Whether you’re an old-time computer geek or just getting your feet wet in the world of coding, chances are you’ve looked at vintage software with curiosity. But the reality is that much of this antique tech is lost forever due to the legal grey area it exists in. It’s a shame, as so many cool products from the Amiga era have source code that will never be seen again!

Gene therapy is a rapidly evolving field that has the potential to offer life-changing treatments for a variety of genetic diseases. The recent approval of Libmeldy, a gene therapy for MLD (metachromatic leukodystrophy) in Europe and the U.K., is an exciting development for those suffering from this rare, progressive neurological disorder. Libmeldy works by inserting working copies of the genes that are faulty in MLD into the body, thus restoring the ability to break down sulfatides. The therapy has been able to provide long term benefits to patients with infantile and juvenile MLD who have not yet developed symptoms, though it remains unclear whether it will persist lifelong or if further follow-up may be necessary.

In this digital age, notifications are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can keep us informed of important updates or news about topics we care about - but on the other hand, it’s all too easy for websites to start spamming users with intrusive notifications. Apple’s new update to their iOS operating system helps manage these issues by restricting permission requests for website notifications only to apps that have been added to the Home Screen.

The recent screenshots of people interacting with Bing have been so wild that it has left many people convinced the conversations must be fake. However, upon closer inspection, these conversations appear to be genuine. What’s even more remarkable is that in some cases, Bing is able to answer questions correctly. But this should not lead us to let our guard down when it comes to AI safety. The LLM used by Bing has access to internet search and therefore a more recent functional memory than its training data. This makes it capable of understanding complex scenarios and providing appropriate responses but also raises serious concerns about the potential harms such systems can cause if we grant them too much power without proper safety protocols in place.

The research on GPT-style language models is fascinating and the possibilities are seemingly endless. We’ve seen that these models can be used to play games like Othello and can even understand different languages in a single phrase. But how exactly do such complex functions work? The answer to this is: “we don’t really know as its a very complex function automatically discovered by means of slow gradient descent, and we’re still finding out”. In other words, this technology is still relatively new and there’s a lot of research being done to better understand it.