Buying Apple’s Vision Pro headset could require an appointment and a face scan (2 minute read)
Customers might need to make an appointment to buy Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset at launch in a process similar to the rollout of the first Apple Watch. Apple will create areas for customers to try on the headset in its stores. The appointment will ensure that the headset fits the wearer and also outfit the device with prescription lens inserts if required. Apple is working on both an iPhone app and a physical machine to scan people's heads to help fit the Vision Pro. The Vision Pro is set to launch in the US in early 2024 and won't be available in other countries until late 2024.
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Google’s medical AI chatbot is already being tested in hospitals (1 minute read)
Google's Med-PaLM 2 is being tested at several hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic research hospital. Med-PaLM 2 is a variant of PaLM 2 designed to answer questions about medical information. It is trained on a curated set of medical expert demonstrations. While Med-PaLM 2 still suffers from some accuracy issues, it performs more or less as well as actual doctors in almost every other metric, such as reasoning, providing consensus-supported answers, and comprehension. A 5-minute-long video presentation from Google about Med-PaLM 2 is available in the article.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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FDA grants first full approval for an Alzheimer’s drug in 20 years (2 minute read)
The FDA granted the first traditional approval for an Alzheimer's drug in more than two decades on Thursday. The drug is targeted at patients in the early stages of the disease. Medicare will reimburse the drug's cost for beneficiaries enrolled in a nationwide registry that tracks patient side effects and outcomes over time. During trials, participants who received the drug showed moderately slowed cognitive decline compared to those who received a placebo, but there were potentially serious side effects.
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In-space manufacturing startup aces pharma experiment in orbit (8 minute read)
Varda Space Industries' first mission is on track to end with a first-of-its-kind re-entry and landing in Utah in the coming weeks. Its spacecraft has successfully completed a drug manufacturing experiment, creating a drug commonly used to treat HIV. The company is still waiting for FAA approval before it can begin re-entry. Varda's approval license will be the first under streamlined commercial space flight regulations. The only other companies that have received commercial FAA re-entry licenses are SpaceX and Boeing.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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Digger (GitHub Repo)
Digger runs terraform natively in existing CI/CD pipelines. It is secure and cost-effective as cloud access secrets aren't shared with any third parties and it doesn't require purchasing any additional compute just to run a terraform. Digger works with any CI and any cloud provider.
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What AI can do with a toolbox... Getting started with Code Interpreter (10 minute read)
ChatGPT's Code Interpreter uses GPT-4 to write and execute programs in a persistent workspace. It allows AI to do things it couldn't do before. Users can upload files for Code Interpreter to analyze or modify. This article gives readers an overview of Code Interpreter and how to use it. Code Interpreter will soon be available to all ChatGPT Plus users.
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How to Blow Up a Timeline (32 minute read)
This article talks about how Twitter blew up over the past year. It doesn't cover Threads or the rate-limiting fiasco as they were relatively recent events. The article discusses the mistakes Twitter made over the year and how it may fail despite its dominance in a niche. The slow but steady flow of users leaving the social network is resulting in less content on the platform, which is causing more people to leave.
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This futuristic entertainment venue in Las Vegas is the world’s largest spherical structure (5 minute read)
The MSG Sphere is a 366-foot fall, 516-foot wide bowl-shaped theater located in Las Vegas containing what is reportedly the world's highest-resolution wrap-around LED screen. It has so far cost around $2.3 billion to construct. The entertainment venue will open on September 29 with a series of 25 concerts by U2. It was fully illuminated for the first time last week to celebrate the Fourth of July. A video of the Sphere is available in the article.
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Open Weights (GitHub Repo)
This repository contains a definition and license for open source-compatible licensing of neural network weights.
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