SpaceX celebrates major pro=
gress on the third flight of Starship (7 minute read)
SpaceX's Starship rocket flew halfway a=
round the world yesterday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability=
to carry heavy payloads into low-Earth orbit. The successful launch builds=
on two previous flights last year. Thursday's flight tested Starship's pay=
load bay door and performed a precursor test of an in-orbit refueling syste=
m. Photos from the launch are available in the article.
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Who could buy TikTok? These=
are the people who could acquire the app (7 minute read)
ByteDance may have to sell TikTok in th=
e US if a proposed bill passes the Senate. Some high-profile investors, inc=
luding former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, online video platform Rumb=
le, and former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, have expressed interes=
t in acquiring the app. This article presents a list of known potential buy=
ers along with a primer on companies that have previously tried to purchase=
TikTok.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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Evo: DNA foundation modelin=
g from molecular to genome scale (9 minute read)
Evo is a long-context biological founda=
tion model capable of both prediction tasks and generative design, from mol=
ecular to whole genome scale. The model generalizes across the fundamental =
languages of biology, DNA, RNA, and proteins to generate DNA sequences usin=
g a context length of 131k tokens. It is based on StripedHyena, a deep sign=
al processing architecture designed to improve efficiency and quality over =
prevailing Transformer architecture. A playground is available where users =
can generate DNA in their browsers using Evo.
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Genetically modified cow ma=
kes milk with human insulin (5 minute read)
Researchers have engineered a cow capab=
le of producing milk that contains human insulin. This could result in an a=
lternative for insulin production. The process involves inserting human DNA=
coding for insulin into cow embryos. It could dramatically simplify the pr=
ocess and cost of producing the drug. A single cow can produce enough milk =
every day to supply thousands of type 1 diabetes patients with their daily =
insulin for an entire month. Scaling up production, ensuring the health and=
welfare of the transgenic cows, and navigating regulatory approvals are st=
ill huge challenges that lie ahead before the process can replace conventio=
nal methods of insulin production.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Falsehoods programmers beli=
eve about time zones (10 minute read)
Building a time zone conversion layer o=
n top of a datetime library sounds like an easy task, but it isn't. This ar=
ticle lists 21 misconceptions about time zones the author had before attemp=
ting to write a time zone conversion app as well as extra misconceptions fr=
om readers. These misconceptions include thinking that there are more count=
ries in the world than time zones, that every time zone has exactly one agr=
eed-upon name, or that time zones are always offset from UTC by an integer =
number of hours.
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HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 explained=
(25 minute read)
The first HTTP draft had only one metho=
d, GET - there were no headers or status codes, and the only data format av=
ailable was HTML. The protocol has evolved significantly since then. HTTP/3=
is designed for unstable connections, resulting in performance tradeoffs. =
HTTP/2 offers better performance on reliable and stable connections than HT=
TP/3. Servers can accept both HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 connections so clients can =
make the decision of which version to use.
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The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer=
Apps (11 minute read)
AI-native products and companies are gr=
owing faster and engaging users more deeply than ever before. Over the comi=
ng decade, AI will likely underpin category-defining companies. This articl=
e examines data on the most popular generative AI products to uncover patte=
rns on how consumers are using the technology. It looks at the rate of prog=
ress in the industry, emerging categories, hot niches, the mobile vs web sp=
lit, and AI as a global pursuit.
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The Curse of the Senior Sof=
tware Engineer (11 minute read)
Titles help normalize pay ranges and al=
low for progression and evaluation. People who are not job hoppers or get s=
tuck in the same company and title due to laziness, comfort, or other reaso=
ns are unfortunately prone to 'The Curse of the Senior Software Engineer'. =
This is when an engineer who has been senior for too long finds themselves =
between two worlds upon their next job search: they are too senior to be hi=
red as a senior or they have too little leadership experience to be hired i=
n a leadership position. Avoiding the curse involves either playing by corp=
orate rules or exiting the game by switching to self-employment.
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Digital forgeries are hard =
(6 minute read)
Expert witnesses on both sides of the c=
ase over whether Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto agree that much of the di=
gital evidence provided by Wright is unreliable in one way or another.
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Dan Ni &a=
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Flanders
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