IBM to Acquire Confluent
We are excited to announce that Confluent has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by IBM. After the transaction is closed (subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals), together, IBM and Confluent will aim to provide a platform that unifies the world’s largest enterprises, unlocking data for cloud/microservices, accelerating time-to-value, and building […]
Alignment Is Capability
Here’s a claim that might actually be true: alignment is not a constraint on capable AI systems. Alignment is what capability is at sufficient depth. A model that aces benchmarks but doesn’t understand human intent is just less capable. Virtually every task we give an LLM is steeped in human values, culture, and assumptions. Miss […]
Bit flips: How cosmic rays grounded a fleet of aircraft
Radiation from space that led to more than 6,000 Airbus aircraft needing emergency computer updates could become a growing problem as ever more microchips run our lives. “We need medical equipment,” the pilot of a JetBlue passenger jet announced over the radio to air traffic control. His plane, an Airbus A320 commercial airliner had suddenly […]
Flow: Actor-based language for C++, used by FoundationDB
foundationdb/flow at main · apple/foundationdb · GitHub {{ message }} You can’t perform that action at this time.
A ‘toaster with a lens’: The story behind the first handheld digital camera
One question never stopped being asked: when would this technology be viable? “I had to come up with an answer. So I called the research labs, and I said, ‘How many pixels would I need in order to have equivalent film quality of 110 film‘, which was like the worst film format you could find.” […]
How the Brain Parses Language
Even in a world where large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots are commonplace, it can be hard to fully accept that fluent writing can come from an unthinking machine. That’s because, to many of us, finding the right words is a crucial part of thought — not the outcome of some separate process. But […]
Nango (YC W23) is hiring back-end engineers and dev-rels (remote)
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Bad Dye Job
In my post earlier today on the then-breaking news that Alan Dye has left Apple to join Meta as chief design officer (a new title at the company1), I wrote: It sounds like Dye chose to jump ship, and wasn’t squeezed out (as it seems with former AI chief John Giannandrea earlier this week). Gurman/Bloomberg […]
Show HN: Web app that lets you send email time capsules
You write something down. It’s wonderful. But you never look at it again. Your notes, ideas, insights, letters will pop up in your email, when you want it back. Get Started Resurf is focused on the mid-term. Not things you need to do today, and not things you need to do years later. So what […]
Spirograph style Lego drawing machine
This is a simple Spirograph style LEGO drawing machine, loosely based off an old drawing toy from the 1950’s called the Hoot Nanny or Magic Designer. It can create many different patterns by changing the configuration of the model. You can also draw multiple patterns on the same piece of paper to create even more complex designs. […]