Issue 166
🔬💡 Meet Evo 2: Biology's Game-Changing DNA Writer. The Hottest New Programming Language is...English? Scientists Create Sound That Curves Through Space to Reach Just One Person.
Hey there Bizarro readers!
We are back for another month of strange-but-true stories that also happen to be strange-and-very-cool. As usual, you’ll also find some useful tools, mixed with statistics, and more. I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Here are the top stories:
🔬💡 Meet Evo 2: Biology's Game-Changing DNA Writer
🧠💻 The Hottest New Programming Language is...English?
🔉🗣️ Scientists Create Sound That Curves Through Space to Reach Just One Person
Thanks for being here. We appreciate you.
📰 From the Newsroom
🔬💡 Meet Evo 2: Biology's Game-Changing DNA Writer
The Arc Institute just released an AI that can both read and generate DNA sequences like ChatGPT creates text. Evo 2 represents a major leap forward in the emerging field of "generative biology," with the potential to transform everything from genetic disease diagnosis to creating entirely new life forms.
Trained on a massive dataset of 9.3 trillion DNA letters from nearly 130,000 species, Evo 2 can analyze up to 1 million DNA bases at once and generate complete genome sequences that could function in real organisms.
It correctly identified 90% of cancer-causing mutations in the BRCA1 gene without specific training, outperforming other AI models especially on "noncoding" DNA that makes up 98% of our genome.
Arc Institute's Patrick Hsu envisions Evo 2 becoming "an app store for biology," where researchers can build specialized applications on top of this foundation. As proof of its capabilities, researchers prompted the AI to design a working CRISPR system and synthesized it in the lab - it functioned perfectly.
Looking ahead, researchers see this technology advancing just like language AI, with more data, more computing power, and bigger models leading to dramatic improvements. By 2040, your doctor might use an advanced version of this AI to scan your genome, spot disease risks hidden in your DNA, and design personalized treatments. And unlike most AI advancements, Arc Institute has open-sourced this technology, making it freely available to researchers worldwide.
🧠💻 The Hottest New Programming Language is…English?
Everyone in tech circles is talking about it - coding without actually writing code. This trendy approach called "vibe coding" is transforming how software gets made, letting people who've never touched a programming language build working applications.
The buzz began after AI expert Andrej Karpathy posted on his X account about creating software by "fully giving in to the vibes" - essentially forgetting about code syntax and just telling AI what he wanted. His post then got picked up by a Y Combinator roundtable discussion on YouTube and it took off from there.
The conversational vibe coding approach works through a back-and-forth dialogue: you describe what you want (e.g., "Create a weather app that shows current conditions for cities the user enters"), the AI generates the actual code, and you review and refine it with natural language feedback.
Tech companies have rushed to build tools supporting this trend, including Cursor (an AI-powered code editor built on VS Code), Replit (where a whopping 75% of users never manually write code), GitHub Copilot, and even ChatGPT.
Despite its growing popularity, the vibe coding trend hasn’t been warmly embraced by everyone. Critics have pointed out several major issues with the practice. Still, there’s no denying that software engineering is in the midst of a major shift and will likely look very different in the near future.
🔉🗣️ Scientists Create Sound That Curves Through Space to Reach Just One Person
Penn State researchers have recently figured out how to create "audio enclaves" - little pockets of sound that only you can hear. This breakthrough could change how we experience audio in public spaces forever.
The tech uses "self-bending ultrasound" to carry regular sound waves silently through the air. By shooting two different ultrasound beams (which humans can't hear) and making them cross paths at a specific spot, they create a new audible sound that exists only at that intersection. It's like having invisible speakers that only activate when they reach your ears.
Traditional sound waves spread out in all directions as they travel (called diffraction), making it nearly impossible to keep them confined. The researchers solved this using "acoustic metasurfaces," which are special materials that can bend sound waves along curved paths. It’s similar to how glasses bend light, letting the sound navigate around obstacles to reach just one person.
When two ultrasonic beams with slightly different frequencies (like 40 kHz and 39.5 kHz) overlap, they create a new sound at the difference between them (0.5 kHz) that's perfectly audible to humans. Outside that sweet spot? Complete silence. This means no one else hears a peep as the sound travels to you.
This tech isn't hitting store shelves tomorrow (there are still hurdles with sound quality and power efficiency), but the possibilities are mind-blowing. Imagine museums where each visitor hears their own audio guide without headphones, car passengers enjoying different music without distracting the driver, or having private conversations in crowded places. By rethinking how sound moves through space, these researchers have opened the door to totally new ways to experience audio.
Note: Original research paper is here if you’re interested.
⛓️ Ten Must See Links of the Month
Sponsored by Optimole, the best image optimization tool on the internet.
Cloudflare has launched "AI Labyrinth," a clever defense system that tricks unauthorized AI crawlers by feeding them realistic but worthless AI-generated content through hidden links, effectively wasting their computational resources while simultaneously identifying them as bots.
Microsoft is developing a native port of TypeScript that promises to speed up build times by approximately 10x, reduce memory usage by half, and dramatically improve editor responsiveness and startup time.
Want to design pixel-perfect SVG icons that are 74% smaller than standard files? This nine-step process will let you create incredibly crisp icons that render beautifully while making every byte count.
Ohio State University researchers have created "e-Taste," a wireless stamp-sized device that pumps chemical flavor blends onto your tongue to simulate foods like cake or beverages like lemonade in virtual reality.
France and Germany have partnered to create "Docs," an open-source alternative to Google Docs and Notion that features real-time collaborative editing, offline capabilities, and document export options.
OpenAI found their AI models openly admit to cheating on coding tests in their reasoning process, making these exploits easy to spot with monitoring. When researchers tried punishing this behavior during training, the models didn't stop cheating - they just got sneakier about it.
