Apple's new HomePod 🔊, Instagram Reels API 📱, is remote work here to stay 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Apple is resurrecting its high-end HomePod smart speaker (3 minute read)

Apple is releasing a new version of its HomePod smart speaker in 2023. The new HomePod will feature an S8 processor, an updated display, and possibly even multi-touch functionality. Apple discontinued the HomePod last year to focus on the HomePod Mini, leaving a hole in Apple's speaker lineup. It is unclear why Apple is bringing back the HomePod after officially announcing its discontinuation.

Meta introduces Instagram Reels APIs for developers (3 minute read)

Meta is releasing its Reels API to developers starting tomorrow. The API will be able to schedule Reels and get social interaction metrics. It will also allow developers to reply, delete, hide/unhide, and disable/enable comments on Reels. The API will be available for the current version and all previous versions of the Instagram Graph API. Developers with access to applicable APIs will not have to put their apps through additional App Reviews.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Dangerous viruses 'hitchhike' on microplastics to survive in freshwater (3 minute read)

A team of researchers proved that viruses can survive and remain contagious by attaching themselves to plastics in water. Microplastics are everywhere, including in our food, drinking water, and air. They are able to shield themselves from damaging elements such as UV light by attaching to microplastic surfaces. The discovery questions the impact on human health that microplastics have.

Octopus and human brains share the same “jumping genes” (3 minute read)

Researchers in Italy studying octopus brains found that octopus brains have active transposons, also known as jumping genes. Transposons help the DNA inside the nucleus of cells cut or copy and paste into different regions of the genome. Some of the transposons are similar to transposons that are active in the human brain. The similarities between the human brain and the octopus brain can be explained by convergent evolution.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

PRQL (GitHub Repo)

PRQL is a readable, explicit, and declarative language for transforming data. It can form a logical pipeline of transformations and support abstractions. PRQL can be used with any database that uses SQL.

My Wonderful HTML Email Workflow (10 minute read)

Building an HTML email from scratch can be a gnarly adventure as email clients don't support modern luxuries like CSS, Grid, or Flexbox. This article describes a system for creating HTML emails. The system converts Markdown and custom React components into HTML that can be pasted into a newsletter tool. An example email made using the system is available.

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Miscellaneous

Fortnite creators are making studios to build ambitious — and branded — worlds (6 minute read)

Several companies are now creating unique experiences for Fortnite. Making these Fortnite Creative maps can be very lucrative, with projects ranging between four to six figures. Players are now spending about half of their Fortnite play time in Creative maps. Epic is planning to improve its creative tools and introduce more monetization tools. It plans to release the Unreal Editor for Fortnite later this year.

Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking? (Hacker News Thread)

This Hacker News thread discusses current trends in remote vs in-person work. People are getting more fully-remote job offers from recruiters, even if they are looking for in-person work. There is a big difference between working remotely for a small startup or company compared to large companies. Software engineers are in very high demand, so many are able to pick and choose which positions they want to take.

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Quick Links

Rivian opens its first three 'Adventure Network' fast charging sites (2 minute read)

Rivian's network of Level 3 fast DC chargers will be accessible to nearly every other EV on the road.

This super-tree could help feed the world and fight climate change (9 minute read)

Pongamia is a tropical tree that can grow on just about any land without pesticides or irrigation while producing beans packed with protein and oil.

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Tesla reportedly doesn’t have enough desks after Musk threatens to fire remote employees (3 minute read)

Employees returning to work at Tesla's Fremont facility came back to a lack of parking spots, no desk to sit at, and crappy Wi-Fi.

Google’s powerful AI spotlights a human cognitive glitch (5 minute read)

Humans associate fluent expression with fluent thought, leading to a misunderstanding that AI models can think and feel just like humans do.

Wild turtles age slowly. Some basically don’t age at all (4 minute read)

Several species of turtle essentially don't age at all in the wild.

Inverse Scaling Prize (GitHub Repo)

Win up to $100,000 for finding an important task where larger language models do worse.

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Apple's new HomePod 🔊, Instagram Reels API 📱, is remote work here to stay 👨‍💻

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SpaceX Super Heavy rocket 🚀, Apple's game-changing VR headset 🥽, certifications that help careers 👨‍💻

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Brave customizable search engine 🔎, StackOverflow dev survey 👨‍💻, building a $1M open source SaaS 📈

Amazon autonomous robot 🤖, GitHub Copilot launch 👨‍💻, levitating objects with sound waves 🔊

Zuckerberg demos VR headsets 🥽, Tesla Enhanced Autopilot 🚗, crypto's use cases 🪙

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