Stability AI has released a suite of open-source large language models. 

TLDR

Together With LinearB

TLDR 2023-04-20

Workshop Series for Engineering Executives by LinearB (Sponsor)

Benchmark > Automate > Improve: a 3-part workshop series for engineering leaders that focuses on how elite engineering teams are increasing their efficiency in today’s down market. 

This formula for scaling dev efficiency results in an average 47% decrease in cycle time.

How does it work? We’ll show you how to benchmark your metrics against the industry, apply automation that removes bottlenecks, and gain holistic visibility into your resource allocation.

Join us for one or all three workshops in this upcoming summer series from LinearB.

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Big Tech & Startups

Stability AI announces new open-source large language model (2 minute read)

Stability AI has released a suite of open-source large language models. StableLM is designed to generate text and code. It is trained on a range of sources that includes Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and PubMed. A link to a demo of StableLM is available in the article.
SpaceX readies for another attempt to launch Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built (3 minute read)

SpaceX may attempt another test flight of Starship as early as today during an hour-long launch window that opens up at 9:28 am ET. Starship is already in position for liftoff. The livestream will start 45 minutes before the launch. SpaceX's first attempt to launch Starship was halted due to a problem with a valve that created pressurization issues.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

A Peter Thiel-Backed Startup City Wants to Be Africa’s Delaware (14 minute read)

Itana is an aspiring tech hub that aims to host Nigeria's internet workers and help nurture a new generation of tech unicorns. The city's investors include Peter Thiel, the Charter Cities Institute, and Binance. While Nigerian companies pulled in close to $1 billion in VC funding in 2022, many startups still struggle with a lack of basic infrastructure and an ongoing brain drain of educated individuals leaving the country. The project's goal is to make investors feel more comfortable investing in Africa and to allow African tech companies to scale globally.
Building telescopes on the Moon is becoming an achievable goal (7 minute read)

Dozens of missions are set to visit the Moon by the end of this decade. These missions will benefit many fields of science. The Moon's dark side is the only location in the whole solar system that permanently faces away from the Earth, making it ideally suited for radio astronomy. A telescope on the Moon would be free from interference and be able to probe the structure of the early Universe.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

griptape (GitHub Repo)

griptape is a modular Python framework for LLM workflows, tools, memory, and data. It can be used to build sequential LLM pipelines and sprawling DAG workflows, augment LLMs with chain of thought capabilities and external tools, and add memory to AI pipelines.
Introducing npm package provenance (10 minute read)

Developers building npm projects on GitHub Actions can now publish provenance alongside their packages. The --provenance flag gives consumers a verifiable way to link packages back to their source repository and the specific build instructions used to publish it. There are a growing number of instances where attackers attempt to inject malicious code into projects by directly compromising popular dependencies. Provenance allows developers to ensure the integrity of their software supply chain.
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Miscellaneous

The Complete Beginners Guide To Autonomous Agents (35 minute read)

Autonomous Agents are AIs that can create their own tasks based on an objective, complete them, and continue to create new tasks for themselves to complete until the objective is met. The topic of Autonomous Agents is the fastest-growing trend amongst AI developers. This article looks at what Autonomous Agents are, how they work, how to build them, and how to meet other people interested in Autonomous Agents. Autonomous Agents could trigger exponential growth in automation across many fields and industries once they become reliable.
The underground economy of company reviews is well and truly alive. And today we’re going to find out how it operates. (14 minute read)

Companies are paying for positive reviews on sites like Glassdoor. This article looks at the underground economy that these review sites have created. It covers how freelancers and larger online reputation management companies operate and their strategies for navigating content moderation policies. Companies have to try to control their reputations otherwise their reputations could be controlled by employees that had the worst possible experience.

Quick Links

Amazon Preps Managers for Employee Pay Questions After Stock Drops (8 minute read)

Amazon managers will stress the long-term value of stock and ownership of work during annual employee compensation reviews.
Offline Is Just Online With Extreme Latency (3 minute read)

Instead of running programs in the cloud, programs could run on local devices and send data to the cloud for durability or accessibility.
How to train your own Large Language Models (11 minute read)

This article talks about how Replit trains large language models.
Can Xi Jinping control AI without crushing it? (9 minute read)

China has proposed new rules to control generative AI, a technology that is opening up new ways for information to spread.
DINOv2: State-of-the-art computer vision models with self-supervised learning (8 minute read)

DINOV2 is a new method for training high-performance computer vision models that uses self-supervision, allowing it to learn from any collection of images.
Technique reverses heart attack damage by reprogramming scar cells (3 minute read)

Researchers have discovered a technique that transforms scar tissue into healthy tissue in mice, allowing them to reverse some of the damage caused by heart attacks.

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