TikTok confirms it offered =
US government a 'kill switch' (3 minute read)
TikTok offered the US government the po=
wer to shut the platform down in 2022 in an attempt to address lawmakers' d=
ata protection and national security concerns. It suggested a mechanism tha=
t would have allowed the government to suspend the platform in the US if it=
did not follow certain rules such as properly funding its data protection =
units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data.=
The US government refused to engage in serious settlement talks after 2022=
.. It ignored requests to meet for further negotiations and did not respond =
to TikTok's invitation for it to visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparen=
cy Center in Maryland.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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Radioactive drugs strike ca=
ncer with precision (15 minute read)
Radiation therapy has come a long way s=
ince X-ray therapy was born in 1896. Targeted radiopharmaceuticals helped t=
he field achieve a new level of molecular precision. These agents deliver t=
heir radioactive payloads directly at tumor sites. While there are only a h=
andful of these therapies commercially available for patients, the number i=
s poised to grow as major players in the biopharmaceutical industry start t=
o invest heavily in the technology.
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NASA indefinitely delays re=
turn of Starliner to review propulsion data (4 minute read)
NASA has adjusted the date of the Starl=
iner spacecraft's return to Earth to an unspecified time in July. The space=
craft was originally due to undock and return to Earth on June 14, but retu=
rn opportunities have been waved off as more time is needed to review the d=
ata from the vehicle's problematic flight to the International Space Statio=
n. There were five separate leaks in the helium system that pressurizes Sta=
rliner's propulsion system and five of the vehicle's 28 reaction-control sy=
stem thrusters failed as Starliner approached the station. NASA has not spe=
cified why it is not yet comfortable with releasing Starliner to fly back t=
o Earth.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Inside Netflix's bet on adv=
anced video encoding (16 minute read)
Netflix's encoding team has enabled the=
company to deliver better-looking streams over slower connections and has =
resulted in 50 percent bandwidth savings for 4K streams. It has contributed=
to industry-wide efforts, including developing the AV1 video codec and its=
eventual successor. The company is starting to move into more live streami=
ng, which will necessitate a completely different encoding pipeline than wh=
at it uses for VOD. Its encoding team will have to basically start all over=
to develop encoding that achieves the same bandwidth requirements as VOD b=
ut in a faster, real-time way.
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llama.ttf (3 minute read)
llama.ttf is a font file, large languag=
e model, and inference engine for that model. Harfbuzz, a font shaping engi=
ne, has a Wasm shaper that allows arbitrary code to be used to shape text. =
This code can be anything - so llama.ttf uses an entire LLM inference engin=
e with trained parameters bundled inside. The result is a font that can gen=
erate text locally in any Wasm-enabled Harfbuzz-based application. A video =
demonstration is available.
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AI Doesn't Kill Jobs? Tell =
That to Freelancers (8 minute read)
Freelance jobs that require basic writi=
ng, coding, or translation are disappearing across job boards. The number o=
f freelance jobs posted on online platforms in the areas in which generativ=
e AI excels has dropped by as much as 21% since the debut of ChatGPT and ot=
her generative AI models. Some companies are returning to freelancers as th=
ey are finding that AI-generated content isn't up to par - while AI-generat=
ed material may look good to those in marketing, it often reads as word sal=
ad to more knowledgeable people, especially on niche topics.
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The manager's unbearable la=
ck of endorphins (6 minute read)
Completing tasks and reaching goals fee=
ls good and makes you feel competent. Most people don't get this feeling fr=
om managing people. Management can be demoralizing due to the lack of measu=
rable progress. Contributions are often several levels, and often weeks/mon=
ths, removed from success events. This is the nature of management work.
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Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders
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