Good morning! This is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.

In today's Techpresso:

🚗 Tesla to launch robotaxi service in June

🚀 NASA's asteroid samples contain the 'building blocks of life'

💥 DeepSeek exposed internal database containing chat histories and sensitive data

🤗 Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook cool again

🤖 Alibaba introduces Qwen 2.5 AI model, claims it surpasses DeepSeek

📞 Vodafone achieves first satellite video call using standard mobile phone

🎁 + 13 other news you might like

🔮 + 4 handpicked research papers and tools

🚗 Tesla to launch robotaxi service in June LINK

Tesla plans to launch a robotaxi service in June using a fleet of company-owned vehicles that will operate without a driver behind the wheel, according to CEO Elon Musk.

The company has faced criticism for delaying fully autonomous vehicle promises, but it has now shortened the timeline for delivering such technology, with recent testing involving unsupervised driving on private roads.

Tesla's autonomous driving technology relies solely on cameras and does not use lidar, which has led to concerns about its safety and effectiveness, especially in challenging conditions like wet roads and sunlight glare.

🚀 NASA's asteroid samples contain the 'building blocks of life' LINK

NASA's Osiris-Rex mission retrieved 122 grams of material from the asteroid Bennu, marking the largest sample collected beyond the moon, and revealed essential compounds for life.

The research found amino acids and nitrogen-rich compounds, suggesting that life's building blocks possibly originated from asteroids impacting early Earth.

The study indicates that Bennu's parent body once had underground lakes or oceans, with water evaporating and leaving behind sodium-rich salts, crucial for the development of life.

💥 DeepSeek exposed internal database containing chat histories and sensitive data LINK

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, had an unprotected database leaking sensitive data like user chat histories and API keys to the public internet.

Security experts from Wiz discovered the database vulnerability, informed DeepSeek, and the company promptly took the database offline to secure it.

It remains unclear if anyone besides Wiz accessed the exposed data or how long it was accessible before being secured, and DeepSeek has not commented on the incident.

🤗 Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook cool again LINK

Mark Zuckerberg is planning significant changes to Facebook to recapture its original appeal, aiming to make it more culturally influential for its three billion monthly users.

He indicated that this transformation will be a major focus for the company over the next year, possibly affecting short-term business outcomes to prioritize necessary product enhancements.

Zuckerberg emphasized that the goal is to explore new directions in product development without removing modern features, as highlighted by the increased user engagement with video content on the platform.

🤖 Alibaba introduces Qwen 2.5 AI model, claims it surpasses DeepSeek LINK

Alibaba has unveiled its new AI model, Qwen 2.5 Max, which it claims outperforms AI systems from competitors like DeepSeek, OpenAI, and Meta in performance metrics.

DeepSeek, a rapidly growing company from Hangzhou, has significantly influenced market dynamics with its competitively priced AI models, prompting reactions from major tech firms in China.

Price reductions across the AI industry, initiated by DeepSeek's aggressive pricing strategy, have led Alibaba to cut its fees by up to 97% on selected models to maintain its competitive edge.

📞 Vodafone achieves first satellite video call using standard mobile phone LINK

Vodafone has claimed the "world's first" satellite video call using a standard mobile phone through AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird satellites, providing 4G/5G broadband signals from space to remote areas.

The demonstration involved a call from a signal-less mountain region in Wales, where BlueBird satellites connected directly to a regular smartphone, though video quality included low resolution and lag.

While other networks like Starlink have achieved similar feats, Vodafone's service aims to offer a comprehensive mobile broadband experience by 2025, with testing in the US planned for spring.

Other news you might like

• AI creations edited by humans can likely be copyrighted in US, agency says LINK

• SoftBank in talks to invest as much as $25B in OpenAI, report says LINK

• Anthropic’s CEO says DeepSeek shows US export rules are working LINK

• Mark Zuckerberg says Meta isn’t worried about DeepSeek LINK

• India IT minister praises DeepSeek's low-cost AI, compares it with own investment approach LINK

• Facebook admits that the Linux topic crackdown was 'in error' and has been fixed LINK

• Gemini can now do more complex data analysis in Google Sheets LINK

• Microsoft brings a DeepSeek model to its cloud LINK

• DeepSeek gets removed from Apple and Google app stores in Italy amid GDPR and privacy probe LINK

• Meta’s Reality Labs posts $5 billion loss in fourth quarter LINK

• Waymo reportedly testing robotaxis in 10 new cities in 2025 LINK

• Lawsuit accuses Amazon of secretly tracking consumers through cellphones LINK

Latest research and tools

GITHUB • 345 points View Source
SmolGPT: A minimal PyTorch implementation for training a small LLM from scratch: SmolGPT: a minimal PyTorch tool for training a small language model from scratch, ideal for educational use with efficient training and sampling techniques.

GITHUB • 161 points View Source
Mathesar – an intutive spreadsheet-like interface to Postgres data: Mathesar: an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface that enables users of all technical levels to view, edit, query, and collaborate on Postgres data directly—self hosted, with native Postgres access control.

GITHUB • 148 points View Source
Blueskyfeedbot: Post RSS Feeds to Bluesky via GitHub Actions: Blueskyfeedbot: a bot that posts RSS feeds to Bluesky using GitHub Actions and requires setting up an app password and repository secret for operation.

GITHUB • 72 points View Source
Keymapper: A cross-platform context-aware key remapper: Keymapper: a cross-platform context-aware key remapper that allows users to redefine keyboard layouts and shortcuts for system-wide or individual applications, manage shortcuts from a single file, and control configurations from external applications.

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