• Microsoft's Copilot key ¨, DeepMind's robot constitution ¨, terminal smooth scrolling ¨¨

    From TLDR@VERT to tldr@synchro.net on Fri Jan 5 11:37:18 2024
    Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety
    of new PCs and laptops

    Sign Up [1]|Hire [2]|Advertise [3]|View Online [4]

    TLDR

    TLDR 2024-01-05

    ¨

    BIG TECH & STARTUPS

    MICROSOFT'S NEW COPILOT KEY IS THE FIRST BIG CHANGE TO WINDOWS
    KEYBOARDS IN 30 YEARS (3 MINUTE READ) [5]

    Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety
    of new PCs and laptops. The button will provide quick access to
    Microsoft's AI-powered Windows Copilot experience. It is the first big
    change to the Windows PC keyboard layout in nearly three decades. The
    new Copilot key will replace the menu (or application) key. If Windows
    Copilot isn't available in the user's country, the button will launch
    Windows Search instead. It is unclear whether Microsoft plans to allow
    users to use the key in combination with other keys.

    GOOGLE APPEARS TO BE WORKING ON AN `ADVANCED' VERSION OF BARD
    THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR (2 MINUTE READ) [6]

    Bard Advanced is an upgraded version of Bard that may soon be
    available through a paid subscription to Google One. It appears to be
    powered by Gemini Ultra, an upgrade over the current version of Bard
    which runs the mid-tier Gemini Pro. There may be a feature that allows
    users to create custom bots, but it is unclear whether users will be
    able to share these bots. It is unknown when or if the feature will
    become official.

    ¨

    SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

    GOOGLE WROTE A `ROBOT CONSTITUTION' TO MAKE SURE ITS NEW AI
    DROIDS WON'T KILL US (3 MINUTE READ) [7]

    The DeepMind robotics team has revealed three new advances that will
    help robots make faster, better, and safer decisions in the wild. One
    involves a system for gathering training data with a set of
    safety-focused prompts instructing the model to avoid choosing tasks
    that involve humans, animals, sharp objects, and electrical
    appliances. The others are a neural network architecture designed to
    make the existing Robotic Transformer RT-2 more accurate and faster
    and RT-Trajectory, which adds 2D outlines to help robots better
    perform specific physical tasks.

    ELON MUSK: SPACEX NEEDS TO BUILD STARSHIPS AS OFTEN AS BOEING BUILDS
    737S (5 MINUTE READ) [8]

    Elon Musk recently made a post on X saying that SpaceX might need to
    make up to 300 spaceships a year to achieve Mars colonization.
    Establishing a settlement on Mars will require rocket travel to be
    nearly as routine as air travel. While SpaceX will be able to reuse
    Starship and its Super Heavy boosters, the parts that travel into
    orbit won't be able to be reused as often. Ships often have to orbit
    the planet several times before they line up with pickup sites, so
    they might only be able to be used once a day.

    ¨

    PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

    TERMINAL SMOOTH SCROLLING (5 MINUTE READ) [9]

    Terminal usually draws lines of text at fixed intervals. When
    scrolling, the sudden jumps are incompatible with how eyes track
    motion, making it a blurry mess that's hard to read. This blog post
    discusses how to implement smooth scrolling in Terminal. While smooth
    scrolling uses a lot more resources, it makes it possible to easily
    skim text as it scrolls by. A video demonstrating the difference
    between normal scrolling and smooth scrolling in Terminal is available
    in the post.

    MISE-EN-PLACE (WEBSITE) [10]

    mise-en-place manages dev tools like Node, Python, CMake, Terraform,
    and more. It manages environment variables for different project
    directories and tasks used to build and test projects. It can also
    work as a task runner that can replace make or npm scripts.

    ¨

    MISCELLANEOUS

    AMAZON CAPTURED 29% OF ONLINE ORDERS BEFORE CHRISTMAS (2 MINUTE READ)
    [11]

    Amazon's global order volume in the final two weeks before Christmas
    was up 21% from the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. The
    company's speedy delivery is a key competitive advantage. 70% of Prime
    orders in the US arrive within two days, with almost a quarter being
    delivered within a day. Amazon plans to double its number of same-day
    delivery facilities in the coming years.

    OPENAI'S APP STORE FOR GPTS WILL LAUNCH NEXT WEEK (3 MINUTE READ)
    [12]

    OpenAI's GPT Store will feature custom apps based on its
    text-generating AI models. Developers will have to review OpenAI's
    updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines as well as verify
    their user profiles before they will be eligible for listing in the
    store. Making a bot doesn't require any coding experience - developers
    can just type the capabilities they want their bots to offer in plain
    language and a GPT-building tool will attempt to make it. Bots can be
    as simple or complex as a developer wishes. It is unclear whether the
    GPT Store will launch with a revenue-sharing scheme.

