📱Big Tech & Startups
xAI sues former engineer, alleging he stole trade secrets after being paid $7M (4 minute read)
xAI has accused a former employee, Xuechen Li, of taking confidential information and trade secrets before resigning and joining rival OpenAI. It has filed a lawsuit alleging that Li willfully and maliciously copied documents from his work-issued laptop onto at least one personal system the day after being paid a large sum in cash for his xAI shares. Li allegedly took extensive measures to conceal his misconduct, including deleting his browser history and system logs and renaming and compressing files before uploading them to his personal system. Li resigned from xAI on July 28 and was scheduled to start at OpenAI on August 19.
Cracks are forming in Meta's partnership with Scale AI (6 minute read)
At least one of the executives Alexandr Wang brought to Meta to help run Meta Superintelligence Labs has already departed the company. Ruben Mayer, Scale AI's former Senior Vice President of GenAI Product and Operations, says he was very happy with his Meta experience and that he left for a personal matter. Meta's relationship with Scale AI appears to be shifting as it is working with third-party data labeling vendors other than Scale AI to train its upcoming AI models. Meta's researchers reportedly see Scale AI's data as low quality and have expressed a preference to work with Surge and Mercor, two of Scale AI's largest competitors.
🚀Science & Futuristic Technology
Astra Pill Cuts Hard-to-Treat Blood Pressure in Late-Stage Trial (4 minute read)
AstraZeneca's experimental hypertension pill reduced blood pressure by more than twice as much as standard treatment during a large late-stage study. The drugmaker aims to file for regulatory approval by the end of the year. More studies are still required to confirm safety and assess outcomes over a long period of time before use of the pill can be approved. The drug works by reducing the production of aldosterone, a hormone made in the adrenal gland that helps the body regulate levels of salt and water.
Breakthrough Breast Cancer Pill Extends Survival in 7-Year Trial (4 minute read)
Lilly Oncology's Abemaciclib pill, sold under the brand name Verzenio, can significantly reduce the risk of relapse in some types of early breast cancer that have spread to the lymph node, according to the results of a phase 3 clinical trial that has yet to be peer reviewed. Verzenio is already approved for advanced or metastatic breast cancer cases that are hormone receptor-positive and for early-stage breast cancers at high risk of recurrence. It works in conjunction with hormone therapy to prevent breast cancer cells from proliferating.
💻Programming, Design & Data Science
AI-Assisted Development: A Three-Act Play (8 minute read)
There are three fundamentally different approaches emerging in AI-assisted development. The first is Vibe Coding, which can be described as asking large language models to build applications and iterating on the code via chat until it is ready for production. The second approach is using AI as a Copilot, where the developer asks models to build parts of applications, and then they review changes, fix whatever they need manually, and approve or deny the changes. The third approach is using AI tools as a HUD, only using them to write code. Each approach has its pros and cons and is suited for different tasks and skillsets.
Why do browsers throttle JavaScript timers? (6 minute read)
JavaScript's setTimeout(0) can actually run 4 milliseconds later. A lot of websites spam setTimeout, so browsers set the delay to avoid draining users' batteries or other issues. Developers could just use other alternatives. While these options can still be abused, they are permitted for now.
🎁Miscellaneous
Cutting-Edge AI Was Supposed to Get Cheaper. It's More Expensive Than Ever (7 minute read)
The latest AI models are doing more 'thinking', driving up the costs to complete tasks despite the cost of tokens dropping. This is the opposite of what many analysts and experts predicted even just a few months ago. Reasoning can deliver meaningfully better responses, but it spends significantly more tokens in the process. One way to lower costs is to use 'dumber' AIs - many use-cases don't require cutting-edge AI.
The Amusement Park for Engineers (44 minute read)
Anduril started with lofty ambitions of reinventing the defense ecosystem. The company has now deployed more than 30 products with thousands of field-tested systems and changed the arc of American defense technology. This article looks back at the years of explosive growth to give other founders, engineers, investors, operators, and everyone else a glimpse of what growth at Anduril was actually like.
⚡Quick Links
Cognitive Load is what matters (32 minute read)
Cognitive load is how much a developer needs to think in order to complete a task.
Vibe Coding Terminal Editor (11 minute read)
Large language models don't magically solve all software engineering problems, and they don't solve maintenance.
I sat down with Werner Vogels (4 minute read)
A summary of an interview with Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon, where he covers two decades of lessons from building some of the most critical infrastructure on the Internet.
Vibe Shift? Senior Developers Ship nearly 2.5x more AI Code than Junior Counterparts (7 minute read)
Senior developers may simply be better equipped to catch and correct AI's mistakes.
Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet? (9 minute read)
The factoring-21 circuit is more than one hundred times more expensive than the factoring-15 circuit.
The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger (16 minute read)
Understanding real-time changes to the economy is hard work, and overconfidence in any direction is inadvisable.