Good Morning! After nearly a decade as CEO of Unity Technologies, John Riccitiello has stepped down from his leadership roles amid backlash over controversial pricing changes that sparked outrage in the developer community. Seeking to expand its developer platform, OpenAI plans to roll out significant updates next month that include memory storage and new vision capabilities, with the goal of reducing costs and speeding up AI development. In alarming testimony, FTX co-founder Gary Wang said the company used Python code to falsely inflate the value of its insurance fund and allow near-unlimited trading for Alameda Research, raising serious questions about deception and mismanagement.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

Unity CEO John Riccitiello Steps Down Amid Controversy

Unity Technologies, the company behind the popular game development engine, has announced the retirement of its CEO, John Riccitiello, effective immediately. This decision comes in the wake of a significant controversy surrounding the company's pricing model.

Riccitiello, who has been at the helm of Unity for nearly a decade, will also step down from his roles as president, chairman, and a member of the company's board of directors. James Whitehurst, an advisor at Silver Lake, a private equity firm that owns about 9 percent of Unity, will serve as interim CEO while the company conducts a comprehensive search for a permanent replacement.

The controversy that led to Riccitiello's departure began in September 2023 when Unity unveiled plans to overhaul its pricing structure for the Unity Engine. The proposed changes included a new "runtime fee," a 20-cent charge to developers every time a player installed a game after it reached 200,000 downloads and $200,000 in revenue. This change would have also taken place retroactively, affecting developers with games already in progress or even released.

The announcement sparked a massive backlash from the developer community, with hundreds of developers releasing statements denouncing Unity and some even calling for Riccitiello's resignation. The uproar led Unity to walk back some of the changes, but for many developers, the damage to Unity's reputation was irreparable.

Riccitiello's tenure at Unity was marked by significant growth for the company, with half of the world's top games being built using its engine. However, the company has never made a profit, losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year. His departure comes at a critical time for Unity, as it works to regain the trust of the developer community and navigate its future direction.

In his farewell message, Riccitiello expressed satisfaction with the achievements made during his time at the company and acknowledged the need for new leadership to shape the company’s path.

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OpenAI to Introduce Major Updates for Developers: Aiming for Lower Costs and Faster Development

OpenAI is reportedly planning to introduce significant updates to its developer tools next month. The updates are aimed at making it cheaper and faster for developers to build software applications based on OpenAI's artificial intelligence models.

Lowering Costs with Memory Storage: One of the key updates includes the addition of memory storage to its developer tools for using AI models. This feature could potentially reduce costs for application makers by as much as 20 times. The introduction of the so-called stateful API will make it cheaper for companies to create applications by remembering the conversation history of inquiries. This could dramatically reduce the amount of usage developers need to pay for. Currently, processing a one-page document using GPT-4 could cost 10 cents, depending on the length and complexity of the input and output.

Expanding Developer Platform with Vision Capabilities: In addition to cost reduction, OpenAI is also expanding its developer platform by introducing vision capabilities that enable image analysis and description. This move is part of OpenAI’s transition from a consumer-focused company to a developer platform.

Unveiling at OpenAI's First Developer Conference: The new features are expected to be rolled out at OpenAI's first-ever developer conference in San Francisco on November 6. The conference is being organized to encourage companies to use OpenAI's technology to build AI-powered chatbots and autonomous agents that can perform tasks without human intervention.

Aiming to Stand Out in the Competitive AI Landscape: OpenAI's updates are part of a broader strategy to grow as a developer-friendly platform and address concerns about cost and competition in the AI landscape. Over $20 billion has been invested in AI startups this year, many of which rely on OpenAI’s technology. OpenAI’s challenge is to distinguish itself from competitors like Google and keep developers engaged and satisfied.

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FTX's Used Python to Misrepresent Insurance Funds

FTX, a once-prominent crypto exchange, has been accused of using Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund. The allegations were made by Gary Wang, FTX's co-founder, during a recent court testimony.

FTX's insurance fund, also known as the "Backstop Fund," was designed to protect user losses in case of significant market fluctuations. The value of this fund was frequently advertised on FTX's website and social media platforms. However, Wang's testimony suggests that the fund's value was not as robust as claimed.

According to Wang, the figure displayed to the public was calculated by multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a random number close to 7,500. This calculation did not reflect the actual amount in the fund. Furthermore, Wang stated that the fund did not contain any FTT (FTX tokens), contrary to what was previously claimed.

Wang also alleged that he and Nishad Singh were prompted by Sam Bankman-Fried, another co-founder of FTX, to implement an "allow_negative" balance feature in the code at FTX. This feature allowed Alameda Research, a company associated with Bankman-Fried, to trade with near-unlimited liquidity on the crypto exchange.

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A 21-Year-Old Computer Science Student’s Groundbreaking Discovery in Ancient Scrolls

A 21-year-old computer science student, Luke Farritor, has become the first person in two millennia to decipher an entire word from an unopened Herculaneum scroll. This discovery, part of the Vesuvius Challenge, has been hailed as a significant step forward in the field of papyrology and digital humanities.

The Herculaneum scrolls, discovered in the 18th century in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, are a collection of more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls. These scrolls were carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which buried the villa and the city of Herculaneum. Despite their preservation, the scrolls are extremely fragile and would disintegrate if physically unrolled.

The Vesuvius Challenge, a competition with $1,000,000 in prizes, was launched to find alternative methods to unlock the secrets of these ancient scrolls using modern technology. The challenge required contestants to find at least 10 letters in a 4 cm2 area in a scroll.

Luke Farritor, an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska, used machine learning to decipher the first word from one of the scrolls, winning $40,000. The word he discovered was "porphyras," the ancient Greek term for "purple". This discovery was made possible by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-resolution X-ray scans, which allowed the scrolls to be virtually unrolled and read.

This discovery is not just a significant achievement in the field of papyrology, but it also opens up new possibilities for the study of ancient civilizations. The Herculaneum scrolls are the only library to survive from antiquity, and most of the texts analyzed so far are written in ancient Greek. The ability to read these scrolls could provide unprecedented insights into ancient civilizations and could dramatically impact our understanding of major historical events.

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