TLDR 2024-04-19

Meta's AI assistant is being integrated into search boxes within its apps. It will start appearing directly in the main Facebook feed and users can chat with it using Meta's messaging apps. The assistant is also accessible via a standalone website. It runs on Meta's new Llama 3 model, which outperforms competing models of its class on key benchmarks. The assistant integrates real-time search results from both Bing and Google and can generate images.

Google has reorganized its Android, Chrome, and Google hardware divisions, merging them under a new 'Platforms and Devices' division. The new division will be led by Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh. It will include a group from Google Research that has been working on computational photography. The unified team will help Google deliver higher-quality products and experiences for its users and partners.

Scientists have witnessed a rare phenomenon called primary endosymbiosis, where one microbial organism engulfs another and starts using it like an internal organ. The process results in the host cell providing nutrients, energy, protection, and other benefits to the symbiote, which eventually becomes an organelle. It is being observed in a species of algae which have engulfed a cyanobacterium, allowing the algae to obtain nitrogen straight from the air. The relationship between the two organisms started to evolve around 100 million years ago. Studying the process may provide a new path to incorporate nitrogen-fixing into plants to grow better crops.

The US FAA has given Boom the first-ever Special Flight Authorization to Exceed Mach. The authorization will allow the company's XB-1 prototype to break the sound barrier during its test flights. The permission designated the Black Mountain Supersonic Corridor at Edwards Air Force Base in California and part of the High Altitude Supersonic Corridor within the R-2515 airspace as a permissible area for Boom to conduct supersonic test flights. Boom still has to complete up to 20 subsonic tests before starting supersonic tests.

otel-profiling-agent is a whole-system cross-language profiler for Linux via eBPF. It implements the experiential OTel profiling signal with very low CPU and memory overhead. otel-profiling-agent features support for C/C++ executables, profiling of system libraries, mixed stack traces between runtimes, and more.

Hatchet is a distributed fault-tolerant task queue. It replaces difficult-to-manage legacy queues and pub/sub systems so that developers can design durable workloads that recover from failure and solve for problems like concurrency, fairness, and rate limiting. Hatchet can be used to distribute functions between sets of workers with minimal configuration or infrastructure. Example use cases for Hatchet include fairness for generative AI, batch processing for document indexing, workflow orchestration for multi-modal systems, and correctness for event-based processing.

Drug development is an integrated team effort with crucial players from both the biology and chemistry disciplines. However, the design, synthesis, purification, and characterization of new drugs lies squarely within the domain of chemistry. Physicians administer drugs, but they don't usually invent them. The public needs to be more aware of chemists' involvement with the drug development process so that they can better help resolve the myriad of problems confronting humankind.

China has ordered Apple to remove some of the world's most popular messaging apps from the App Store in the country. WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, Telegram, and Line have now been removed from the store. Apple said it was told to remove the apps due to national security concerns. The messaging apps were only accessible in China through virtual private networks, but they were still commonly used. China's increasing censorship will likely result in more apps being removed from app stores over the coming months.

Stability AI has laid off 20 employees a day after announcing the expansion of access to its new flagship model.

Big River Services International, an operation that sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces, is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant's competitors, using its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations, and payments services.

A 'WTF Notebook' can be a powerful tool for self-management and making changes in a team.

A review of Delta, a Nintendo console emulator on iOS - get a real controller for the best experience.

The webpage devoted to AWS' Snow family of products now directs users to the company's other data transport services.

This is a transcript of an interview with Mark Zuckerberg that covers Llama 3, open sourcing towards AGI, custom silicon, synthetic data, energy constraints on scaling, Caesar Augustus, intelligence explosion, bioweapons, $10b models, and much more.