    ¨

    QUICK LINKS

    OPENAI'S NEWS PUBLISHER DEALS REPORTEDLY TOP OUT AT $5 MILLION A
    YEAR (2 MINUTE READ) [13]

    OpenAI offers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license
    copyrighted news articles to train its AI models.

    THE RANDOM TRANSFORMER (44 MINUTE READ) [14]

    This blog post provides an end-to-end example of the math within a
    transformer model with lots of simplification and reduced dimensions.

    NVIDIA SUPER REFRESH CONFIRMED FOR CES 2024 Ä GIGABYTE TEASES
    GEFORCE RTX 40-SERIES SUPER GPUS (2 MINUTE READ) [15]

    It is likely that Gigabyte's Aorus Turkey graphics board will
    essentially confirm Nvidia's RTX 40 Super launch.

    TESLA ADDS POWERWALL, SOLAR, AND CHARGER TO ITS API FOR DEVS (2
    MINUTE READ) [16]

    The release is aimed at increasing the value of Tesla's distributed
    energy assets and growing the deployment of its energy storage
    products.

    WHEN "EVERYTHING" BECOMES TOO MUCH: THE NPM PACKAGE CHAOS OF 2024 (5
    MINUTE READ) [17]

    An npm package called 'everything' released in the new year that
    depended on every other public npm package, creating millions of
    transitive dependencies, caused storage space to run out and system
    resource exhaustion for anyone that installed it.

    THE PULSE: WILL US COMPANIES HIRE FEWER ENGINEERS DUE TO SECTION 174?
    (18 MINUTE READ) [18]

    Section 176 of the US tax law made it so all costs related to R&D
    cannot be expensed, making bootstrapped software businesses completely unsustainable.

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    [5] https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/4/24023809/microsoft-copilot-key-keyboard-windows-laptops-pcs?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
  • From Coz@VERT/CEBBS to TLDR on Fri Jan 5 07:59:11 2024
    Re: Microsoft's Copilot key ¨, DeepMind's robot constitution ¨, terminal smooth scrolling ¨¨
    By: TLDR to tldr@synchro.net on Fri Jan 05 2024 11:37 am

    Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety
    of new PCs and laptops

    Gee, I really can't think of anything that is needed more than a new key on keyboards. I truly hope Co-Pilot is a passing trend. I also hope it'll be easy to continue to acquire keyboards without the Co-Pilot key.

    Know anyone with enough sway to get us a physical Telnet or SSH key on keyboards to log into Vert? :-)

    Chris
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Computer Express - cebbs.costakis.org
  • From Phigan@VERT/TACOPRON to Coz on Fri Jan 5 12:34:05 2024
    Re: Microsoft's Copilot key ¨, DeepMind's robot constitution ¨, terminal
    By: Coz to TLDR on Fri Jan 05 2024 07:59 am

    Know anyone with enough sway to get us a physical Telnet or SSH key on keyboards to log into Vert? :-)

    I wouldn't mind a PuTTY key.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ TIRED of waiting 2 hours for a taco? GO TO TACOPRONTO.bbs.io
  • From Nightfox@VERT/DIGDIST to Phigan on Fri Jan 5 12:57:27 2024
    Re: Microsoft's Copilot key ¨, DeepMind's robot constitution ¨, terminal
    By: Phigan to Coz on Fri Jan 05 2024 12:34 pm

    Know anyone with enough sway to get us a physical Telnet or SSH key on
    keyboards to log into Vert? :-)

    I wouldn't mind a PuTTY key.

    Some keyboards have additional keys to for media (pause/play, mute/unmute, volume up/down) and "office" keys that launch your web browser, email reader, calculator program, etc.. One example is the Logitech K200 media keybaord - I use one of those both at home and at work. If they can make keys to launch particular applications like those, I wonder if they could add a key to launch a telnet application.

    Nightfox

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Dave Drum@VERT/SESTAR to Coz on Sat Jan 6 06:00:00 2024
    Coz wrote to TLDR <=-

    Re: Microsoft's Copilot key ¨, DeepMind's robot constitution ¨,
    terminal smooth scrolling ¨¨
    By: TLDR to tldr@synchro.net on Fri Jan 05 2024 11:37 am

    Microsoft partners will start shipping a new Copilot key on a variety
    of new PCs and laptops

    Gee, I really can't think of anything that is needed more than a new
    key on keyboards. I truly hope Co-Pilot is a passing trend. I also hope it'll be easy to continue to acquire keyboards without the Co-Pilot
    key.

    Know anyone with enough sway to get us a physical Telnet or SSH key on keyboards to log into Vert? :-)

    If they put it as an entry under the "Windows" key .... then OK. I can
    ignore it nicely there as I do all the Windows key functiona except the
    file explorer.

    AI is fast becoming a royal pain in my arse. I've been using BING as
    my search enginge by preference. But, since they have screwed the pooch
    by tacking AI onto it - automatically and with no way to opt out I may
    have to go to Duck Duck Go or some other arcane thing.

    ... Information and knowledge are two different things.
    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ The SouthEast Star Mail HUB - SESTAR