iPhone 15 📱, how Nvidia's CEO works 💼, Unity's pay-per-download pricing 👨‍💻

Sign Up|Hire|Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2023-09-13 Heard of Merge? It’s how the best B2B companies manage integrations (Sponsor) If you’re selling B2B software, one of the first questions you’ll hear is “how does this integrate with our [CRM / ticketing / HR system]?” So you start adding integrations. The first few are easy enough. But over time, they become a major time sink. Your feature delivery slows down. Devs get annoyed. If you’re thinking: someone should automate this - you’re right… And Merge already has. It’s simple: Instead of dealing with dozens of APIs, you build on Merge’s unified API and common data model. Now you can add hundreds of integrations with just a few lines of code. Calendly, Drata, and Gong are already on board. Start for free with a special offer for TLDR readers 📱 Big Tech & Startups Apple iPhone 15 event: the seven biggest announcements (5 minute read) Apple announced its latest iPhone lineup, the Watch Series 9, a second-gen Apple Watch Ultra, a USB-C charging case for the AirPods Pro, and the release dates for its next round of OS updates at its Wonderlust event. The new iPhones will have USB-C and feature the Dynamic Island. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models will include a new Action button that replaces the mute toggle. Many more details about Apple's latest announcements are available in the article. WhatsApp is working on cross-platform messaging (1 minute read) WhatsApp's latest Android beta update contains a new screen called Third-party chats. The screen is currently not functional and can't be accessed by users. It is a strong clue that Meta is building cross-platform compatibility for encrypted messages. Meta's communication software will need to be interoperable with third-party messaging apps by March 2024 as the company meets the definition of a gatekeeper under the EU's Digital Markets Act. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology This student-built EV just set a new world record for 0–62 mph (3 minute read) A team of students from the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich, ETH Zurich, and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have built an electric vehicle that can accelerate from 0 to 62 miles per hour in just 0.956 seconds. The student-built EV can do this with just 326 hp over a distance of 12.3 meters. It only weighs 309 lbs. A video of the world record attempt is available in the article. Researchers sequence genomes of rare parrot to help it thrive (6 minute read) The kākāpō is a critically endangered species native to New Zealand. While its populations have risen slowly over the last decade, the limited genetic diversity in the species' population has made breeding problematic. Most kākāpō are severely inbred and susceptible to disease and infertility. Researchers are now sequencing the genomes of nearly all existing birds to discover genetic variants in the population to help preserve the species. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Death by a thousand microservices (15 minute read) There is no need for every service to be 'micro'. Some startups do fine with just 'services'. Starting with a monolith is fine. Services can be branched from the monolith if they take care of a clearly-identifiable and separately-scalable load. A simple approach is often a more appropriate choice. Whisper Turbo (GitHub Repo) Whisper Turbo is a drop-in replacement for the OpenAI Whisper API. It features a smooth compatibility layer for ingesting audio files and converting them to be Whisper compatible, developer-friendly APIs for one-shot inference and streaming, and an inference framework for fast, cross-platform inference. The project is still currently in alpha. 🎁 Miscellaneous Charter-Disney Winners and Losers (12 minute read) Disney and Charter Communications have reached an agreement to restore popular channels to the cable operator, ending a blackout that lasted for more than a week. The agreement marks a seminal moment in the relationship between pay-TV providers and entertainment companies. Charter appears to be the winner in the standoff as Disney has been forced to give up its attempt at double-dipping by getting paid by Charter for channels and charging subscribers directly for the same content. However, Disney may end up being the long-term winner. More details about the agreement and its implications are available in the article. The way that Jensen Huang runs Nvidia is wild (2 minute read) Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes that the flattest organization is the most empowering one, so there are no 1:1s in the company and everything happens in the group setting. There are no status reports within Nvidia - Huang believes that these are too refined by the time they get to him. Anyone in the company can email Huang with whatever is on top of their mind and he will read it. The company doesn't have any formal planning cycles, but strategy meetings are open to all employees. Nvidia is optimized for attracting amazing people and allowing information to travel as quickly as possible. ⚡ Quick Links China AI & Semiconductors Rise: US Sanctions Have Failed (21 minute read) US sanctions aimed at limiting Chinese firms' ability to manufacture high-end chips have clearly failed as China is rapidly developing exascale supercomputing capabilities - the country has announced its intent to become the world leader in AI by 2030. Unity has changed its pricing model, and game developers are pissed off (7 minute read) Unity is implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that charges developers a flat fee any time a game using Unity software is installed starting from January 2024 - these fees will only be applied to games that meet certain criteria. We built the fastest CI in the world. It failed. Here’s what we learned (20 minute read) This article looks at how a team built out a tool that no one wanted, the lessons the team learned while building the tool, and why the team decided to shut down the service. Apple’s Vision Pro headset is on track to ship early next year (1 minute read) Tim Cook announced that production of the Vision Pro headset is on track and that the iPhone 15 Pro will be able to capture spatial video for the headset at the Wonderlust launch event. The Rules of Margin Collapse (10 minute read) Margin collapse is when adjacent margins overlap in CSS - understanding the rules behind this mechanism can make writing CSS clearer and less surprising. United States takes on Google in biggest tech monopoly trial of 21st century (6 minute read) The Justice Department claims that Google abused its monopoly power in its search engine business in the first major monopoly case to make it to trial in decades. Want more TLDR? We also write newsletters for founders, AI, information security, design, marketing, crypto, and web dev! We help cutting edge companies hire world class technical talent through our job listings. If you're hiring software engineers, AI/ML engineers, product managers, designers or other tech talent, click here to learn more. 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! Thanks for reading, Dan Ni and Stephen Flanders If you don't want to receive future editions of TLDR, please click here to unsubscribe.