Telegram's Founder, in First Comments Since Arrest, Defends the App (3 minute read)
Telegram founder Pavel Durov says that innovators should not be personally liable for the potential abuse of the tools they create. He says that growing pains on Telegram made it easy for criminals to abuse the platform, but that he aims to significantly improve the platform. French authorities arrested Durov in part due to Telegram's apparent lack of response to requests related to criminal investigations, but Durov says Telegram has official representatives in the EU and that he had personally helped French authorities establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France. Telegram is expected to announce changes to address the abuse of its platform very soon.
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OpenAI Considers $2,000 Monthly Subscription Prices for New LLMs (2 minute read)
OpenAI executives are reportedly considering $2,000 per month subscription prices for the company's upcoming large language models. The company plans to release its next-level artificial intelligence product, Strawberry, in the fall. Strawberry will be able to solve novel math problems, develop market strategies, and perform deep research. OpenAI is also reportedly considering changing its corporate structure to be more simple and attractive to financial backers. It is aiming to raise several billion dollars in a funding round that would value it at above $100 billion.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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The ultra-selfish gene (35 minute read)
It is now possible for humans to genetically modify entire species by inserting genes into them with brute force. The technology has so far gone unused, even though its deployment could mean the end of diseases like malaria. It could be used for many positive things such as giving raccoons immunity to rabies, editing insects so that they're more vulnerable to safer pesticides, and preventing the spread of deadly diseases. However, its existence presents many issues, such as the possibility of a harmful gene being released into human populations.
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A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options (17 minute read)
Vertex Pharmaceuticals is currently seeking regulatory approval for a new drug that looks promising in clinical trials. Suzetrigine could be the first of an entirely new class of pain therapy. It targets specific sodium ion channels found on pain-sensing nerve cells. While the effect of the drug is modest, it demonstrates that the strategy of targeting sodium channels specific to pain-sensing neurons works, leading to hope that the next generation of these compounds could perform much better. Suzetrigine could be approved by early 2025.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Ethical Hacking 101 Workshop Sept 17 (Sponsor)
Looking to upgrade your developer security skills? Register today for Snyk's Ethical Hacking 101 🤖 and earn 2 CPE credits! 🎓 Get live support in the hands-on lab 🧪 as you find and fix 🛠 vulnerabilities and learn the process of responsible disclosure. Save your spot
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OAuth from First Principles (14 minute read)
This article presents an informal explanation of the OAuth flow. Skipping over a lot of the nitty-gritty details, it details the problems that OAuth solves by looking at various potential security flaws. Resources for a deeper dive into the topic are available.
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The AI industry is obsessed with Chatbot Arena, but it might not be the best benchmark (13 minute read)
LMSYS' Chatbot Arena has become an industry obsession over the past few months. It lets anyone on the web ask questions of two randomly selected, anonymous models and then vote on their preferred answers. Critics say that LMSYS has not been completely transparent about the model capabilities, knowledge, and skills it's assessing on Chatbot Arena. The limited data released by the company makes it challenging to study the limitations of models in depth. While Chatbot Arena is framed as an empirical test, it amounts to a relative rating of models.
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Bill Gates has a good feeling about AI (8 minute read)
Bill Gates has spent billions on funding technologies he thinks will shape the future. He has a new Netflix series that covers these technologies, including AI, climate change, inequality, misinformation, and global health. 'What's Next? The Future with Bill Gates' is set to launch on September 18. This article contains an interview with Gates where he discusses why he is so optimistic about these technologies.
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Leaked Disney Data Reveals Financial and Strategy Secrets (5 minute read)
Hackers recently leaked a trove of data from Disney that included financial and strategy information on the entertainment giant's operations. It also included personally identifiable information of some staff and consumers and granular details about revenue generated by Disney products, park pricing offers that the company has modeled, and login credentials for some of Disney's cloud infrastructure. Disney says that it doesn't expect the incident to have a material impact on its operations or financial performance. This article provides an overview of the leaked data.
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