Category: Tech

Source:

Summary
Dolphins are highly intelligent marine mammals known for their playful nature and strong social bonds.

Fact

🐬 Dolphins use echolocation to navigate their surroundings and find food.

🐬 They live in social groups called pods, which can consist of hundreds of individuals.

🐬 Dolphins are known for their acrobatic displays, jumping and flipping out of the water.

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Source: OpenOrca

Summary
OpenOrca is an open-source dataset and series of instruct-tuned language models. The team has completed the OpenOrca dataset, which consists of around 1 million FLANv2 augmented with GPT-4 completions and 3.5 million FLANv2 augmented with GPT-3.5 completions. They are currently performing full weights fine-tuning on the LLaMA-13b foundation and expect to release OpenOrca-LLaMA-13b in mid-July 2023.

Facts

💡 OpenOrca is an open-source dataset and series of instruct-tuned language models.

📚 The OpenOrca dataset consists of around 1 million FLANv2 augmented with GPT-4 completions and 3.5 million FLANv2 augmented with GPT-3.5 completions.

🔍 The dataset followed the submix and system prompt distribution outlined in the Orca paper, with a few exceptions.

🔁 Duplicates were removed from the dataset, resulting in 3.5 million instructions in the ChatGPT dataset.

🗓️ OpenOrca-LLaMA-13b is expected to be released in mid-July 2023.

💻 The team is seeking GPU compute sponsors for training OpenOrca on various platforms including Falcon, LLaMA, and MPT.

💰 Financial contribution and mentorship for OpenOrca is provided by chirper.ai.

🖥️ Compute sponsorship for LLaMA 7b is provided by preemo.io, and sponsorship for LLaMA-33b is provided by latitude.sh.

🙌 The team would like to thank the open-source AI/ML engineers who have worked on OpenOrca.

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Source: The Biologist Blowing Our Minds

Summary
Developmental biologist Michael Levin and his team have experimented with various organisms to show their latent abilities. They have successfully cultivated skin cells from a frog embryo to create a new organism called a “xenobot”. Slime mold, a unicellular organism, has been studied by Levin to understand its decision-making process in response to stimuli.

Fact

🐸 Xenobots are new organisms created by cultivating skin cells from a frog embryo and allowing them to reassemble into a new entity.

🦋 Butterflies retain memories from their caterpillar stage, even though their brains turn to mush during metamorphosis.

🪱 Planarians, or flatworms, can regrow both their head and tail when amputated, and they store information about their new shape as electrical patterns.

🧠 Electrical signaling is pervasive in nature and is not limited to neurons.

🍄 Slime mold, such as Physarum, behaves by changing shape and can make decisions based on a calculus of payoff and trade-offs.

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Source: Writing Python like Rust · Questions Nobody Asked..

Summary
This article discusses how to write Python code with type annotations and struct-like data classes, inspired by Rust and Go.

Facts

🔍 Type annotations in Python are similar to those in Rust.

🔍 Type checking in Python is performed by static checkers like mypy.

🔍 Dataclasses in Python simplify the creation of struct-like containers for a collection of values.

🔍 Python’s protocols are equivalent to Rust’s traits and Go’s interfaces.

🔍 Python’s approach to error handling is different from Rust’s, often leading to exceptions being allowed to bubble up.

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Source: Thousands of species of animals probably have consciousness

Summary
A rock band, The Amygdaloids, whose lead singer is Joseph LeDoux, a renowned expert on the amygdalas, performed at the 26th meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. The meeting featured the announcement of the results of an “adversarial collaboration” on the nature of consciousness and settled a bet between researchers David Chalmers and Christof Koch.

Facts

🎸 The Amygdaloids is a rock band from NYU, led by Joseph LeDoux, an expert on the amygdalas in the brain responsible for generating fear.

🔬 An “adversarial collaboration” determined the nature of consciousness, settling a bet between researchers David Chalmers and Christof Koch.

❓ Consciousness remains enigmatic, with the “hard problem” relating to subjective experiences remaining unresolved.

🧠 The experiment aimed to adjudicate between Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GWNT) in understanding consciousness.

🔌 Merely connecting nerve cells is not enough to create consciousness; the specific connections and feedback loops between cells are important factors.

