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AI Celebs 🤖 , Streaming Tech 🖥️ , and the Messaging War 📱
10/10/2023
Tech News 📡
Meta is investing heavily in its AI chatbot feature, shelling out as much as $5 million to a top creator for using their likeness in an AI assistant, according to a report by The Information. The tech giant has enlisted 28 celebrities, including Kendall Jenner and MrBeast, to portray chatbots with varied personalities. While the AI assistants are currently text-based, Meta's announcement video showcased the celebrities speaking as their AI counterparts. The substantial payouts and use of celebrity images underscore Meta’s commitment to integrating AI into its platforms, despite potential concerns over brand safety and image usage.
Disney has found itself in hot water with the creative community following allegations that a promotional poster for the second season of "Loki" was partially created using generative AI. The controversy ignited when illustrator Katria Raden pointed out AI telltale signs, such as random transformations into meaningless squiggles, in the spiraling clock image in the poster’s background. The image appears to have been sourced from a stock image on Shutterstock, which was flagged by AI image checkers as being AI-generated. The incident has sparked broader concerns among artists about AI image generators being trained on their work without consent and potentially replacing human artists.
Trending Startups📱
FounderPal introduces a 100% free business ideas generator, designed to provide six unique ideas for your next profitable venture, all done in 10 seconds by AI. The tool aims to eliminate the need for prolonged brainstorming sessions by instantly generating business ideas based on desired target audience, personal interests, and relevant product formats. This tool could be a valuable asset for solopreneurs and startups looking to explore new business opportunities without the often tedious and time-consuming process of ideation.
Payload CMS presents itself as a comprehensive and extensible Content Management System (CMS) built with TypeScript, Node.js, and React. It offers a range of features including over 20 field components, custom React components, extensibility through hooks, and powerful function-based access control. The platform is designed to be code-first, providing solutions without imposing roadblocks, and can power everything from enterprise websites to native apps. Payload CMS is open-source and can be self-hosted, but also offers a hosted option through Payload Cloud, aiming to cater to a wide range of developers and businesses.
AI 🤖
Baa, a new LLM (Language Model) client designed for both web and desktop, is introduced with a variety of useful features for those working with LLMs, including chat capabilities, handling prompts, constructing functions, and running experiments with multiple models from OpenAI and Anthropic. The developer, who created Baa to meet specific needs not addressed by existing LLM clients, outlines its current capabilities and future roadmap. The roadmap includes potential developments like local auth, local storage, local models, VS Code integration, two-way audio, and more, aiming to enhance its utility and user-friendliness for a range of applications.
Sahir Maharaj provides a comprehensive guide for those looking to pivot their career into the Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain without spending a fortune or an excessive amount of time. The roadmap includes a deep dive into AI impact research, reflection on personal interests within AI, discovering a unique path in AI’s expansive realm, exploring AI domains, setting clear goals, building a repository of skills and knowledge, developing a structured learning plan, and seeking mentorship. The article emphasizes the importance of mentorship and networking in navigating the AI field and highlights the role of platforms like Preplaced in providing personalized guidance and support.
Coding & Development 🖥️
Alexandre Olive delves into the complexities and challenges that video streaming platforms face, particularly in managing vast amounts of data and ensuring smooth, lag-free access to users worldwide. The article explores the architecture of a streaming solution at Skeepers, discussing technical aspects like Kubernetes, RabbitMQ, and load balancers. The author shares insights into handling video uploads, processing, and playback, emphasizing the importance of scalable solutions, especially when dealing with resource-intensive tasks like video processing using FFmpeg. The article also touches on using preemptible nodes for cost-effectiveness and ensuring a robust system that can scale vertically indefinitely.
The article discusses the evolution and challenges of using Unicode code points and char in Java, particularly in the context of Unicode's expansion and the introduction of grapheme clusters. The author reflects on the journey from Unicode 1.0.0, which comfortably fit within a 2-byte space, to the complexities introduced with Unicode 3.1 and beyond, which required handling characters beyond the 16-bit limit and dealing with variable-width encoding like UTF-16. The article advocates for using String in Java, treating indexes from methods like indexOf and substring as opaque values, and utilizing methods that don’t require an index for string manipulation, thereby avoiding the intricacies and potential pitfalls of dealing with char and code points directly.
Miscellaneous 🌀️
Google is amplifying its security efforts by integrating Rust into Android's bare-metal environments, particularly in firmware, to mitigate vulnerabilities associated with memory-unsafe languages like C. The Android Virtualization Framework’s protected VM (pVM) firmware, which functions similarly to a bootloader, has been rewritten in Rust, replacing its U-Boot foundation due to U-Boot's susceptibility to various security vulnerabilities. The transition to Rust, starting with the pVM firmware in Android 14, aims to prevent future memory-safety vulnerabilities and enhance the security of Android devices. Google has also contributed to the Rust community by fixing bugs in existing crates and publishing new ones to support bare-metal programming across various platforms.
Samsung has joined forces with Google in a bid to persuade Apple to adopt the Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging standard, which Google has been championing. The collaborative effort is highlighted in a Samsung advertisement that emphasizes the desire for compatibility between Android's "green bubbles" and Apple's "blue bubbles." RCS is a communication protocol aimed at enhancing SMS messages with features like read receipts, group messaging, and multimedia sharing, which are already standard in iMessages. The adoption of RCS by Apple would potentially bridge the communication gap between Android and iPhone users, providing a unified and enriched messaging experience across both platforms.
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