Good Morning! Discord has expanded the capacity of a single server to support a whopping 15 million concurrent users, overcoming previous limits to accommodate their rapidly ballooning MidJourney community. CopilotKit is bringing the power of AI chatbots seamlessly into web applications through integrations on both client and server sides, with extensive customization options to tailor the interface and fine-tune prompts. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently engaged in a thought-provoking discussion with Bill Gates on Microsoft's podcast, exploring advancements in AI like ChatGPT as well as pressing concerns around bias, privacy, and the technology's broad societal impact.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

How Discord Serves 15-Million Users on One Server

Discord, the popular communication platform, has achieved a remarkable feat by expanding the capacity of a single server to support 15 million users, a significant leap from the previous limit of around 1 million users. This expansion was crucial to accommodate the rapid growth of the MidJourney community, which risked outgrowing Discord's infrastructure.

The challenge began when the MidJourney server's growth threatened to surpass Discord's established user limit per server. To address this, Discord assembled a team of senior engineers, dubbed MaxJourney, to tackle the scaling crisis. The team embarked on detailed performance profiling to identify and resolve bottlenecks.

One of the critical issues encountered was a performance drop due to pathological garbage collection, which occurred when freeing small memory allocations outside the heap. The solution was to tune the virtual binary heap size, which allowed for the enabling of offload and significantly improved throughput.

Discord's infrastructure is powered by BEAM and Elixir, technologies that facilitate the handling of numerous concurrent users. However, the MaxJourney team's efforts went beyond mere adjustments to these technologies. They also employed Rust, a programming language known for its performance and safety, to scale Elixir for the massive number of concurrent users.

Through systematic optimization and creative engineering, the MaxJourney team successfully expanded the guild capacity by 15 times, ensuring that the MidJourney community could continue to use Discord without interruption.

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In-app AI chatbots into react web apps

The platform offers two key components: CopilotPortal and CopilotTextarea. CopilotPortal is a programmable two-way bridge between your copilot and your application state, supporting both client and cloud sides. It also supports third-party integrations, such as Salesforce and Zendesk. CopilotTextarea, on the other hand, is a drop-in replacement for the standard textarea, providing AI-powered autocompletions, insertions, and edits.

One of the standout features of CopilotKit is its customizability. Developers can tailor the user interface to suit their app's unique style and even bring their own model for a more personalized AI experience. The platform also offers a range of functions for a more comprehensive understanding of the desired output, and prompt engineering can be fully customized, empowering users to fine-tune and optimize the prompts used by the system for generating content.

Setting up CopilotKit is straightforward. Developers need to install the CopilotKit frontend packages and wrap a CopilotProvider around the application or components that interact with CopilotKit. A backend endpoint also needs to be set up.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talks with Bill Gates

In a recent episode of the Unconfuse Me podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates engaged in a thought-provoking discussion about the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Altman highlighted the advancements in AI, specifically praising the unexpected success of ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI.

However, the conversation also delved into the more daunting aspects of AI. Altman acknowledged the challenges AI faces, such as the need for adaptive compute for complex problem-solving. He also expressed confidence in gaining a deeper understanding of the neural networks, drawing parallels with the complexity of the human brain.

The discussion between Altman and Gates reflects broader concerns about the ethical implications of AI. These include issues of privacy and surveillance, bias and discrimination, and the potential for AI to do more societal harm than economic good. AI systems are trained on massive amounts of data, and societal biases embedded in that data can become ingrained in AI algorithms, perpetuating and amplifying unfair or discriminatory outcomes.

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Tech Talk

Apple Offers Rare iPhone Discounts in China to Counter Sales Slump

In an unusual move, Apple is offering significant discounts on its iPhones in China, a strategy aimed at countering a sales slump in the region. The promotional discount, which will run from January 18 through January 21, offers customers up to 500 yuan ($70) off the price of its flagship devices, including the iPhone 13 to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This discount also extends to other major Apple products like Macs, iPads, AirPods, and Apple Watch models.

Apple's decision to offer these discounts is noteworthy because the company typically does not offer promotions on its website around the Lunar New Year, usually leaving such promotions to Apple authorized resellers. This move comes as Apple grapples with falling iPhone sales in China, with last year's double-digit decline projected by analysts to deepen through 2024. This is largely due to strong interest in Huawei's latest home-grown lineup, the Mate 60 series, which uses a new China-made 7-nanometer processor tailored for the local market.

Despite Apple's promotional efforts, its attempts to counter the sales slump are likely to be hampered by China's decision last year to ban iPhones from the offices of multiple government agencies and state companies. This, coupled with the growing competition from local brands like Huawei and Xiaomi, has led to a 30% year-over-year drop in iPhone sales in China in the first week of 2024.

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Youtube Spotlight

THE LEAP OF FAITH: How the Apple Airport Changed Everything

The video explores the complicated and contentious history of wireless networking, focusing on the revolutionary impact of the Apple Airport. Starting with the development of spread spectrum technique during World War II, they also trace the evolution of wireless communication and the challenges faced in creating a wireless local area network. They then delve into the pivotal role of the 802.11 working group, the development of the 802.11b standard, and the bold risk taken by Apple in embedding wireless networking into their products.

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