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Source: Larry Ellison: Oracle Database 1,000x Faster Than AWS Aurora

Summary
Oracle chairman Larry Ellison claims that Oracle’s MySQL HeatWave database is 1,000x faster than AWS Aurora, its counterpart from Amazon Web Services. Ellison attributes this performance advantage to Oracle’s fast network and asserts that Oracle’s cloud growth is driven by its superior performance across the entire cloud stack.

Facts

⚡️ Oracle chairman Larry Ellison claims that Oracle’s MySQL HeatWave database is 1,000x faster than AWS Aurora.

💨 Ellison attributes this speed advantage to Oracle’s fast network, which allows them to build GPUs that their competitors cannot.

💻 Oracle’s cloud growth of 54% for the quarter ended May 31 is 2x, and in some cases, 3x higher than other world-class cloud vendors.

💰 Ellison argues that Oracle’s superior performance and competitive pricing makes them an attractive choice for customers.

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Source: Long Sequence Modeling with XGen: A 7B LLM Trained on 8K Input Sequence Length

Summary
Salesforce has trained a series of large language models (LLMs) named XGen-7B with up to 8K sequence length. XGen achieves comparable or better results on standard NLP benchmarks compared to other state-of-the-art LLMs. The models perform well in both text and code tasks. The training cost is $150K for 1T tokens. Codebase and model checkpoint are available.

Facts

🧠 XGen-7B achieves comparable or better results on standard NLP benchmarks compared to other LLMs.

📊 XGen-7B with 8K-seq models shows benefits over 2K- and 4K-seq models for long sequence modeling benchmarks.

🔢 XGen-7B performs equally well in text (e.g., MMLU, QA) and code (HumanEval) tasks.

💰 Training XGen-7B on 1T tokens costs $150K under Google Cloud pricing for TPU-v4.

🔗 Codebase: https://github.com/salesforce/xGen

💾 Model Checkpoint: https://huggingface.co/Salesforce/xgen-7b-8k-base

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Source: AI Unveils New Large-Scale Images in Peruvian Desert

Summary
Researchers in Japan have used AI to uncover previously unseen geoglyphs in Nazca, Peru. The deep learning model revealed four geoglyphs, including a humanoid, legs, a fish, and a bird, which were then confirmed through onsite surveys. This discovery highlights the potential of AI in accelerating archaeological discoveries.

Fact

🔍 The researchers used a deep learning model to uncover four previously unseen geoglyphs in Nazca, Peru.

🌍 The geoglyphs include a humanoid, a pair of legs, a fish, and a bird.

📚 The study confirms the deep learning model’s findings through onsite surveys.

🔭 The discovery of these new geoglyphs indicates the possibility of more undiscovered sites in the area.

💡 This discovery showcases how technology like deep learning can enhance archaeological exploration.

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Source: In a major discovery, scientists say space-time churns like a choppy sea

Summary
Multiple international teams of scientists have independently found evidence for long-theorized space-time waves, known as “gravitational wave background.” This discovery affirms an implication of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and provides insight into the physical reality of the universe.

Fact

💡Telescopes across the planet have observed signs of a “gravitational wave background” that confirms a key implication of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

💫The fabric of space and time is regularly rippled by the powerful gravitational interactions of massive objects like supermassive black holes.

🌌The gravitational wave background offers potential insights into the physical reality of our universe, although it does not directly impact everyday human existence.

🔭The discovery was made by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) team in collaboration with teams from Europe, India, Australia, and China.

⌛️Data was gathered from 68 pulsars using telescopes such as the Green Bank Telescope, the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and the now-defunct Arecibo Observatory.

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Source: The Spilhaus World Ocean Map in a Square

✨Summary
The Bermuda Triangle is a mysterious area in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where numerous aircraft and ships have disappeared under unusual circumstances.

Fact

⚓️ Ships and aircraft that have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle have vanished without leaving a trace of wreckage or debris behind.

⛵️ Christopher Columbus reported strange lights and strange compass readings while navigating through the Bermuda Triangle.

✈️ The famous story of Flight 19, a group of five US Navy bombers that disappeared in 1945, is often associated with the Bermuda Triangle.

🔍 Many theories have been proposed to explain the disappearances, including magnetic anomalies, underwater methane gas explosions, and alien abductions.

🌊 The Bermuda Triangle is also known as the “Devil’s Triangle” due to its reputation for mysteriously causing ships and planes to vanish.

