Google scrambles to manuall=
y remove weird AI answers in search (3 minute read)
There are many examples on social media=
of Google's new AI Overview product saying weird stuff. Google is now raci=
ng to manually disable AI Overviews for specific searches. The company has =
been testing AI Overviews for a year now, with over a billion queries serve=
d in that time. It says that examples seen on social media have been uncomm=
on queries and that there were also examples that were doctored or unreprod=
ucible.
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Elon Musk plans xAI superco=
mputer (1 minute read)
xAI is planning to build a supercompute=
r to power the next version of its Grok AI chatbot. Elon Musk says he wants=
to get the proposed supercomputer running by the fall of 2025. xAI could b=
e partnering with Oracle for the project. When completed, the supercomputer=
will be at least four times the size of the biggest GPU clusters that exis=
t today. Musk estimates that running the Grok 3 model and beyond will requi=
re 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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SpaceX sets date for next S=
tarship flight, explains what went wrong the last time (3 minute read)
SpaceX is targeting June 5 for its next=
Starship test flight. The highly anticipated flight seeks to demonstrate t=
he Super Heavy stage's ability to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico=
.. It also aims for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry th=
rough the Earth's atmosphere before falling into the Indian Ocean. The Supe=
r Heavy first stage failed to make a soft landing in previous attempts due =
to a blockage in a filter in the Raptor engines. The Starship upper stage l=
ost the ability to control its altitude during its coast phase in space due=
to clogged valves used by its reaction control thrusters.
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'Absolute miracle' breakthr=
ough provides recipe for zero-carbon cement (3 minute read)
Old concrete can be recycled in steel-p=
rocessing furnaces to purify iron, producing 'reactivated cement' as a bypr=
oduct. The process produces completely carbon-zero cement if renewable ener=
gy is used. The resulting concrete has similar performance to the original =
material. The technique doesn't add major costs to either concrete or steel=
production and it significantly reduces CO2 emissions compared to the usua=
l methods of making both. Industrial-scale trials of the technology are set=
to begin soon.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Essays on programming I thi=
nk about a lot (13 minute read)
This page contains an index of programm=
ing essays along with summaries of what they're about. The essays cover top=
ics like approaches to software development, how to make technical decision=
s, how to succeed as an engineer at a startup, and more. Each entry in the =
list includes a bit about the lessons learned from the essay along with an =
excerpt. Commenters on the post have also linked additional essays to read.
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Why you shouldn't use AI to=
write your tests (7 minute read)
Tests are not always valuable - tests w=
ritten by AI are even less valuable because the tests are derived from the =
code and they aren't written with intent. AI may be able to write higher-le=
vel tests that focus on feature coverage. It may also be useful for writing=
AI tests to fuzz apps, translating acceptance criteria into tests, and wri=
ting code that fits tests.
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Amazon cloud boss Matt Garm=
an inherits business under pressure to keep pace in AI (13 minute read)
Matt Garman, a veteran AWS executive wh=
o most recently led sales and marketing, is now taking the helm at the clou=
d services provider. Amazon has yet to emerge as a leader in generative AI =
despite throwing billions of dollars behind Anthropic and rolling out its o=
wn large language models. Growth at AWS also decelerated to 13% in 2023, re=
flecting more conservative spending by businesses on IT and cloud services.=
While the company remains the leader in cloud infrastructure, Microsoft is=
quickly closing the gap.
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Where are the builders? (12=
minute read)
There are now fewer entrepreneurs in th=
eir 20s on a path to outlier success than there were in previous decades. T=
his could be because their attention is being taken up by things like games=
and TikTok, or they may have so little free time they no longer have origi=
nal ideas. The tech industry could be getting too good at consumer app opti=
mization, which may be producing undesirable outcomes when paired with adop=
tion at a enough age.
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Raw hours (1 minute read)
Forget about all the shortcuts if you w=
ant to get good at something - you simply have to inject a ton of raw hours=
..
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Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders
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