Adobe abandons $20B deal 💰, scientists contact whales 🐋, embeddable interactive code 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Adobe gives up on $20 billion acquisition of Figma (2 minute read)

Adobe has abandoned its acquisition of product design software company Figma as there was no clear path for regulatory approval for the deal. Both UK and EU competition regulators have probed the deal due to the impact it would have on the product design, image editing, and illustration markets. Adobe will pay Figma $1 billion as a termination fee as per the terms of the merger agreement.

Apple Watches being pulled from stores this week due to potential import ban (2 minute read)

Apple is pausing sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 starting on December 21. The products are facing a potential import ban until August 2028 as a ruling found that they infringe on patents from Masimo. The case is now under a Presidential Review Period after which the devices will be subject to an import ban if the ruling isn't vetoed. Apple is pursuing a range of legal and technical options to ensure that the Apple Watch remains available.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

How CRISPR gene editing could help treat Alzheimer’s (4 minute read)

CRISPR therapies could potentially provide a one-and-done solution for forms of Alzheimer's disease caused by genetic mutations. There are several proposed strategies for using the technology to fight Alzheimer's, but CRISPR-based gene therapies still have a long way to go. Scientists are now laying the groundwork to start bringing CRISPR technologies to clinical trials. Transformative treatments are likely only a few years away, although they will be expensive.

Scientists Contact Whales in World-First Communication Experiment (3 minute read)

Scientists from UC Davis, the Alaska Whale Foundation, and SETI teamed up to have a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale in her own language. The scientists played a contact call to the whale, who responded each time closely matching the intervals, indicating that the whale was engaged in an intentional exchange. The interaction had elements analogous to how we may one day be contacted by extraterrestrial beings. The scientists hope to replicate the work with other intelligent animals.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Zilla (GitHub Repo)

Zilla is a multi-protocol, event-native proxy. It securely interfaces web apps, IoT clients, and microservices to Apache Kafka via declaratively defined, stateless APIs. Zilla has no external dependencies and does not rely on the Kafka Consumer/Producer API or Kafka Connect. It natively supports the Kafka wire protocol and uses advanced protocol mediation to establish stateless API entry points into Kafka.

codapi-js (GitHub Repo)

codapi-js produces interactive code examples that can be embedded directly into product documentation, an online course, or a blog post. It automatically converts static code examples into mini-playgrounds that are lightweight and easy to integrate. codapi-js can create sandboxes for any programming language, database, or software. Most playgrounds require a Codapi server, but the JavaScript and Fetch playgrounds are able to work completely in the browser.

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Miscellaneous

OpenAI buffs safety team and gives board veto power on risky AI (4 minute read)

OpenAI has announced a new safety advisory group that will sit above the technical teams and make recommendations to leadership as part of an expansion of its internal safety processes to fend off the threat of harmful AI. The company has updated its Preparedness Framework to show a clear path for identifying, analyzing, and deciding what to do about catastrophic risks inherent to models they are developing. Leadership will be able to make decisions on whether to ship products, but the board has the power to reverse those decisions.

Jeff Bezos wants Elon Musk to know Blue Origin is serious now (5 minute read)

This article discusses a recent podcast that Jeff Bezos appeared in that focused on his leadership style and space company, Blue Origin. Bezos has made it clear that Blue Origin needs to speed things up. He has reconfigured leadership at the company and New Shepard is scheduled for its next launch as soon as December 18. Blue Origin predicts that its New Glenn rocket will launch next year with a NASA smallsat mission. New Glenn will pose a challenge to SpaceX as it will be used for cargo rather than for space tourism like New Shepard.

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Quick Links

Beeper vs Apple battle intensifies: Lawmakers demand DOJ investigation (2 minute read)

US senators have written to the Department of Justice over Apple's alleged anti-competitive conduct towards Beeper.

Paying Netflix $0.53/h, etc. (1 minute read)

People pay around $0.50-$2.00 per hour for digital entertainment.

Tesla confirms wireless inductive electric car home charger is coming (2 minute read)

Tesla's wireless inductive home charger will likely be fairly expensive and require an inductive pad that needs to be embedded into concrete.

Transaction Isolation in Postgres, explained (29 minute read)

Transactions provide guarantees that developers can use as assumptions when writing code, greatly simplifying the code and improving its reliability - isolation levels address how concurrent transactions and queries affect each other.

Foxconn makes most of the world’s iPhones. Now its CEO wants to make EVs (9 minute read)

Foxconn's plan to design and build electric cars will only work if it can achieve 5% of the global market by 2025.

Google’s True Moonshot (28 minute read)

Google could build the AI to win it all, but whether it wants to is yet to be decided.

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Adobe abandons $20B deal 💰, scientists contact whales 🐋, embeddable interactive code 👨‍💻

TLDR 2023-12-19

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Meta's AI glasses 👓, OpenAI's prompt guide 🤖, beyond the Turing test 🧠

Apple's top apps of 2023 📱, ChatGPT's laziness 🤖, Blue Origin relaunch 🚀

Tesla's next-gen robot 🤖, Netflix's most watched shows 📺, running an open source company 👨‍💻

Google Pixie AI 🤖, DeepMind cracks unsolved math 🔢, SvelteKit 2.0 👨‍💻

Apple's 3D video feature 📱, Google's 2023 top searches 🔎, Mistral launches LLM API 🤖

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