- Hungry Minds
- Posts
- ππ§ How Meta Built Threads: Learn Their Infrastructure Secrets
ππ§ How Meta Built Threads: Learn Their Infrastructure Secrets
PLUS: Llama locally with GitHub π¦, Caching crash course β±οΈ, Prompt engineering from OpenAI π€
Happy last Monday of the year! βοΈ
Welcome to the 73 new hungry minds who have joined us since last Monday!
If you arenβt subscribed yet, join smart, curious, and hungry folks by subscribing here.
This week is often great to have retrospectives about the whole year and go back to spend time with family:
Itβs exactly what I did!
I also got this nice little Hungry Minds Christmas ornament that I wanted to share here (weβll probably have merch soon):
π THIS WEEKβS MENU π₯
π 10X test speed with Pytest daemon, become a go-to engineer, build like Meta's Threads
ποΈ Google's new Imagen 2 art AI, Meta's AR glasses, AI beats humans at dexterity game
π¨π»βπ» Quick byte: Using context managers for file and DB operations in Python
Reading time: 5 minutes
Food for Thought
A mindset, an example, and an action item to start the week
βIn matters of style swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.β
Mindset: This quote emphasizes the importance of adaptability while staying true to your core values.
Example: Southwest Airlines is known for its lighthearted company culture, while still operating with safety and customer satisfaction as guiding principles.
Action item: Identify what principles are non-negotiable to you today, and be willing to adapt to the rest.
The Rabbit Hole
Deep dives, trends, and resources curated to stay ahead
πΎ SIDE DISHES πΎ
ARTICLE (get ready) β Database fundamentals explained with code and diagrams
GITHUB REPO (local llama) β A set of processes and tools to run Llama locally
COURSE (cache-it) β A crash course on caching
TUTORIAL (prompt-it) β The official prompt engineering resource from OpenAI
ARTICLE (a year in CS) β The biggest discoveries in CS this year
ARTICLE (js hell) β The You donβt Know JS series is back for the end of year
TOOL (usable AI agent) β A free app to extract any data from website or PDFs with AI
ARTICLE (1 line is all we need) β Justine is back with an awesome post on running LLMs from a single command in bash
The Weekly Digest
Software, AI, and startup news worth your time
Brief: Google introduces Imagen 2, a powerful text-to-image technology that generates high-quality, photorealistic images aligned with the user's prompt, with improved detail, accuracy, and style control.
Takeaway: Imagen 2's advancements in text-to-image generation reflect Google's commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI technology, offering developers and Cloud customers a tool to create lifelike images that cater to various industries and applications.
Brief: Meta's second-generation Ray-Ban glasses now come with AI capabilities that enable them to interpret images using generative AI, expanding their voice-enabled features and allowing users to access information and perform tasks in a more advanced and convenient way.
Takeaway: This innovation reflects Meta's dedication to pushing the boundaries of technology and enhancing the user experience, as they incorporate AI into their product line. The integration of AI in glasses opens up possibilities for improved information retrieval and real-time data interpretation, changing the way we interact with the world around us.
Brief: Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an AI robot called CyberRunner that has defeated a human player in a challenging labyrinth maze game, showcasing its ability to master physical skills through experience and model-based reinforcement learning.
Takeaway: This groundbreaking achievement highlights the potential of AI to surpass human capabilities not only in intellectual tasks but also in physical skill-based activities, paving the way for advancements in robotics, automation, and AI-assisted tasks requiring fine motor skills.
Brief: Blue Origin's NS-24 mission saw the successful launch and landing of its New Shepard rocket, with the booster and crew capsule both returning safely to Earth, carrying multiple payloads, including postcards from students worldwide.
Takeaway: Blue Origin's achievement brings them one step closer to their goal of democratizing space travel, highlighting their continued progress in the competitive space tourism industry.
Brief: Adobe cancels its planned $20 billion acquisition of product design software company Figma due to regulatory challenges and the inability to meet UK and EU competition regulators' concerns.
Takeaway: This failed acquisition highlights the increasing regulatory scrutiny facing Big Tech companies and the importance of approval from competition regulators in acquisitions, impacting competition in markets.
Brief: VideoPoet is a large language model that can generate a wide variety of videos, including text-to-video, image-to-video, video stylization, video inpainting, and outpainting, using a single model instead of separate components. It integrates multiple tokenizers to learn across different modalities and offers variable length outputs with various motions and styles.
Takeaway: The advent of VideoPoet showcases the potential of generative AI in advancing video generation techniques, addressing the challenge of producing coherent large motions. This technology not only revolutionizes the creative industry but also presents opportunities for businesses to enhance their video content and engage with audiences in innovative ways.
The Quick Byte
One coding tip because youβre technical after all
Context managers in Python are a powerful feature for managing resources like file operations, database connections, or network sessions. They ensure that resources are properly acquired and released, avoiding resource leaks and ensuring cleaner code.
Wen?
File Operations: Ideal for opening and closing files automatically, ensuring files are not left open accidentally.
Database Connections: Manage database connections to ensure they are closed after operations, preventing connection leaks.
Custom Resource Management: Useful for any scenario where setup and teardown of resources are required, like network connections or temporary data structures.
Why?
Resource Leak Prevention: Automatically handles resource allocation and deallocation, preventing resource leaks.
Code Clarity: Improves code readability by abstracting the setup and teardown processes.
Error Handling: Safely handles exceptions within the block, ensuring resources are released even if an error occurs.
Burp-A-Laugh
The most important meal of your day
Thatβs it for today! βοΈ
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Thanks for spending part of your Monday morning with Hungry Minds.
See you in a week β Alex.
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