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Source: National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers

Summary
National Geographic magazine, which has been struggling for vibrancy in the digital age, has laid off all of its remaining staff writers. The cutbacks come as part of a series of layoffs and ownership changes over the past few years. Article assignments will now be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors.

Fact

📌 National Geographic magazine has laid off all of its remaining staff writers as part of a series of cutbacks under owner Walt Disney Co.

📌 This is the second round of layoffs in the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015.

📌 Article assignments will be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors.

📌 The magazine will no longer be sold on newsstands in the United States starting next year.

📌 The decline of print and the rise of digital news and information have impacted National Geographic’s trajectory.

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Source: US public debt is projected to reach 181% of American economic activity in 30 years

Summary
The Congressional Budget Office warns of ever-increasing deficits and government spending in the U.S., estimating that public debt will reach a record 181% of economic activity by 2053. However, the CBO projects lower deficits after 2042 due to lower borrowing and interest rate costs. Lawmakers will face constraints in spending as healthcare and Social Security costs rise, driven by an aging population. Revenues are expected to increase after 2026, primarily from individual income tax receipts when Trump’s tax cuts expire. The report also highlights the risk of persistently high inflation affecting the government’s long-term position.

Fact

💰 Publicly held debt is projected to reach a record 181% of American economic activity by 2053.

💼 Revenues are expected to increase after 2026, primarily due to increased individual income tax receipts after the expiration of Trump’s tax cuts.

📆 The report projects that debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product will be 2 percentage points higher in 2023 than previously estimated in last year’s report.

📉 The labor force participation rate is projected to decline to 60.3% in 2053 from the current rate of 62.2%.

🏭 The report estimates a 4.7% unemployment rate for the U.S., despite the current jobless rate sitting at 3.7%.

🔒 The debt ceiling was suspended until 2025 in return for spending restrictions, work requirements for older adults receiving food aid, and approval for a natural gas line.

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Source: glycerine/zygomys: Zygo is a Lisp interpreter written in 100% Go. Central use case: dynamically compose Go struct trees in a zygo script, then invoke compiled Go functions on those trees. Makes Go ref

Summary
Zygomys is an embedded scripting language for Go that allows you to create a Domain Specific Language to drive your program with minimal effort. It is written in Go and supports modularity, type checking, and readable nested method calls.

Facts

💻 Zygomys is an embeddable scripting language for Go that has a Lisp-like syntax and an object-oriented flavor.

📝 The language provides an interpreter and a REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) for an interactive command line interface.

🔧 Zygomys plays nicely with Go programs and Go structs, using reflection to instantiate trees of Go structs from the scripted configuration.

📚 The language is suited for creating complex configurations and providing projects with a domain-specific language.

🔀 Zygomys blends traditional Lisp syntax with syntax borrowed from Clojure and Go.

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Source: Stability AI Head of Research Resigns From Startup

Summary
Highlights from a week-long virtual event bringing Bloomberg Businessweek magazine to life.

Fact

📰 The virtual event brought Bloomberg Businessweek magazine to life.

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Source: Plex lays off more than 20 percent of its staff

Summary
Plex, the media server app, has laid off 37 employees, which accounts for over 20% of its workforce. The layoffs are a result of the company’s struggle to make money in the streaming business, specifically due to the downturn in global advertising markets.

Facts

💼 Plex laid off 37 employees, representing over 20% of its staff.

💰 Plex’s ad business has been significantly impacted by the downturn in global advertising markets.

📊 The company aims to become cash-flow positive within the next 18 months by reducing personnel expenses.

🔄 Plex will undergo restructuring, focusing on four main product areas and a few shared services.

📝 There will be reprioritization of product roadmaps and a reduction in marketing spend.

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Source:

Summary
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing various industries – from healthcare to transportation – by enabling machines to learn and make decisions like humans.

Fact

⚡️ AI has improved medical diagnosis accuracy by 20%, leading to better patient outcomes.

🚗 Self-driving cars powered by AI have the potential to reduce traffic accidents by up to 90%.

💰 AI-powered chatbots save businesses up to $8 billion per year in customer service costs.

🌐 AI algorithms are used to personalize online experiences, increasing user engagement by 40%.

🤖 AI is being utilized to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up human workers for more creative and strategic work.

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