Google has unveiled Gemini 2.0, the next generation of its AI model
family. Gemini 2.0 Flash launches today through Google's developer
platforms.


Sign Up [1] |Advertise [2]|View Online [3]

TLDR

TOGETHER WITH [Bland.ai] [4]

TLDR 2024-12-12

THIS AI PHONE AGENT ACES THE TURING TEST. THE ONLY TELL? IT'S TOO
GOOD (SPONSOR) [4]

Was your last business call unusually easy? No holding or endless
transfers? There's a good chance you're one of the MILLIONS speaking
to Bland's AI phone agent [4] every day.

Unlike an ordinary customer service rep/salesperson, Bland understands
every word ¨, takes calls day or night ¨, handles thousands of
calls simultaneously ¨, and always responds intelligently and
empathetically ¨ - in any language ¨.

Bland schedules meetings, updates CRMs, transfers calls, and even
takes payments over phone. It learns faster than human employees +
delivers call campaign analytics to prove it.

Sounds crazy? Call it to see for yourself. [4]

TLDR readers get exclusive access to an even more advanced version
here... [4]

¨

BIG TECH & STARTUPS

GOOGLE GOES "AGENTIC" WITH GEMINI 2.0'S AMBITIOUS AI AGENT
FEATURES (3 MINUTE READ) [5]

Google has unveiled Gemini 2.0, the next generation of its AI model
family. Gemini 2.0 Flash, the smallest model of the family in terms of parameter count, launches today through Google's developer platforms.
It can generate text, images, and speech while processing multiple
types of input including text, images, audio, and video, but its image generation and text-to-speech features will remain limited to early
access partners until January 2025. Google plans to integrate the
technology into products like Android Studio, Chrome DevTools, and
Firebase.

THE VISION PRO'S ULTRAWIDE MAC DISPLAY IS VERY CLOSE TO BEING A
KILLER APP (3 MINUTE READ) [6]

The visionOS 2.2 update upgrades Mac screen mirroring on the Apple
Vision Pro with a curved and sharper display. There are now three
screen options - Standard, Wide, and Ultrawide. The Ultrawide mode can
display resolutions of up to 10240 x 2880. The update makes the Vision
Pro more than a personal movie theater.

¨

SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

WHY IT'S TIME TO GET OPTIMISTIC ABOUT SELF-DRIVING CARS (10 MINUTE
READ) [7]

Self-driving cars are now ready for prime time, with robotaxis
leading the charge. There is evidence that the industry is making
progress on overlapping technologies that make adoption possible. This
article looks at the adoption of self-driving cars, robotaxis, public perceptions of the technology, and the future of self-driving cars.
The regulatory environment will determine how long it takes for
markets to adopt self-driving technology. It will still likely be a
couple of decades before consumers are buying self-driving cars in
meaningful numbers.

THE CASE AGAINST GOOGLE'S CLAIMS OF "QUANTUM SUPREMACY": A VERY
SHORT INTRODUCTION (12 MINUTE READ) [8]

Google Quantum's claims should be approached with caution,
particularly those of an extraordinary nature. Its supremacy claims in
the past have been refuted by several groups. This article looks at
Google's 2019 experiment to review its claims of quantum supremacy.
The methodology used in the experiment was flawed and the competition
in the space is a serious additional reason to not take Google's
assertions seriously.

¨

PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

IS MANUAL TESTING THE ROOT CAUSE OF YOUR SLOW RELEASES? (SPONSOR) [9]


Every dev team wants to ship faster. But when E2E testing takes hours
to run, everything slows down. The alternative? Ditch manual testing
and try QA Wolf [10]. Run 100% of your test suite in parallel with
pass/fail results within 3 minutes, and no cap on test runs. Test
constantly. Deploy continuously. Start here [11]

THE DEATH OF THE STUBBORN DEVELOPER (15 MINUTE READ) [12]

The circuit that lets junior developers grow into senior developers
is broken, or at least damaged. Many tasks can now be automated, so
companies don't need as many junior contributors. Developers who don't
adopt chat-based programming as their primary modality will be left
behind.

SETUP-UCACHER (GITHUB REPO) [13]

ucacher is a CLI tool that tracks which files are accessed by
commands, skips unnecessary executions, and restores cached outputs
when possible. It brings faster feedback loops, simplified caching and skipping, enhanced precision, resource efficiency, scalability for
complex workflows, and more. Using ucacher can result in significantly
reduced execution times.

