 🎅

Monday, December 23, 2024

Christmas nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Here's a version for your browser. Hunting for the end of the long tail • December 22, 2024 Hey all, Ernie here with a refresh of a piece from our very

SRE Weekly Issue #456

Monday, December 23, 2024

View on sreweekly.com A message from our sponsor, FireHydrant: On-call during the holidays? Spend more time taking in some R&R and less getting paged. Let alerts make their rounds fairly with our

The Power of an Annual Review & Grammarly acquires Coda

Sunday, December 22, 2024

I am looking for my next role, Zen Browser got a fresh new look, Flipboard introduces Surf, Campsite shuts down, and a lot more in this week's issue of Creativerly. Creativerly The Power of an

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1645 [Hard]

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Daily Coding Problem Good morning! Here's your coding interview problem for today. This problem was asked by Facebook. Implement regular expression matching with the following special characters: .

PD#606 How concurrecy works: A visual guide

Sunday, December 22, 2024

A programmer had a problem. "I'll solve it with threads!". has Now problems. two he ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌

RD#486 (React) Things I Regret Not Knowing Earlier

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Keep coding, stay curious, and remember—you've got this ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

🎶 GIFs Are Neat, but I Want Clips With Sound — Your Own Linux Desktop in the Cloud

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Also: 9 Games That Were Truly Ahead of Their Time, and More! How-To Geek Logo December 22, 2024 Did You Know Dextrose is another name for glucose, so if you see it listed prominently on the ingredients