Google's robot assistant 🤖, reviving extinct species 🦣, Apple orders back to office 👨‍💻

📱

Big Tech & Startups

Google is teaching robots to think for themselves (4 minute read)

PaLM-SayCan is a language model from Google that gives robots a broader understanding of the world. It allows robots to respond to complex human requests. Google aims to explore and understand the capabilities robots can provide before developing a robot for commercial release. It is unlikely to release a robot anytime soon. Examples of commands that PaLM-SayCan can process are available in the article.

Microsoft Dev Box now ready for developers to try cloud-powered workstations (2 minute read)

Microsoft has opened up a preview version of its Microsoft Dev Box cloud-powered workstations to developers. Microsoft Dev Box is a service that allows developers to spin up powerful cloud PCs for testing applications. Its workstations can be configured to have up to 32 virtual CPUs and 128GB of RAM. They can be accessed from anywhere using a modern browser. Microsoft plans to charge users on a per-hour basis for compute and storage. More details about Microsoft Dev Box are available in the article.

🚀

Science & Futuristic Technology

Researchers change blood type of kidney in transplant breakthrough (3 minute read)

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have successfully altered the blood type of three donor kidneys. They flushed the kidneys with blood infused with an enzyme that removed blood type markers from the blood vessels of the kidneys, converting them to blood type O. The technology could significantly increase the number of kidneys available for patients who need them. One of the biggest restrictions to kidney transplantations is blood-type compatibility.

De-extinction company sets its next (first?) target: The thylacine (11 minute read)

A company called Colossal has partnered with an Australian lab to de-extinct the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian Tiger. The plan involves obtaining thylacine genomes, identifying key differences between those genomes and related lineages, and then editing those differences into marsupial stem cells and using those stem cells for IVF. The project faces significant hurdles, but many factors make thylacine de-extinction more likely to be successful than mammoth de-extinction.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Why React Re-Renders (10 minute read)

Many developers work professionally with React for years without understanding how its re-rendering process works. This tutorial helps readers build a mental model for when and why React re-renders and how to tell why a specific component re-rendered. Knowing how React's render cycle works can help developers understand how to use React.memo and when to wrap functions in useCallback.

JSON Convert (GitHub Repo)

JSON Convert is a command-line tool that converts the output of popular command-line tools, file types, and common strings to JSON, YAML, or Dictionaries. The output can be piped into other tools or scripts. JSON Convert can be used as a Python library. It is available as an Ansible filter plugin.

Python tutorial: Start working with time-series data in InfluxDB (Sponsor)

If your data changes every minute, MySQL isn’t going to cut it. Learn how to level up your time-series data analysis with a time-series database. This article covers how to set up open-source InfluxDB using Python, read and write data, and how to handle updates. We’ll be using stock data from the Yahoo API. Read the guide and get the source code

🎁

Miscellaneous

Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends (15 minute read)

This article talks about different social media platforms and three common trends between them. Platforms are shifting towards ever more immersive mediums. There is increasing use of algorithms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Interaction models are changing from user-directed to computer-controlled. These trends are likely intertwined.

Apple tells employees to work at the office three times per week starting in September (1 minute read)

Apple employees working in Santa Clara County will be expected to work at the office three times a week starting in September. The company's culture has always heavily emphasized in-person meetings and demos. Employees will be asked to go to the office on Tuesday and Thursday. Individual teams will pick an additional third day for in-person work.

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Quick Links

6 Docker Compose Best Practices for Dev and Prod (6 minute read)

This article discusses the best practices of Docker Compose for development and production.

Cops Use Newborn Baby's DNA to Nail Dad for Crime from the 90s (2 minute read)

Police from New Jersey used DNA taken from a newborn infant's blood sample to arrest the child's father for a sexual assault committed in 1996.

krunvm (GitHub Repo)

krunvm is a CLI-based utility for creating microVMs from OCI images.

Oracle begins auditing TikTok's algorithms (3 minute read)

Oracle is vetting TikTok's algorithms and content moderation models to ensure they aren't manipulated by Chinese authorities.

American Airlines places order for 20 supersonic jets from Boom Supersonic (3 minute read)

American Airlines is betting on the return of ultra-fast air travel in just two years.

Karafka (GitHub Repo)

Karafka is a Ruby and Rails multi-threaded efficient Kafka processing framework.

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Google's robot assistant 🤖, reviving extinct species 🦣, Apple orders back to office 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2022-08-17

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

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Android 13 📱, a16z gives WeWork founder $350M 🏠, Deno integrates NPM 👨‍💻

Apple asked for Meta's ad revenue 📱, open source DALL-E competitor 🖼️, next-gen terminal for devs 👨‍💻

Google Search games 🎮, Xiaomi humanoid robot 🤖, no-code vs. developers 👨‍💻

AirPods switch to USB-C ⚡, $20B Unity acquisition offer 🎮, Meta's new CFO 👩🏻

Samsung Galaxy event📱, Google Fiber expands 🌐, how teens use social media 🧒

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