¨

MISCELLANEOUS

A LETTER TO OPEN-SOURCE MAINTAINERS (6 MINUTE READ) [14]

People contributing to open source are under no obligation to stay in
a project. The best thing to do is to make sure projects can continue
to operate smoothly even after you leave. The license maintainers
choose will influence how their project is utilized and how it
develops, so maintainers should fully understand the implications of
each license before making a decision. It's okay to step away from
projects if they don't make you happy.

PIXEL 9A LEAK REVEALS $499 PRICE AND SPECS; 5,100 MAH BATTERY,
OPTICAL FINGERPRINT SENSOR (2 MINUTE READ) [15]

The Pixel 9a is expected to be released in March next year for $499.
It will be powered by a Tensor G4 and use the Titan M2 security chip.
The 6.3-inch display, which will use Gorilla Glass 3, will have a peak brightness of 1,700 nits (or 2,700 nits for HDR content) with a 120Hz
refresh rate. The Pixel 9a will have Android 15 out of the box and
seven years of updates.

¨

QUICK LINKS

Q: WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF MINDLESS SCROLLING? (SPONSOR) [16]

A: Solving bite-sized, interactive lessons on Brilliant. Sharpen your
mind while building real knowledge in everything from logic to ML and
beyond. Free for 30 days + 20% off for TLDR readers [17]

APPLE IS WORKING ON AI CHIP WITH BROADCOM, INFORMATION SAYS (1 MINUTE
READ) [18]

Apple and Broadcom are working on a server chip designed especially
for artificial intelligence internally code-named Baltra - it is
expected to be ready for mass production by 2026.

HELIUM (GITHUB REPO) [19]

Helium is a Python library for automating browsers that lets
developers refer to elements with user-visible labels.

GOOGLE TOLD FTC MICROSOFT'S OPENAI DEAL IS KILLING AI COMPETITION (4
MINUTE READ) [20]

Some of Microsoft's biggest rivals say that its deal with OpenAI
harms competition by saddling rivals with extra costs and blocking
them from hosting OpenAI's latest models themselves.

GOOGLE TAKES ON NVIDIA BLACKWELL GPUS WITH THE NEW TRILLIUM TPUS (2
MINUTE READ) [21]

Google has announced the general availability of Trillium TPUs for
Google Cloud customers - the new Gemini 2.0 was trained on Trillium
TPUs.

ARE GAMING CONSOLES REACHING FINAL FORM? FORMER PLAYSTATION BOSS SAYS
NO MORE MAJOR HARDWARE LEAPS (2 MINUTE READ) [22]

Former PlayStation Studios boss Shawn Layden doesn't think there will
ever be a generational improvement in console performance matching
that of the PS1 to PS2 ever again.

WPENGINE WINS INJUNCTION IN `WAR' WITH WORDPRESS CREATOR (3 MINUTE
READ) [23]

A federal district judge in California has ordered Matt Mullenweg and
his companies to stop interfering in WPEngine's contacts with its
customers and to restore its access to the wordpress.com platform.

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If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email!

Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders

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[4] https://www.bland.ai/?utm_campaign=TLDRAINov&utm_medium=paid&utm_source=TLDRhome
[5] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/12/google-goes-agentic-with-gemini-2-0s-ambitious-ai-agent-features/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[6] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/11/24301921/vision-pro-ultrawide-mac-display-visionos-2-2-killer-app?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[7] https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotaxi?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[8] https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2024/12/09/the-case-against-googles-claims-of-quantum-supremacy-a-very-short-introduction/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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[12] https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-death-of-the-stubborn-developer?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[13] https://github.com/earthly/setup-ucacher?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[14] https://xuanwo.io/2024/10-a-letter-to-open-source-maintainers/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[15] https://9to5google.com/2024/12/11/google-pixel-9a-specs-price-leak/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[16] https://brilliant.org/tldrtech/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[17] https://brilliant.org/tldrtech/
[18] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-11/apple-is-working-on-ai-chip-with-broadcom-information-reports?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczMzk4MDc2MCwiZXhwIjoxNzM0NTg1NTYwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTT0MxWEtUMEcxS1cwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFQTExNDNDNTM4NEE0RUY5QTg5RjJEN0IxMTg2MzcwOSJ9.guBSQ54c4_5feyfT_A3DOmWbmfPZ28CGkl5zb9xeLmI&utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[19] https://github.com/mherrmann/helium?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[20] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/report-microsofts-exclusive-deal-with-openai-harms-competition-google-told-ftc/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[21] https://www.neowin.net/news/google-takes-on-nvidia-blackwell-gpus-with-the-new-trillium-tpus/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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[23] https://gizmodo.com/wpengine-wins-injunction-in-war-with-wordpress-creator-2000537329?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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