Good Morning! In a recent Capitol Hill summit, prominent tech leaders, including Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Sam Altman, have displayed a remarkable consensus on the need for AI regulation. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has unveiled PostgreSQL 16, featuring substantial performance upgrades, developer-friendly additions, and improved scalability. Nue, a novel frontend framework, has emerged as a formidable contender to established counterparts like React and Vue.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

Overwhelming Consensus on AI Regulation with Musk, Zuckerburg, and Pichai

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called for a federal department of artificial intelligence (AI) following a Capitol Hill summit that featured high-profile tech leaders, activists, and researchers. The meeting included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and other tech executives. Musk expressed optimism about the meeting, saying there seemed to be a "strong consensus". He also mentioned that it's likely the federal AI department could operate similarly to the Federal Aviation Administration or the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Major tech companies in the United States have expressed support for AI regulations, though they don’t necessarily agree on what that means. Microsoft has endorsed the licensing approach, while IBM prefers rules that govern the deployment of specific risky uses of AI rather than the technology itself. Some Republicans have been wary of following the path of the European Union, which signed off in June on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, known as the EU's AI Act.

During the Capitol Hill summit, Musk warned about existential risks from AI, exclaiming, “If someone takes us out as a civilization, all bets are off”. He also said it is essential to have a “referee” for AI, implying that it needs to be regulated. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said the first gathering of the world’s top artificial intelligence experts with senators produced a consensus that Congress needs to act to regulate the development of AI technologies, but there was no agreement on the correct steps.

Musk endorsed the idea of a new federal agency to oversee AI and repeated his warning that artificial intelligence poses a tremendous danger. He said, “The consequences of AI going wrong are severe, so we have to be proactive rather than reactive”.

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PostgreSQL 16 Released: A Compact Overview

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has announced the release of PostgreSQL 16, the latest version of the world's most advanced open-source database. This new version brings numerous performance improvements, new features for developers and administrators, and enhanced scalability.

Performance Enhancements: PostgreSQL 16 raises its performance with notable improvements in query parallelism, bulk data loading, and logical replication. The release also adds SIMD support on both x86 and ARM architectures, which is used for faster ASCII and JSON string processing, as well as array and sub-transaction searches. Bulk loading using the COPY command can see up to a 300% performance improvement in some cases.

New Features for Developers and Administrators: Developers can benefit from more SQL/JSON syntax and new monitoring stats for workloads. PostgreSQL 16 introduces the pg_stat_io view, allowing for better insight into the I/O activity of the system. Additionally, the release adds support for regular expression matching of user and database names in pg_hba.conf, and user names in pg_ident.conf.

Improved Scalability: PostgreSQL 16 offers more methods to scale-up and scale-out workloads, giving users new ways to gain insights and optimize how they manage their data. The release allows parallelization of FULL and internal right OUTER hash joins, logical replication from standby servers, and logical replication subscribers to apply large transactions in parallel.

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 16: To migrate data from any previous release, a dump/restore using pg_dumpall or the use of pg_upgrade or logical replication is required. For more information on migrating to new major releases, refer to the PostgreSQL documentation.

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Nue: An Alternative to React, Vue, Vite, and Astro

Nue, a new frontend framework, has emerged as a powerful alternative to popular frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelte, as well as toolchains like Vite, Next.js, and Astro. Developed by an author who has spent the past 12 months working on it full-time, Nue aims to change the way developers approach web development.

Nue takes inspiration from Vue 2.0, petite-vue, and Riot.js, and supports server-side rendering (SSR), reactive components, and "isomorphic" combinations. The framework focuses on progressive enhancement, separation of concerns, and semantic web design, harking back to the "good old days" of web development.

One of the main goals of Nue is to create a complete ecosystem that serves as a serious alternative to systems like Vite, Next.js, and Astro. The author believes that the current state of web development has led to unnecessarily large projects, often 10 times larger than needed, and hopes to address this issue with Nue.

How Nue Handles Client-Side Reactivity: While the exact method of handling client-side reactivity is not explicitly mentioned, the author does state that Nue does not require a bundler, which may suggest a compilation strategy similar to Svelte.

Comparing Nue to Other Frameworks: Nue aims to offer a more lightweight and minimalistic approach compared to other frameworks. For example, a "Hello World" app created with create-vite-app weighs 31MB, while Nue promises a lighter footprint.

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Unity Faces Backlash Over Per-Install Fee, Receives Death Threat

Unity Technologies, the company behind the popular Unity game engine, has been forced to close two of its offices and cancel a town hall meeting after receiving a credible death threat. The threat came in response to the company's recent announcement of a new per-install fee for developers using the Unity game engine. The controversial fee has sparked outrage within the gaming community, with many developers expressing concerns about the financial impact on their businesses.

The new pricing model, set to take effect on January 1, 2024, will charge developers up to $0.20 per installation once their game reaches 200,000 downloads and earns $200,000. This has led to widespread backlash, with developers threatening to switch to rival game engines and questioning the legality of the decision. In response to the criticism, Unity has made some clarifications and adjustments to its new pricing structure, stating that developers will no longer be charged for demos or game re-installs.

Despite these changes, tensions remain high, and the gaming community is closely watching the situation as it unfolds. The death threat, while unacceptable, highlights the magnitude of the backlash against Unity's pricing changes and the potential financial hardships it may impose on game developers.

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Youtube Spotlight

The Making of BSD: The ACTUAL World's First Open-Source Operating System?

Forrest explores the history and development of BSD, the Berkeley Software Distribution, which is often hailed as the world’s first open-source operating system. BSD was based on the source code of the original Unix and was developed at the University of California Berkeley in the 1970s.

• BSD, originally called Berkeley Unix, was based on the source code of the original Unix and developed at the University of California Berkeley in the 1970s.

• BSD was not a clone of Unix but included extra features and improvements implemented by the Berkeley team.

• Different versions of BSD, such as 1BSD and 2BSD, were released with updated utilities and programs developed by Bill Joy.

• BSD faced legal disputes with AT&T’s Unix System Laboratories but eventually settled, allowing for the development of free software descendants.

• BSD’s influence can be seen in modern operating systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and even in commercial Unix operating systems like Solaris.

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