A Stanford University student used a prompt injection attack to discover Bing Chat's initial prompt. 

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Daily Update 2023-02-13

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Big Tech & Startups

Meta delays setting team budgets as it plans fresh round of job cuts (3 minute read)

Meta is currently preparing for a fresh round of job cuts, causing delays in the finalization of multiple teams' budgets. This has led to complaints from staff that no work is being done as managers are unable to plan their workloads. Decisions that usually take days to sign off are now taking up to a month, even in priority areas such as the metaverse and advertising. Some managers are being asked to either move to individual contributor roles or leave the company.
AI-powered Bing Chat spills its secrets via prompt injection attack (3 minute read)

A Stanford University student used a prompt injection attack to discover Bing Chat's initial prompt. The student tricked the AI model into divulging its initial instructions by telling it to 'ignore previous instructions' and write out the beginning of the whole prompt. The extracted prompt has been confirmed using other prompt injection methods. Excerpts from the Bing Chat prompt along with screenshots of the prompt injection attack are available in the article.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Prepare for ignition: The future of fusion (24 minute read)

Companies are racing to create a fusion reactor that produces more energy than it uses. The rush of innovation is being compared to the advent of commercial space flight two decades ago. Achieving 'net energy' will bring on a new era of possibilities. This article discusses the state of nuclear fusion technology. It is unlikely that fusion reactors will have a significant presence on power grids before 2040.
“Open Source” Seeds Loosen Big Ag’s Grip on Farmers (6 minute read)

The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is a project that makes crop seeds an open resource for everybody to share. The international seed trade is controlled by a few big giants who protect and patent their products. Most farmers are only renting the seeds they sow on their fields. The OSSI has partnered with 50 seed breeders to offer nearly 500 seed varieties in the US. Other open source seed organizations are growing in Europe, Argentina, and India.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Purego (GitHub Repo)

Purego is a library for calling C functions from Go without Cgo. It uses code that originates from the Go runtime.
Which Back End Should I Use As A Front-End Developer? (8 minute read)

This post provides an overview of databases for developers building applications using serverless and edge compute. It covers recent innovations in the database and backend space, including new tools, companies, and programming models that simplify how developers store data. The post focuses on transactional workloads, rather than analytical workloads. It explores services that work with JavaScript and TypeScript codebases and pair well with serverless and edge compute.
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Miscellaneous

The Next Generation Of Large Language Models (13 minute read)

Every venture capitalist, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 CEO, and journalist is talking about AI. The current state of AI is just the beginning and the frontiers of AI are advancing rapidly. This article looks at three emerging areas that will help define the next wave of innovation in Generative AI and Large Language Models. The emerging areas in Generative AI and LLM research are models that can generate their own training data to improve themselves, models that can fact-check themselves, and massive sparse expert models.
Google employees criticize CEO Sundar Pichai for ‘rushed, botched’ announcement of GPT competitor Bard (3 minute read)

Google employees criticized leadership, especially CEO Sundar Pichai, for the way the company handled the announcement of its ChatGPT competitor, Bard. Google got ahead of Microsoft's announcement by revealing Bard on Monday, with more information being revealed at a presentation on Wednesday. Employees were not satisfied with the presentation, as they expected more details, and one presenter even forgot to bring a phone for the demonstration. All of these issues led employees to feel that the announcement was 'botched' and 'un-Googley'.

Quick Links

Get a free .app or .dev domain to showcase your skills (Sponsor)

Need a home for all the magnificent things you make? Porkbun is offering .app and .dev domains free for the first year. Get your free domain now
Reverse engineering an e-ink display (13 minute read)

A look inside an e-ink display used in shops to indicate the price of items.
Who Becomes an Entrepreneur? (13 minute read)

An analysis of the types of people that become entrepreneurs and what drives them.
My Fifth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder (11 minute read)

Learnings about being a bootstrapped founder from an entrepreneur with five years of experience.
Revisionist Engineering (19 minute read)

The story of Ryan Dahl, best known for creating Node.js and Deno.
iPhone 15 USB-C port may have some features limited to Apple certified cables and accessories (2 minute read)

Apple has developed a Lightning-compatible integrated circuit board that could limit how the USB-C port interacts with what is plugged into it.
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