Tesla Semi 🚚, Amazon plans 10k layoffs 🧍, cubesat reaches moon 🛰️

Daily Update 2022-11-15

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Big Tech & Startups

Amazon reportedly plans to lay off about 10,000 employees starting this week (2 minute read)

Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees, one of the largest cuts in the company's history. The layoffs would primarily impact Amazon's devices organization, retail division, and human resources. They represent less than 1% of Amazon's global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees. Amazon had about 1.6 million full- and part-time employees at the beginning of this year.

Tesla to hold rare event for Tesla Semi deliveries on Dec. 1 (2 minute read)

Tesla is planning to hold an event on December 1 for the first Tesla Semi deliveries. The automaker may release more details about the production version of the electric truck at the event. Tesla hasn't officially announced the event, but it has been confirmed by the company's head of investor relations. There will be a random drawing for retail shareholders during the event.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

The first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon has successfully arrived (3 minute read)

The CAPSTONE spacecraft has successfully entered into lunar orbit. It will continue to refine its orbit over the next few days and become the first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon. The cubesat passes within 3,000 km of the lunar surface at its closest point during its roughly week-long orbit. It is 70,000 km away at other points. NASA plans to build a small space station in this orbit later this decade.

Nuclear Fusion Experiment Reveals Unexpected Physics Inside ‘Burning Plasma’ (4 minute read)

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility have created burning plasma, an energized state of matter that is mostly sustained by alpha particles created by fusion reactions. They have also produced self-sustaining fusion reactions, a major breakthrough. Particles inside burning plasma have unexpectedly high energies that could reveal new physics important for achieving robust and reproducible ignition. It will likely still be decades before a fusion reactor is developed, assuming it is possible.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Openblocks (GitHub Repo)

Openblocks is an open-source Retool alternative. It is an all-in-one IDE for creating internal or customer-facing apps. Openblocks features a visual UI builder with over 50 components, a module and query library for reusable components, native connections to a range of databases, JavaScript support everywhere, and more.

xq (GitHub Repo)

xq is a command-line XML and HTML beautifier and content extractor. It features syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and formatting, automatic pagination, and node content extraction.

Shortcut puts your docs, issue tracking, and sprint planning in the same place (Sponsor)

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Miscellaneous

Waymo’s robotaxis are basically mobile weather stations now (3 minute read)

Waymo has been quietly investing in weather research since its early days. The company uses its technology to create a meteorological metric that its autonomous 'Waymo Driver' uses for decision-making. Its robotaxis have gradually become mobile weather stations. Traditional weather stations are mostly located at airports to support aviation safety. Waymo's system is able to show more localized and relevant weather information.

Myocarditis after Covid vaccination: Research on possible long-term risks underway (7 minute read)

A very small number of people in the US have experienced myocarditis after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology. Most have fully recovered. There is no evidence of an increased risk of cardiac-related death from the condition. Myocarditis has long been linked to a number of viral infections. The first research tracking adverse health effects following a diagnosis of vaccine-associated heart problems is underway.

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Quick Links

See why Stream’s chat and activity feed API is trusted by over one billion end users (Sponsor)

Create a free account to discover what makes Stream great. Chat messaging, activity feeds, flexible APIs, enterprise-grade reliability.

The long, solder-heavy way to get root access to a Starlink terminal (2 minute read)

Researchers from Belgium were able to execute arbitrary code on a Starlink User Terminal using a custom-built modchip through a voltage fault injection.

Musk tells Twitter employees they can still receive stock even though the company is private (2 minute read)

Twitter employees may receive stock and options as part of an ongoing compensation plan similar to the one in place at SpaceX.

They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth. That's only the start of the story (6 minute read)

Scientists from Northeastern University in Boston have lab manufactured a material only found in meteorites.

Performance Optimizations Can Have Unexpectedly Large Effects When Combined With Caches (2 minute read)

There is a non-obvious interaction between performance optimizations and LRU/time-limited caching.

SpaceX just bought a big ad campaign on Twitter for Starlink (4 minute read)

SpaceX has ordered one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter to promote Starlink in Spain and Australia.

Rust and C++ Interoperability (16 minute read)

This post explores both directions of integration between Rust and C++.

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Tesla Semi 🚚, Amazon plans 10k layoffs 🧍, cubesat reaches moon 🛰️

Daily Update 2022-11-15

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Apple's VR plans 🌎, Elon's Twitter all-hands 🐦, GPT-4 rumors 🤖

Elon's first Twitter-wide email leaked 📧, reasons behind Meta's layoffs ‍💻, why designs all look the same 👀

Elon considers Twitter paywall 🐦, FTX crypto exchange collapses 📉, partial solution to Riemann Hypothesis 🧠

Meta lays off 11,000 👨‍💻, Twitter payments 💸, GitHub's voice assistant & code search 🤖

LG's stretchable display 🖥️, Twitter's record user growth 📈, next-gen AI coding demo 👨‍💻

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