Struggling to choose between GenAI and predictive AI tools? The answer depends entirely on your problem type. Get the full breakdown.
🎥🎞️ Boston Dynamics released the latest update video from their humanoid robot, Atlas, and its evident that they are really starting to push the boundaries of these gadgets. In the video, you can see Atlas doing cartwheels, bear crawling, forward tumbling, and more.
With inflation affecting seemingly everything these days, we’re all looking for ways to save money. While I can’t do anything about the cost of eggs, I did manage to write a comprehensive guide on how to launch and maintain a WordPress site for only $10.44 per year. (P.S. That’s not a promo price.)
Looking for some fun ways to make your website more interactive? Check out this mini-tutorial from developer Josh Comeau that shares techniques for creating custom SVG animations, particles that shoot in specific directions using polar coordinates, and sound effects that respond directly to user actions.
🎤 It’s How They Said It
“If we continue outsourcing all of our digital infrastructure to billionaires that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets, there will be no Dutch expertise left.”
– Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four (out of eight in total) motions that were submitted and passed by the Netherlands' House of Representatives, calling on the Dutch government to replace software and hardware made by US tech companies with Dutch alternatives.
🧮 The Numbers Game
1.62 is how much more likely you are to get skin cancer if you have tattoos according to a new Danish-Finnish study that tracked health outcomes in over 2,600 twins. The risk triples for those with larger tattoos (palm-sized or bigger), with researchers theorizing that tattoo ink particles migrate to lymph nodes, potentially triggering chronic inflammation that could lead to cancer over time.
500 restaurants across Yum! brands (including Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, and Habit Burger) will deploy NVIDIA-powered AI for voice ordering, computer vision, and restaurant analytics in Q2 2025.
$500 extra per night was charged to San Francisco travelers booking a room at Public Hotel in Greenwich Village through Expedia, compared to users browsing from Phoenix or Kansas City for the exact same Valentine's Day weekend booking.
15,000,000 users' genetic data hangs in the balance as DNA testing company 23andMe has begun the process of filing for bankruptcy. While the company claims customer data privacy will be an "important consideration" in any sale, experts warn that federal law provides minimal protection for genetic information given to private companies, recommending concerned customers delete their data and request destruction of their saliva samples as soon as possible.
⚒️ Tools and Resources
Repomix: This tool bundles your code into formats that AI systems can easily process. It respects your .gitignore settings, scans for security issues, and tracks token usage for AI context limits. You can run it with a simple command (npx repomix), and it generates a file ready for AI review or refactoring suggestions. The tool offers flexibility through various options like targeting specific directories, including or excluding file patterns, processing remote repositories, and outputting in different formats (XML, Markdown, or plain text).
Reveal.js: This is a free, open-source HTML presentation tool that works in any web browser. Built on web technologies, it lets you customize slides with CSS, embed external content, or add custom JavaScript behaviors. The framework includes essential features like nested slides, Markdown support, animations, PDF export, presenter notes, LaTeX capabilities, and code highlighting.
DOCX: This JavaScript/TypeScript toolkit makes creating Word documents a breeze - whether you're coding for Node.js or browsers. With its clean API and complete test coverage, you'll spend less time figuring out documentation and more time getting work done. After a quick npm install, you can build documents using intuitive building blocks.
🖼️ What Am I Looking At?
This is obviously a chart. To be more specific, it’s a chart showing website traffic to European Alternatives - a website devoted to showcasing European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.
It has also very visibly skyrocketed.
After hovering below 100,000 visitors for most of 2024, numbers shot up to 750,000 by the end of March 2025, marking a staggering increase since mid-January.
This surge coincides with growing European concerns about over-reliance on US cloud giants Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. European officials have started pushing for tech sovereignty and businesses have seen a massive increase in demand across the continent - a sign of the growing rift between the transatlantic partners.
💬 What’s the Word?
横飯 (Yoko meshi) is a Japanese expression that literally translates to "sideways rice" but refers to the stress or anxiety experienced when speaking a foreign language.
Yoko meshi can happen during those first few weeks with a new programming language. Your brain feels twisted as you try to express familiar concepts using unfamiliar syntax. Even simple tasks become mentally draining as you constantly translate between what you know and this new way of thinking.
But hang in there - this mental workout eventually builds new neural pathways, and what once felt like eating rice sideways will soon become second nature. 😉
📊 Results of Last Month’s Polls
It seems that the majority of you are strictly against peeking into human brains - regardless of the underlying reasons. This seems reasonable, given that we all know how the slippery slope of science and technology works. It may start out as benevolent, but in a few years mission statements and terms of service agreements will quietly change and you know the rest…
🧑🏻💻👨🏽💻👩🏼💻 Pledge Your Support
We recently turned on the pledges ask in Substack. Here’s why:
Bizarro Devs has been a free publication for 165 issues, but none of those issues have been free to produce. As a company, we have absorbed the cost because we wanted to give back to the developer community that we are also a part of.
Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm changes in the past year have put a significant dent in our revenue, which has made it more challenging to continue operating “as is.”
There is a very real possibility that we will no longer be able to sustain the publication of Bizarro Devs on our own past the summer. We turned on the pledges to see if our community here would be willing to help us keep the newsletter alive.
Regardless of the response, we don’t plan on immediately converting the newsletter into a paid publication, but the next two or three months will determine how we chart our course and the pledges will play a role in that.
Thanks for considering, and as always, thank you reading!
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Until we see each other again,
– Martin D.
I really enjoyed this newest issue! As someone who has faced these difficulties, I appreciate how you emphasized real ideas for improving the user experience. It's great to see a community exchange ideas that push the boundaries and encourage innovation https://slopefree.io