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2023-05-04

  • Microsoft is making changes to force the use of Edge browser for certain links in Teams and Outlook, which is angering IT admins.
  • The change means that users will automatically open links in Edge browser instead of their default one.
  • IT admins must notify their users of the upcoming change and adapt the policy accordingly.

Industry Reactions

  • Microsoft is criticized for their history of anti-competitive behavior and "dark patterns" in promoting Edge.
  • However, some commenters praise Microsoft's open-source tools, such as C# and .NET ecosystem, and tools like VS Code, while also discussing the limitations of browser engines and platform control by tech companies.

It's A(door)able

  • This website is best experienced by visiting the website directly.
  • Please visit the website to read the article.

Industry Reactions

  • Suggestions made by players include adding a one-way door or crumbling floor to incentivize moving forward
  • Some commenters engage in humorous discussion around metaphorical programming and share similar websites for handcrafted experiences

Bank Failures Visualized

  • The article discusses a visual representation of bank failures occurring between 1947 and 2023.
  • The visualization shows the relationship between failed banks' size and their respective failure date.
  • The data is adjusted for inflation to provide a better understanding of the scale of the banks' size.

Industry Reactions

  • The accuracy and visual representation of observablehq.com's chart of bank failures are questioned, with concerns over the exclusion of non-FDIC bank failures
  • FTX has recovered over $1bn worth of assets, primarily made up of cryptocurrencies, using blockchain technology, but concerns remain over the reported valuation of $7.3bn
  • The discussion among commenters focuses on the frequency of bank failures in the US and the size and business models of banks, with some advocating for smaller, local banks and others for larger, diversified portfolios
  • The article notes the impressive data visualization work of Mike Bostock but highlights shortcomings in the use of circles as a representation of data
  • Some commenters provide data and insights into the subject, and the conversation touches on various subjects such as financial transparency and fraudulent activities in the banking and cryptocurrency industries.

Replit's new Code LLM: Open Source, 77% smaller than Codex, trained in 1 week

  • Replit has open-sourced their new code LLM, which is more efficient than OpenAI's Codex and trained in just one week.
  • Replit's Head of AI, Reza Shabani, talks about their data platform, Ghostwriter, and the team's plans for the future, including new hires and scaling laws.
  • The conversation centers around Ghostwriter, an AI-based code completion tool, and its unique abilities beyond completing code, as well as the social impact of automation and the importance of allowing AI to help people instead of replacing them.

Industry Reactions

  • The Replit-Code model is similar to OpenAI's Codex and GitHub's Copilot, but is open-source and can be trained on a user's specific codebase, making it a more popular approach to improving AI models for specific tasks.
  • OpenAI's Copilot generates incomplete or unrelated code sometimes, but the ability to fine-tune it to specific libraries for open-source support has been suggested.

I want to talk about WebGPU

  • WebGPU is a new low-level graphics API that has been released for creating 2D and 3D graphics in web browsers and other software.
  • It has the potential to replace Vulkan and OpenGL as the standard for drawing in any type of software or programming language.
  • While it has some limitations and complexities in initialization and pipeline construction, WebGPU offers promise for easier cross-platform GPU programming.

Industry Reactions

  • WebGPU also has potential use cases in physics simulations and scientific workloads, and supports declarative programming models.
  • Web developers discuss the potential benefits of using WebGPU, such as better access to graphics processing units, but also raise concerns about its potential for malicious activities.

Passkeys: The beginning of the end of the password

  • Google has started rolling out passkeys, a new way to sign in to apps and websites that is both easier to use and more secure than passwords.
  • Passkeys let users sign in the same way they unlock their devices, with options including fingerprints, face scans, or screen lock PINs.
  • Unlike passwords, passkeys are resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure.

Industry Reactions

  • Passkeys use biometrics to unlock the phone and are stored on users' devices, synced across all devices signed into the same Google account.
  • While there are open-source and third-party options for using passkeys, storing private keys on cloud-based services raises privacy concerns, and losing access to all devices could result in loss of access to data.

OpenLLaMA: An Open Reproduction of LLaMA

  • OpenLLaMA is a new open-source language model released by Berkeley AI Research that reproduces Meta AI's LLaMA language model.
  • The public preview of the 7B OpenLLaMA model has been trained on 200 billion tokens and is now available with PyTorch and Jax weights on Huggingface Hub.
  • OpenLLaMA has been evaluated on a range of tasks and exhibits comparable performance to the original LLaMA and GPT-J models.

Industry Reactions

  • Some users have encountered errors on Intel-based MacOS systems when using it with llama.cpp and 8GB RAM.
  • The model and datasets are fully replicable under Apache License 2.0, providing transparency in research and preventing monopolization by large tech companies.

The Framework Laptop 13

  • The Framework Laptop 13 is a new laptop powered by AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series Processors, featuring incredibly impressive CPU and GPU performance.
  • The Ryzen 5 7640U and Ryzen 7 7840U processors have 6 and 8 cores respectively, making them very powerful.
  • The laptop can handle modern games directly, with the graphics being some of the best in the market.

Industry Reactions

  • Discussions on different processor architectures, disappointments with keyboard layout and lack of touchscreen support, and concerns about power consumption and availability.
  • Insights into user preferences for touchscreens and keyboard layouts, with no specific new or exciting information in the post.

A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

  • This post provides information about a book called "A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics."
  • The book is available in physical format on Amazon and as a pay-what-you-want PDF e-book.
  • Readers can access code from each chapter on GitHub and participate in discussions about exercises with other readers.

Industry Reactions

  • Debate over the use of formal language and mathematical notation in programming, with arguments for and against mathematical language.
  • Importance of learning mathematical language for effectively using and understanding research papers emphasized, along with recommendations for a book on math for non-mathematicians.

De-dollarization is happening at a 'stunning' pace

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Industry Reactions

  • The move away from the dollar could hurt the US economy and its foreign policy, but could also minimize financial risk and foreign economic-political influence for other countries.
  • There is a discussion on the challenges and potential consequences of de-dollarization in a multi-polar world, including the role of different world powers, modern monetary theory, and the mechanisms of deflation and inflation.