Apple hardware rentals 🖥️, Amazon's self-driving car 🚗, writing an engineering strategy 👨‍💻

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Daily Update 2023-02-14

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Big Tech & Startups

Amazon’s Self-Driving Car Shuttles People on Public Roads for the First Time (2 minute read)

Amazon's Zoox Inc. carried passengers in its fully autonomous vehicle on public roads for the first time last week. The electric vehicle traveled a mile-long route between two of Zoox's main buildings in Foster City, California. The firm will now operate a shuttle for employees on the same route. It is working to expand its services to the public. Zoox's driverless testing permit, held since September 2020, was extended by California to include the purpose-built robotaxi. Zoox’s robotaxi has no traditional controls or pedals and can carry four passengers split across two inward-facing rows of seats.

Apple hardware subscription would be a big step – raising big questions (6 minute read)

Apple's hardware subscription will likely be a true rental and not an installment purchase scheme. It will probably be bundled with more services and extend to Apple hardware such as the iPad, Mac, and Watch. The hardware subscription might replace the iPhone Upgrade Program. It will give customers flexibility with their devices.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Blue Origin makes a big lunar announcement without any fanfare (2 minute read)

Blue Origin's 'Blue Alchemist' program has created solar cells and electricity transmission wires from simulated lunar soil. Simulated lunar soil is a material that is chemically and mineralogically equivalent to lunar regolith. The solar cells and wires were created using an engineering process called 'Molten Regolith Electrolysis', a technique that can also be used to produce metals for construction, oxygen, and other resources. Blue Origin hopes to market the technology to NASA for use in the Artemis program.

Swallowing this pill-shaped sensor could help you avoid invasive procedures (2 minute read)

A team from Caltech and MIT have developed a new pill-shaped ingestible module containing sensors. The module’s progression through the GI tract can be monitored using electromagnetic fields generated from an external coil. It has been tested in large non-human animals where the accuracy of the system was within 5 to 10 millimeters. Potential applications of the technology include the early identification of constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis. The system can be used at home without needing to go to a doctor or hospital.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Writing an engineering strategy (27 minute read)

This article discusses what engineering strategies are, what they should accomplish, and how an engineering executive can guide that strategy's creation. It covers example engineering strategies, how and when to write an engineering strategy, dealing with undocumented strategies, structuring guiding policies, and more. An engineering strategy involves a theory describing the nature of a challenge, approaches to dealing with the challenge, and a set of specific actions directed by the guiding policy to address the challenge.

Whisper as a Service (GitHub Repo)

Whisper as a Service is a GUI and API for OpenAI Whisper. OpenAI Whisper is a general-purpose speech recognition model. A screenshot of the GUI is available in the repository.

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Miscellaneous

Bigscreen's first VR headset is supposedly the world's smallest (2 minute read)

Bigscreen, known for its virtual social platform, is entering the VR headset market with the Beyond. The device weighs just under 6oz and features two 5K 90Hz OLED displays, six-degrees-of-freedom tracking, three-element pancake optics, and a 93-degree horizontal field of view. It is compatible with SteamVR, Vive and Valve's Index controllers, and full-body trackers. The headset will require at least a quad-core processor and GeForce RTX 2070 or Radeon RX 5700 XT-class graphics. The Beyond is now available for pre-order for $999 and will ship to the US in the third quarter.

Why I chose OpenAI over academia: reflections on the CS academic and industry job markets (14 minute read)

This post talks about Rowan Zellers' decision-making process when he decided to take a risk and turn down all academic job offers to sign an offer with OpenAI. The decision was driven by Zellers' passion for the work at OpenAI and the opportunity to live and work in San Francisco. The post is the second part of a series about job searching. The first part, which is linked, talks about the experience of interviewing for primarily academic jobs.

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Quick Links

Go beyond transcription with Deepgram's all-in-one API for speech understanding (Sponsor)

Extract meaning from conversational audio with Deepgram, the only AI speech platform for true voice intelligence. Use features like Diarization, Summarization, and Topic Detection to make sense of your transcripts. Try it free.

Google Lowering Severance that was Originally Promised (1 minute read)

US staff that were laid off a few weeks ago have had their severance slash by almost half.

React.js: The Documentary - How it All Began (Documentary)

This documentary talks about how React was created, its early development, its introduction into the JavaScript community, how Netflix came to adopt React, and the role that the JavaScript community played in making React the framework it is today.

You will always have more problems than engineers (7 minute read)

There will always be more problems - a better way to measure progress is to ignore the problems and look at what has been achieved.

This biohacking company is using a crypto city to test controversial gene therapies (14 minute read)

Minicircle is conducting trials to try to find the keys to longevity in Próspera, Honduras.

Amazon Is Taking Half of Each Sale From Its Merchants (5 minute read)

Amazon’s average cut of each sale, accounting for commission, fees for warehouse storage, packing, delivery, and advertising, surpassed 50% in 2022.

Twilio to lay off about 1,500 employees, or 17% of its workforce (2 minute read)

Twilio already laid off around 11% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan in September.

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Jobs

Gno.land - Golang Engineer (Fully Remote, $130,000 - $250,000)

Gno.land is hiring a Golang Engineer to create and implement features such as Golang interpreters, libraries, developer tools, and utilities for a Smart Contracts Platform.

Emotech LTD - Senior Product Designer (United Kingdom, $40,000 - $70,000)

Emotech LTD is hiring a Senior Product Designer to guide and inspire teams into finding innovative solutions for an award-winning AI Startup based in London.

Kainos - Agile Team Lead (Birmingham, United Kingdom)

Kainos is hiring an Agile Team Lead to lead deliver high quality solutions that meet client and user needs for a Digital IT Services company.

You may also like to see more jobs or hire through our free job board.

If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us.

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SelfDriving Car Shuttles People generalpurpose speech recognition model new pillshaped ingestible module installment purchase scheme crazy transaction fees driverless testing permit two inwardfacing rows large nonhuman animals gastroesophageal reflux disease iPhone Upgrade Program sophisticated feature set electricity transmission wires simulated lunar soil Blue Alchemist program big lunar announcement example engineering strategies Apple hardware subscription

Apple hardware rentals 🖥️, Amazon's self-driving car 🚗, writing an engineering strategy 👨‍💻

Daily Update 2023-02-14

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Jobs

Key phrases

Older messages

Injection attack on Bing AI 👨‍💻, more Meta layoffs 📉, next-gen language models 🤖

Microsoft CEO's on AI & Google 🤖, SpaceX Starship test 🚀, 1M users with a Google Sheets backend 👨‍💻

Google's AI event disaster 🤖, Sam Altman interview 🧍, Android 14 dev preview 🧑‍💻

Microsoft's AI browser 🤖, Google's "all hands on deck" ✋, Meta cutting managers 👨‍💻

Google's ChatGPT rival 🤖, cloning super cows 🐄, next-gen video AI 🎥

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