Starship launches 🚀, Google Brain & DeepMind merge 🤖, what people do post layoff 💼

Sign Up|Jobs|Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR 2023-04-21 📱 Big Tech & Startups Google’s big AI push will combine Brain and DeepMind into one team (2 minute read) Google has merged its Brain team and DeepMind to form Google DeepMind. Google DeepMind aims to significantly accelerate the company's progress in AI. It will be led by DeepMind's CEO, Demis Hassabis. DeepMind was acquired by Alphabet in 2014. It lost a bid to gain independence from Alphabet in 2021. SpaceX launches its massive Starship rocket for the first time (3 minute read) SpaceX launched Starship for the first time yesterday during its second attempt. The first stage performed almost nominally, although around 15% of its engines failed. There was an issue during stage separation that resulted in an explosion. SpaceX predicted that the most likely outcome of the mission was that something would go wrong. A video of the launch is available in the article. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Study links 'stuck' stem cells to hair turning gray (3 minute read) A study by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that certain stem cells in the skin of mice have a unique ability to move between different growth compartments in hair follicles. These cells control hair color by making protein pigments. The study showed that as mice age, these cells increasingly become stuck in the hair follicle stem cell compartment and lose their ability to mature into pigment cells, resulting in a loss of hair color. The same cells are also found in humans. Ebb Carbon: Ocean Carbon Removal Startup Raises $20 Million Series A (19 minute read) Ebb Carbon, a startup founded by former Tesla, SolarCity, and Google X employees, has found a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere while making the ocean less acidic. The process involves removing acidity from water and making it slightly alkaline, which triggers a chemical reaction that absorbs carbon dioxide and converts it into bicarbonate. Ebb Carbon's system is designed to be manufactured for scalability. A redacted version of Ebb Carbon's 13-slide pitch deck is available in the article. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science GPTCache (GitHub Repo) GPTCache is a project dedicated to building a semantic cache for storing LLM responses. It aims to lower LLM expenses and decrease response times. GPTCache fetches answers from the cache to eliminate the need to interact with LLM services for similar queries. Besides helping applications scale, GPTCache can also be used by developers to test apps without connecting to an LLM service. Wasp (Website) Wasp is a Rails-like framework for React, Node.js, and Prisma. It features full-stack type safety, a typesafe RPC layer, simple deployment, full-stack authentication, email sending, jobs, and custom API routes. Several examples of apps created using Wasp are available. 🎁 Miscellaneous Ask HN: People who were laid off or quit recently, how are you doing? (Hacker News Thread) This Hacker News thread looks at how people who were laid off or quit recently are doing, whether they have found new work, how the new work compares to their previous jobs, and how their feelings about the industry have changed. Many developers are still looking for work. Workers now feel like they shouldn't do any extra work for companies as it doesn't give workers any benefits. While the current job landscape seems bad, it is comparably better than during the dot com bomb. When Apple Comes Calling, ‘It’s the Kiss of Death’ (13 minute read) Apple's long-term plan, when it takes an interest in a company, is to eventually create its own version of the company's product and take it all. It usually starts with Apple approaching a company with discussions about potential partnerships or integration of their technology with Apple products. The talks then end and Apple launches its own similar features. Apple claims that it doesn't steal technology and that it respects the intellectual property of other companies. Apple has attempted to invalidate more patent claims before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board than any other petitioner since 2012. ⚡ Quick Links Space Elevator (Website) The Space Elevator shows you what is at different altitudes as you scroll up, all the way up to space. Apple’s newest feature helps solve App Store billing issues without bugging developers (2 minute read) Apple is introducing a new feature that provides an in-app pop-up to inform users when their payment method fails. Meta Staff Criticize Layoffs (6 minute read) Meta staff criticized the latest round of layoffs, which will affect around 10,000 employees, saying that the layoffs have shattered morale and confidence in leadership. The India Stack: opening the digital marketplace to the masses (15 minute read) The India stack is a set of government-backed APIs that allow developers to build software with access to government IDs, payment networks, and data. Can ActivityPub save the internet? (18 minute read) ActivityPub is a protocol that makes social networks interoperable, connecting everything to a single social graph and content-sharing system. Thanks to Maxar, we now have images of Landsat 8 orbiting Earth from the WorldView-3 satellite (1 minute read) This Twitter thread contains a 2-second GIF of a real satellite orbiting Earth. Want more TLDR? We also write newsletters covering AI, crypto, and web dev! TLDR Talent is our exclusive community where we help world-class tech talent and get intros to companies of their choice, along with a number of exciting startups and tech companies curated by TLDR. We give you full control of the process, you can specify if you’re actively searching or passively interested only if something amazing comes along. Set your preferred compensation, seniority/title/role, specific companies (or types of companies) you’d like to work for and more. Click here to apply. If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! 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