Tesla's first Cybertruck 🛻, Threads engagement dropping 📉, common design patterns at Stripe 👨‍💻

Sign Up|Jobs|Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With  TLDR 2023-07-17 The window to invest in this exciting Smart Home startup is closing soon! (Sponsor) Ring 一 Acquired by Amazon for $1.2B Nest 一 Acquired by Google for $3.2B ➡️ If you missed out on these spectacular early investments in the Smart Home space, here’s your chance to grab hold of the next one. RYSE is the tech firm that’s poised to dominate the Smart Shades market (growing at an astonishing 55% annually), and their public $1/share offering is closing next week! They’ve just secured their first retail distribution deal, and you can invest in their company before their product stocks the shelves of over 100 Best Buy stores this year. ⌛One week left to invest – don’t miss it. 📱 Big Tech & Startups Tesla Finally Builds First Cybertruck At Gigafactory Texas (3 minute read) The first Tesla Cybertruck electric pickup has been built at Gigafactory Texas. Elon Musk estimated in May that Tesla could sell between 250,000 and 500,000 Cybertrucks a year when production reaches full pace. The Cybertruck's unique design will likely make it one of the most photographed vehicles on the streets when deliveries begin. Production of the Cybertruck is expected to be limited until 2024. Tesla claims to have more than 1.6 million preorders for the vehicle. Engagement on Instagram's Threads Has Cratered (2 minute read) Analysts say that user engagement on Threads has dropped off, with data showing a 20% drop in daily active users and a 50% drop in time spent on the platform over the weekend. The app gained well over 100 million users since its release on July 5. Meta has implemented VPN blocks to stop people in the EU from using Threads until the company overcomes issues with EU regulations. A Meta spokesperson said that the company is currently focusing on ensuring stable performance, delivering new features, and improving the experience. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape (12 minute read) The Sparc fusion reactor is being built on the site of a former US Army Reserve base near Boston. It will use extremely strong electromagnets created by high-temperature superconducting tape to control plasma during a fusion reaction. The use of the tape will theoretically allow for the construction of high-performance tokamaks much smaller and cheaper than other approaches. It will take 10,000 kilometers of the tape to construct the 18 toroidal field magnets used in the Sparc fusion reactor. Sweden is building the world’s largest wooden city (3 minute read) Swedish developers are building the world's largest wooden city to inspire other similar projects around the world. The city will feature 7,000 office spaces, 2,000 homes, and space for businesses across an area of over 250,000 square meters. Work on the project will begin in 2025 and it is expected to take a decade to complete. Using timber for construction produces significantly lower carbon emissions than using conventional building materials. The project will meet the same high safety requirements as all other constructions, including for fire safety. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Fern - Instantly Create a Stripe-Like API Experience (GitHub Repo Sponsor) Fern is an open source tool to automatically generate idiomatic client libraries and Stripe-like API documentation. Find out why companies like Scale AI and Flatfile already use Fern to develop their APIs and generate their SDKs, click here to learn more. Axe API (GitHub Repo) Axe API is a framework for quickly creating Rest APIs declaratively. It analyzes API definitions and handles all endpoints. Axe API automatically creates documentation by checking model definitions, table relations, database schemas, and other sources. Common design patterns at Stripe (9 minute read) This article discusses common design patterns at Stripe with a focus on design patterns that are generic enough to be useful for any developer in the API design process. It covers how to name things, structure, responses, security, and more. The article is part of a series called 'Designing APIs for humans'. Links to other articles in the series are available. 🎁 Miscellaneous Elon Musk threw nine-figure promises at top AI researchers (7 minute read) The pressure for xAI to compete is intense. Elon Musk appears eager to leapfrog over his new company's deep-pocketed competitors. He recruited top AI talent to the new company with equity he claimed was already worth billions of dollars. Musk's aims with xAI include creating an artificial intelligence that can 'understand the true nature of the universe', a goal that might take some time to achieve. Netflix’s Next Act Is Investing in Video Games (24 minute read) Netflix's release of Oxenfree II is likely the beginning of a long-term plan to focus on video games. The company has previously identified video games as its biggest competition in the market for attention. It has bought several game studios and established two. Netflix now has around 67 games in its library with 86 more in development. The company is taking a slow and steady approach, but its gaming efforts are gaining momentum. ⚡ Quick Links The path to implementing a programming language (8 minute read) This blog discusses the choices and paths developers can take when implementing front ends for programming languages. Twitter loses half its ad revenue, still weighed down by debt (2 minute read) Elon Musk had predicted that Twitter would be cash flow positive by the second quarter of 2023, but a ~50% drop in advertising revenue and large interest payments, among other issues, are preventing the company from reaching that goal. Stablecoins: The Next Financial Platform (25 minute read) Stablecoins solve real problems, have signs of product-market fit, and are a platform for the creation of an open, cheap, and programmable global payments system. docker-pgautoupgrade (GitHub Repo) docker-pgautoupgrade is a PostgreSQL Docker container that automatically upgrades databases to the required version of PostgreSQL. What makes developers productive? (6 minute read) Some of the factors that make developers productive include building the right things, adding less busywork, having the right tools, having the right knowledge, and helpful infrastructure. Google is standardizing interview questions so I am forced to retire my bootleg interview questions (3 minute read) This Twitter thread contains three interview questions along with the reasoning behind them. 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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