Weekly Summary 2023-04-16
The cover photo is of a coffee made by my wife. Over the past few years, her latte art skills have become quite exceptional.
What I Read
By ditching Search, Samsung may make Google get its act together
It comes as no surprise that since the launch of the New Bing, Google hasn’t developed any significant products to compete with Microsoft. I’ve primarily been using DuckDuckGo for the past two years, but I still switch to Google if I feel like I’m missing something. I believe this habit will become less frequent now that we have ChatGPT.
90% of My Skills Are Now Worth $0
At the end of the day, those who know how to utilize the tools effectively will be the ones who remain, while those who fear the tools will be left behind and forgotten.
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is on its next round of layoffs
Just last week, I was questioning Meta’s future, and now a new round of layoffs has begun. I can’t imagine if I were at Meta right now – I’d probably be one of the engineers facing a layoff for sure.
Steam - Unrecord
It’s amazing to see that this game is almost ready for release. I can’t wait to play it. It’s not surprising that Unreal Engine 5 can already support such a realistic experience, but I’m curious about what the system requirements will be like.
suno-ai/bark: 🔊 Text-prompted Generative Audio Model
The text-to-auto-generative models are truly impressive, as they can generate laughs, sighs, throat clearing, and gasps, making it incredibly realistic in English. I tried it in Chinese too, and although it’s not ideal, I expect these models will improve soon. I’d love to have this kind of audio model running in my home lab one day.
What I Watched
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
I watched this movie today. Initially, I didn’t plan on watching it, but a few gamers’ reviews changed my mind, so I decided to check it out. I’ll write a dedicated post about it later. tldr. I love it
What I Did
The palm trees in our yard have been growing incredibly fast in recent months, and it feels like they’ve grown three meters taller in just one summer. Due to their location and the strong winds in Melbourne, they sway dangerously and seem ready to fall into our neighbor’s yard at any moment. After discussing with my wife, we decided to hire professionals to cut down these trees. Although I don’t want to cut down trees, we had to do it for safety reasons.
