Elon Musk says SpaceX’s Starlink business ‘achieved breakeven cash flow’ (2 minute read)
Elon Musk announced on Thursday that SpaceX has achieved breakeven cash flow. It is unclear whether the milestone was hit on an operating basis or for a specific time period. SpaceX's valuation is now at around $150 billion. Musk is considering spinning off Starlink and making it public through an initial public offering likely after 2025.
Two former Google engineers have a product and a plan to fix robot vacuums (15 minute read)
The Matic is a fully autonomous robot vacuum that can clean floors without getting stuck on cables or toys. It processes things visually instead of spatially, making it less prone to common robot vacuum pitfalls. Mapping is all done on-device, so it doesn't require an internet connection to run. The Matic is now available for preorder with delivery planned for March next year.
In a surprising finding, light can make water evaporate without heat (7 minute read)
Researchers have been puzzled for years over the fact that water held in hydrogels evaporates at a significantly higher rate than could be explained by the amount of heat that the water was receiving. New research has concluded that under certain conditions, light can directly bring about evaporation without heat at an even more efficient rate than with heat. The phenomenon may play a role in the formation and evolution of fog and clouds, so climate models will need to consider the new factor to improve accuracy.
tailspin is a log file highlighter. It allows users to view any log file of any format without any setup or configuration. tailspin highlights numbers, dates, IP addresses, UUIDs, URLs, and more. All highlight groups are customizable. tailspin is easy to integrate with other commands.
Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven counts (3 minute read)
He faces up to 115 years in prison.
Elon Musk debuts ‘Grok’ AI bot to rival ChatGPT, others (2 minute read)
xAI has launched an AI chatbot called Grok. The chatbot is able to answer questions that other AIs might dodge. Grok is still in an early beta phase as it has only had two months of training. It is available to a select number of users. A link to the waitlist to sign up for a chance to use the bot is available in the article. Grok will be a feature for X Premium+, which costs $16 per month.
Synthetic Diamonds and Ultrapure Glass May Make The Coolest, Fastest CPUs Yet (2 minute read)
Diamond Foundry is producing synthetic diamond wafers for use with silicon microchips. Using synthetic diamond wafers allows silicon chips to run at least twice as fast as their rated speed. Intel is producing purified glass for substrates. The glass is being used to improve power efficiency and communication between chips. These types of new technologies may be the next great turn in the hardware manufacturing industry.
Habits of great software engineers (25 minute read)
While coding is a crucial part of the software development profession, it is just the tip of the iceberg - the software development role combines many different skills, mindsets, and disciplines. The difference between a developer and a great developer is the breadth and depth of their approach to delivering value. This article looks at what makes a great developer. Topics covered include focusing beyond the code, efficiency, the joy of tinkering, tech detox, and the art of approximation.
All the news from OpenAI’s first developer conference (12 minute read)
OpenAI has hosted its first-ever developer conference, almost a year after the company released ChatGPT to the public. This article provides an overview of the announcements from the event. The company plans to launch a GPT store later this month. It has introduced a copyright shield that defends customers from legal action. GPT-4 Turbo is now available. Anyone can now create custom versions of ChatGPT.
Are language models good at making predictions? (5 minute read)
This post presents the findings of a study that looks at whether GPT-4 can make good predictions. GPT-4's predictions are not well calibrated - its predicted probabilities are often over-confident. Its prediction ability varies depending on the category - for unclear reasons, GPT-4 is well-calibrated for sports questions but horrendously calibrated for personal questions. The model is better at making predictions for politics than for science or technology.
YouTube’s ad blocking crackdown is facing a new challenge: privacy laws (4 minute read)
YouTube's ad blocker detection system may be a violation of privacy in the EU as it may be classified as spyware.
10 hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job (12 minute read)
Many people enter the software engineering role because they see good pay, remote work, team building, and pizza parties - no one is telling them about the real things that software engineers actually do. This article aims to give those planning to enter the industry a dose of reality about the role. Some of the hard truths it covers include the fact that college doesn't prepare you for the job, developers rarely get greenfield projects, no one cares about clean code, and you will sometimes have to work with incompetent people.