Article: 8 min

The discovery of a 5,500-year-old Sumerian star map reveals evidence of an ancient asteroid impact event at Köfel in Austria around 3100 BC.

• The star map was discovered in the 650 BC King Ashurbanipal’s underground library in Nineveh.
• It is believed to be the first astronomical instrument, an Astrolabe, with marked units of angle measure inscribed on its rim.
• The map records a massive asteroid strike that occurred around 3100 BC, which was later confirmed by modern computer simulations.
• The asteroid was over a kilometer in diameter and had an Aten type orbit close to Earth’s orbit.
• The impact caused a landslide at Köfel due to the enormous pressures generated but did not create a classic impact crater.

Quality:
The article presents a well-researched and balanced account of the discovery, with references to academic sources.

Article: 11 min

The article discusses the creation of a Mandarin pronunciation training tool using deep learning techniques. The author trained a small CTC model to grade users' pronunciation, focusing on tones which are challenging for non-native speakers due to their relative nature and context-dependency.

• Initial plan was to build a pitch visualiser but found it brittle due to special cases.
• Decided on building a deep learning-based Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system.
• Treated the task as an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) with a Conformer encoder and CTC loss.
• CTC was chosen over sequence-to-sequence models because it outputs probabilities for every frame, forcing alignment without auto-correction.
• Tokenisation used Pinyin syllables + tone to explicitly show pronunciation errors.
• Training involved combining AISHELL-1 and Primewords datasets with SpecAugment augmentation.
• Model parameters were reduced from 75M to 9M while maintaining accuracy.
• Addressed alignment bug by ignoring frames where the model is confident it's seeing silence.

Article: 2 min

NASA's WB-57 aircraft made an emergency landing at Ellington Field in Houston due to a mechanical issue with its landing gear.

• Pilot maintained control during the landing.
• Crew was not harmed.
• NASA spokesperson confirmed all crew are safe.

Quality:
The article provides factual information without sensationalizing the incident.

Article: 15 min

This memo discusses the team's philosophy on adopting AI in software engineering, emphasizing a balanced approach that avoids being overly reliant on the bleeding edge while still staying informed about advancements. It stresses the importance of maintaining accountability for work quality and fostering creativity through thoughtful engagement with AI tools.

• Avoiding the constant pursuit of the bleeding edge to prevent thrashing and security exposure.
• Exploring the frontier through dedicated time, resources, and safe individual initiatives.
• Continuing to own one's work by reviewing everything before asking for others' input or feedback.
• Using AI as a tool for thought-partnership, idea generation, editing, and synthesis rather than replacing deep thinking.
• Leaving room for inspiration in the face of increased productivity from AI.