Amazon, AMD, and other startups are starting to offer credible
alternatives to Nvidia's chips, proving they can deliver faster speeds
at lower
prices


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TLDR

TOGETHER WITH [WorkOS] [4]

TLDR 2024-12-04

7 NEW FEATURES ANNOUNCED AT WORKOS LAUNCH WEEK (SPONSOR) [4]

If you're building B2B SaaS, chances are you've already run into
WorkOS Ä the API that lets you easily add enterprise-ready features
to your app (SAML, SSO, SCIM, audit logs...).

In their recent Launch Week [4], WorkOS announced a ton of new
additions [4] to AuthKit, the company's identity management platform.
These include support for passkeys, real-time bot protection, and even
an open source Next.js Starter Kit for B2B apps.

See everything that was announced right here  [4]

P.S. Most of these features are included for free with AuthKit up to 1
million MAU ¨

¨

BIG TECH & STARTUPS

THE FURIOUS CONTEST TO UNSEAT NVIDIA AS KING OF A.I. CHIPS (10 MINUTE
READ) [5]

Amazon, AMD, and several other startups are starting to offer
credible alternatives to Nvidia's chips. Nvidia's rivals are proving
they can deliver faster speeds at lower prices for some crucial AI
tasks. Many are emulating Nvidia's tactic of building complete
computers so that customers can gain maximum power and performance out
of their chips. Spending on computers without Nvidia chips by data
center operators is expected to grow 49% this year to $126 billion.

META JOINS THE NUCLEAR-POWERED AI FRAY (3 MINUTE READ) [6]

Meta is turning to nuclear energy to support its data centers and the communities around them. It recently announced a 'request for
proposals' for developers that can bring nuclear reactors online
starting in the early 2030s. The company is open to many ideas on the
size and type of reactors, the locations, and other details. It is
seeking initial responses by February 7.

¨

SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

A NEW METHOD TO MAP THE BRAIN: INFECT IT WITH A VIRUS (9 MINUTE READ)
[7]

E11 Bio has been working for the past three years to develop
techniques to make brain mapping better, cheaper, and faster. One of
these approaches involves making the brain label itself by injecting
it with viruses that cause neurons to make special proteins that act
like barcodes. The approach reduces the amount of brain slicing
required and creates more accurate wiring maps that require less
proofreading. E11 is now shifting from proof-of-concept mode to
building out its imaging infrastructure so it can tackle an entire
mouse brain.

USC STUDENT ROCKET GROUP SHATTERS INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR SPACE RECORD
(4 MINUTE READ) [8]

The USC Rocket Propulsion Lab at the USC Viterbi School of
Engineering has broken the international altitude record with its
Aftershock II rocket. The rocket reached an altitude of 470,000 feet,
higher than any non-governmental and non-commercial group has ever
flown before. Aftershock II, at 330 pounds with a height of 13 ft and
8" diameter, reached a velocity of 5,283 ft/s and Mach 5.5. A video
of the launch is available in the article.

¨

PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

RECORD A VIDEO MESSAGE WITH LOOM  LOOM AI WRITES IT FOR YOU
(SPONSOR) [9]

A quick video is worth a dozen emails. Loom [10] lets you easily
record and share video messages with your teammates and customers Ä
and if you need it in writing, you can use Loom AI to instantly turn
your video into a document, a ticket, or a written message. Join a
group demo session to see Loom AI in action [9]

IS AURORA DSQL YOUR NEXT DATABASE? (5 MINUTE READ) [11]

Amazon's new Aurora DSQL is a serverless, globally distributed
database that is highly available, multi-regional, Postgres
compatible, and fast. This post looks over its features to see if the
product works as advertised. Aurora DSQL is still very new - the
service is only available in two US regions at the moment. It is still
missing a lot of features from Postgres and uses an unusual
authentication method that involves using a URL-like token to connect
to the database.

SKIA CANVAS (GITHUB REPO) [12]

Skia Canvas is a browser-less implementation of the HTML Canvas
drawing API for Node.js. It produces very similar results to Chrome's
canvas element. Skia Canvas is best used on desktop machines that can
render hardware-accelerated graphics to a window or on a server where
it can output a variety of image formats.

¨

MISCELLANEOUS

THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS WANTING TO SWITCH JOBS HITS A 10-YEAR HIGH (4
MINUTE READ) [13]

More than half of US workers are watching for or actively seeking a
new job. Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent
years. The cooling job market is causing employees to feel more stuck
and frustrated. While employers can worry less about turnover, they
risk employee burnout rising if workers feel stuck.

Y COMBINATOR AND POWER IN SILICON VALLEY (18 MINUTE READ) [14]

AdGrok's founders received notice that their company was being sued
by Adchemy, a former employer, in September 2010. The legal action was
not unexpected as the former employer had told them they were unhappy
with the founders leaving and starting a new company. AdGrok had gone
through Y Combinator. Its relationship with the accelerator program
and Sam Altman resulted in the lawsuit being dismissed. Adchemy was
attempting to court funding from Microsoft - Altman had a contact at
Microsoft tell Adchemy that it would be problematic if the company was embroiled in litigation while discussing the deal, so Adchemy dropped
the suit

¨

QUICK LINKS

DSQL VIGNETTE: AURORA DSQL, AND A PERSONAL STORY (11 MINUTE READ)
[15]

Amazon recently announced Aurora DSQL, a serverless SQL database
designed for the cloud and optimized for transaction processing.

AMAZON ANNOUNCES NOVA, A NEW FAMILY OF MULTIMODAL AI MODELS (4 MINUTE
READ) [16]

Amazon's new family of multimodal generative AI models includes four text-generating models, an image-generation model, and a
video-generation model.

SAMSUNG SMART GLASSES DEBUT IN JANUARY, SOFTWARE REVEAL `THIS
MONTH' (1 MINUTE READ) [17]

Samsung plans to preview its smart glasses, which will work similarly
to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, in January alongside the Galaxy S25 -
the actual release will be in the third quarter of 2025.

THE NEXT PLATFORM (12 MINUTE READ) [18]

Possible contenders for the next platform for job security purposes
are PaleoOps, Erlang/Darklang, Fly.io, Serverless/AWS Lambda, and V8
isolates.

THE STARTUP TRYING TO TURN THE WEB INTO A DATABASE (5 MINUTE READ)
[19]

Exa crawls the web and encodes the contents of web pages into
embeddings that can be processed by large language models.

WALMART BOUGHT VIZIO (2 MINUTE READ) [20]

The acquisition will help bolster Walmart's advertising business.

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Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders

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[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-03/ex-google-ceo-wants-to-learn-about-brains-by-infecting-them?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczMzI3NDQyMCwiZXhwIjoxNzMzODc5MjIwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTTlgyT0hEV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFQTExNDNDNTM4NEE0RUY5QTg5RjJEN0IxMTg2MzcwOSJ9.XclCF7p5Q3V6lNZzAv9lKd-85qBPn2wQHAJbd9rU0Jc&utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[8] https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2024/11/usc-student-rocket-group-shatters-international-amateur-space-record/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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[14] https://commoncog.com/c/cases/y-combinator-power/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[15] https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/12/03/aurora-dsql.html?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[16] https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/03/amazon-announces-nova-a-new-family-of-multimodal-ai-models/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[17] https://9to5google.com/2024/12/02/samsung-smart-glasses-software-reveal-date-report/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
[18] https://www.macchaffee.com/blog/2024/the-next-platform/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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