DALL-E launches API 🖼️, Twitter locks offices 🐦, Amazon hiring freeze 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2022-11-04

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Big Tech & Startups

Elon Musk bars Twitter employees from the company's offices in the run up to layoffs, unless staff are working on one of his 'critical' projects (2 minute read)

Twitter offices are closed to employees except for those directly working on 'Elon critical' projects. The company sent out an email on Thursday evening to employees informing them that there will be layoffs on Friday. Employees that are being let go will be informed by an email sent to their personal inbox. Twitter will reportedly let go of more than 3,700 employees, around half of its workforce.

Smart home firms hype Matter launch — with lots of caveats and promises (5 minute read)

The Matter standard was recently launched at the Connectivity Standards Alliance's Matter Launch Event in Amsterdam. More than 190 devices have been certified for Matter since the standard was finalized in October. This article highlights some of the announcements and devices shown off by companies like Amazon, Samsung, Hue, Eve, and Aqara at the event. Most companies announced more new products with Matter support than updates to existing products.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

The Sci-Fi Dream of a ‘Molecular Computer’ Is Getting More Real (3 minute read)

Scientists believe that tiny molecular versions of the Turing machine could help make new drugs or materials with precise traits. Cells already have a natural form of this and can turn sequences of mRNA into proteins. There are no working examples of molecular computers, but experiments have shown that the fundamental processes of physics and chemistry can be used to relay information at the molecular level. The current 'read' processes are still very slow and scientists still haven't developed techniques for fabricating new materials at that scale.

Scientists zap clouds with electricity to make them rain (1 minute read)

New experiments show that zapping clouds with electricity can alter droplet sizes in fog and potentially help clouds to rain. The effect can be observed whether zapping fog with positive or negative charges. Electric charges can slow evaporation. These findings could be used in dry regions of the world to encourage clouds to release rain.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

jc (GitHub Repo)

jc is a command-line tool and Python library that can convert the output of many CLI tools, file types, and common strings into JSON for easier parsing in scripts. It can be used in piped commands for further command-line processing of outputs. If used as a Python library, jc outputs either a Python dictionary, a list of dictionaries, or a lazy iterable of dictionaries.

OpenAI opens up AI text-to-image generation to businesses with launch of DALL-E API (3 minute read)

OpenAI has launched a DALL-E API in a public beta. The API makes it easier for companies to add DALL-E's text-to-image functionality to their products. It will be rate-limited to begin with. Customers will not be vetted for how they will use the technology. There are three resolution tiers and customers will be charged per image generated.

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Miscellaneous

Amazon pauses hiring for corporate workforce (2 minute read)

Amazon is freezing hiring for corporate roles in all of its businesses. It recently announced a hiring freeze for its retail business and it has expanded the freeze due to a worsening economic outlook. The pause will be in place for at least the next few months. Amazon will continue to hire for some targeted areas and to replace employees who leave.

Early career advice (3 minute read)

This article presents a list of tips for people early in their careers. The tips are not in any particular order and they cover a wide range of topics. Examples include building combinations of competencies that are not usually found in one person, understanding the various career paths, and using public communications to force faster growth.

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Quick Links

Twitter Had a Plan to Fix Social Media. Will Elon Musk Follow It? (3 minute read)

Musk still needs to turn Twitter into a profitable business.

The Case for JPEG XL (14 minute read)

JPEG XL brings many benefits without introducing regression in other areas.

Stripe plans to lay off 14% of workers (6 minute read)

Affected staff will receive 14 weeks of severance pay, their 2022 annual bonuses, pay for all unused paid time off, the cash equivalent of 6 months of existing healthcare premiums, accelerated vesting, and career and immigration support.

Is There Too Much CSS Now? (6 minute read)

CSS might be branching out into areas it is not quite suitable for.

Decentralized social network Mastodon grows to 655K users in wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover (3 minute read)

Mastodon saw a record number of downloads for its mobile app this past weekend.

The Most Vulnerable Place on the Internet (4 minute read)

Over 550 fragile subsea internet cables around the world form a large part of the internet's backbone.

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DALL-E launches API 🖼️, Twitter locks offices 🐦, Amazon hiring freeze 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2022-11-04

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Apple hiring freeze 📱, Elon's $56B paycheck 💰, running out of C++ devs 👨‍💻

Twitter's super subscription 🐦, Google ends Hangouts 💬, building a perfect memory 🧠

Elon reboots Vine 📱, reinventing the browser 🌎, what devs 30 years ago did 👨‍💻

Elon's Twitter takeover 🐦, iPhone 15 may ditch buttons 📱, what your manager doesn't know 👨‍💻

Musk buys Twitter 🐦, Apple's app store crackdown 📱, deep dive into Redis 👨‍💻

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