Keep up with Tech in 5 minutes 2024-04-18

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AltStore PAL, a third-party iOS app store, is now live in the EU. Access to the store costs €1.50 (plus tax) per year to cover Apple's Core Technology Fee for installing the marketplace. AltStore PAL will integrate its marketplace with Patreon for monetization. It will support developers who want to distribute beta apps as a reward for crowd-sourced funding. AltStore PAL is open to submissions from third-party developers.

TikTok Notes is now rolling out to select Android and iOS users for download and limited testing in Australia and Canada. Besides a couple of small tweaks, the app is similar to Instagram. The messaging around TikTok Notes suggests that the app may be populated with users' existing and future public TikTok photo posts unless they opt-out. It is uncertain when TikTok will roll out the app to the US and elsewhere.

Boston Dynamics' next-generation Atlas robot features all-electric 360-degree joints that enable it to move in inhuman ways. The company has retired the previous Atlas' hydraulic system to create a new robot a fraction of the size and weight that also looks like a product. It has some impressive capabilities, like being able to stand up from a lying face-down position. A short video of Atlas demonstrating the new way it moves is available in the article.

NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft mission is heading to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The mission has been approved for a 2028 launch with a scheduled arrival at Titan in 2034. The Dragonfly dual-quadcopter drone, powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, is expected to travel hundreds of kilometers during its planned two-year exploration of Titan. The total lifecycle cost of the mission is currently $3.35 billion, approximately double the proposed cost, with increases blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, and design changes.

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Stability AI has released its next-generation Stable Diffusion 3 generative AI model. The model is now available for use via an API on the Stability AI developer platform. Making the model production-ready was a key focus for the company as part of the API release. Stability AI has implemented a number of safeguards to prevent the model's misuse. It is planning to release an open model soon. Stability AI has also just released an early beta preview of Stable Assistant, a chatbot powered by Stability AI's text and image generation technology.

Portr is a tunnel solution that exposes local HTTP, TCP, or WebSocket connections to the public internet. It utilizes SSH remote port forwarding under the hood to securely tunnel connections. Portr is designed for small teams looking to expose development servers on public URLs and is not recommended for use alongside production servers. It features an admin dashboard for user/team management and an inspector for inspecting and replaying requests.

The jhanas is a growing meditation trend that has made its way into some corners of tech. Its practitioners claim that it can induce extremely blissful mental states that rival life's peak experiences. Jhanas could open the path to new inroads to understanding and improving how our brains work. This article takes a look at what jhanas are, what the experience is like, how the tech community is embracing the concept, and more.

Tesla is asking shareholders to approve a move to Texas and to re-approve a $55.8 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk that was recently voided by a Delaware judge. The vote will be held at Tesla's 2024 annual meeting on June 13. Renegotiating a replacement compensation plan that Musk would agree to would likely take substantial time and incur new accounting charges of billions of dollars. Musk has not been paid for any of his work over the last six years at Tesla, where he helped generate significant growth and stockholder value, with the company's stock up more than 630% since March 2018.

TikTok divestiture legislation already passed by the House will be included in a fast-moving aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the chamber is set to clear on Saturday.

Several new architectures have recently emerged that are designed to outperform full attention Transformers in long-context learning/generation and inference speed/cost.

Desbordante is a high-performance data profiler capable of discovering many different patterns in data and running data cleaning scenarios using various algorithms.

The expansion is a natural move for Mercury, who serves more than 100,000 businesses, many of which are startups and have expressed interest in a personal banking product.

Compute thresholds are a poor tool for policymakers because compute is a cost for AI developers and thus they are heavily incentivized to lower it.

Focus on what makes you enjoy your leisure activities and stop optimizing for a non-existent audience.