Apple may have ceased production of its first-generation Vision Pro
headset. Scaling back of production began in the early
summer.
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TLDR
TLDR 2025-01-02
¨
BIG TECH & STARTUPS
APPLE VISION PRO MAY NOW BE OUT OF PRODUCTION (3 MINUTE READ) [4]
Apple may have ceased production of its first-generation Vision Pro
headset. Scaling back of production began in the early summer. It is
not unusual for Apple to do this with low-demand products. Suppliers
have produced the enough components for between 500,000 to 600,000
headsets. Apple is apparently able to resume production if sales pick
up as the production lines haven't been dismantled yet.
STATCOUNTER: MICROSOFT EDGE HAS 13.21%, CHROME IS GETTING EVEN MORE
POPULAR (2 MINUTE READ) [5]
Google Chrome increased its market share in December. It began 2025
with a strong 66.88% market share, increasing by 1.65 points compared
to the same time last year. Microsoft Edge is the second most popular
browser with a 13.21% market share. Apple's Safari comes third with
8.49% of the desktop browser market.
¨
SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY
9 INTRIGUING ENGINEERING FEATS FOR 2025 (4 MINUTE READ) [6]
This article covers nine engineering projects planned for this year.
These include MethaneSat, a satellite that anyone can use to pinpoint
specific problem areas and track emissions of methane more broadly; a processing site for radioactive nuclear waste; a personal aircraft
called the Airhart Sling that anyone can fly in under an hour; Rocket
Lab's Neutron, a reusable booster capable of launching 13,000
kilograms to low earth orbit; and profitable robotaxis.
HOW AI IS UNLOCKING ANCIENT TEXTS Ä AND COULD REWRITE HISTORY (15
MINUTE READ) [7]
Artificial neural networks are being used to decipher ancient texts.
The technology is producing more data for scholars than they've had
for centuries. It is making sense of vast archives, filling in missing
and unreadable characters, and decoding rare and lost languages. The
technology promises a fundamentally new way to explore ancient
sources.
¨
PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE
BRING THE REAL WORLD TO UNREAL ENGINE (WEBSITE) [8]
Cesium for Unreal unlocks a 3D geospatial ecosystem for game engines.
It allows users to create digital worlds from real-world 3D content.
The free plugin provides a full-scale, high-accuracy WGS84 globe for
Unreal Engine. It can visualize massive high-resolution real-world photogrammetry and 3D content at runtime using 3D Tiles. Cesium is
integrated with UE features to enable a high degree of interactivity,
physical realism, and photorealism.
DATABASES IN 2024: A YEAR IN REVIEW (26 MINUTE READ) [9]
This article looks at what happened in the world of databases over
the last year. It covers licensing changes, the Databricks vs
Snowflake gang war, DuckDB's entry into the zeitgeist as the default
choice for running analytical queries on data, acquisitions, funding,
dead projects, and more. The upcoming year will be a test of strength
for many database startups. Declining interest rates may open up
additional funding for several database companies.
¨
MISCELLANEOUS
H5N1: MUCH MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW (24 MINUTE READ) [10]
All pandemic flus started as bird flus - influenza A evolved in birds
but it sometimes spreads to other animals, including pigs, cattle, and
humans. The most common way for a bird flu to spread to humans is to
'reassort' with a human flu virus, which results in a virus with all
of the human flu virus' human adaptations, but with enough new
antigens from the bird virus to evade the immune system. Pigs can be
infected by both human and bird viruses, so they are a common place
for this reassortment to take place. Humans can catch animal diseases
without the disease having 'crossed over' to humans, but every viral replication that takes place in a human who has both a bird and a
normal human flu gives the virus an extra chance to reassort in a way
that produces a bird-antigen-fortified human-adapted flu virus.
2024 IN AI PREDICTIONS (14 MINUTE READ) [11]
This article contains a list of predictions made in 2024 by prominent
people in the AI industry about AI development over the next couple of
decades. It also reviews some of the predictions made about 2024. Elon
Musk thinks that AI will probably be smarter than any single human by
the end of this year. However, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun have
both said that it will take much longer, possibly even two decades.
¨
QUICK LINKS
INTERNAL SPACEX DOCUMENTS SHOW THE SWEET STOCK DEALS OFFERED TO
INVESTORS LIKE A16Z, GIGAFUND (7 MINUTE READ) [12]
a16z was authorized to buy nearly 4.3 million shares for almost $300
million and Gigafund, whose co-founder is a SpaceX board member, was
allocated over 1.4 million shares at a cost of nearly $100 million.
REJECTION (2 MINUTE READ) [13]
It's best not to take rejections personally and move on, but not
before fixing any mistakes brought up by the rejection.
MISTAKES ENGINEERS MAKE IN LARGE ESTABLISHED CODEBASES (6 MINUTE
READ) [14]
The biggest mistake is not maintaining consistency - consistency
protects developers from nasty surprises, slows down codebases'
progression into a mess, and allows developers to take advantage of
future improvements.
HOW TO WRITE COMPLEX SOFTWARE (11 MINUTE READ) [15]
This post describes a general method for writing complex software
with some specific techniques and guiding heuristics.
SMOLAGENTS (GITHUB REPO) [16]
smolagents is a library that enables users to run powerful agents
with a few lines of code.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN 2025 (2 MINUTE READ) [17]
13 predictions on things that may happen this year.
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[4]
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[5]
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[6]
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https://cesium.com/platform/cesium-for-unreal/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter [9]
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