SpaceX launches cell satellites 🛰️, impending Bitcoin ETF 🪙, LLMs and programming in 2024 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

SpaceX Starlink to Launch First Direct-to-Cell Internet Satellites (1 minute read)

SpaceX has launched its first batch of six Starlink satellites designed to enable direct-to-cell internet service from space. The satellites will provide global access to texting, calling, and browsing anywhere in the world without special hardware or firmware. They have a modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration. Partner providers will include T-Mobile in the US, Rogers in Canada, and Optus in Australia.

Foldables Help Chip Away at Apple's Premium Smartphone Lead in 2023 (1 minute read)

Foldables emerged as a differentiator in the premium smartphone market in 2023. Apple ended the year with a 71% share of the premium smartphone market due to competition from Huawei and Samsung. While global smartphone sales have been down, the premium segment is set to grow 6% year-on-year. Consumers are willing to spend more to get a higher quality device that will last longer and promotions, sales, and financing options make the devices accessible to a larger market.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Juno makes its first ultra-close flyby of the volcano-covered moon Io (2 minute read)

NASA's Juno spacecraft flew within 930 miles of the surface of Io, the fourth largest moon in the Solar System, on Saturday. Io is a dense and dry moon that is extremely geologically active, making it an object of great interest to astronomers and planetary scientists. The data collected from the flyby will help scientists determine how Io's volcanoes erupt and how its activity is connected to Jupiter's magnetosphere. A link to a gallery of images from the flyby is available in the article.

Humanoid Robots Are Getting to Work (7 minute read)

A handful of companies will be deploying their humanoid robots in commercial pilot projects this year. This article looks at the current state of humanoid robots and whether they're ready for work. Humanoid robots are able to replace human workers doing robotic jobs, freeing them to be able to work in other more valuable positions. The pilot tests this year will determine whether their potential will translate into a fundamental shift in how repetitive labor is done.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

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LLMs and Programming in the first days of 2024 (26 minute read)

Large language models (LLMs) are great for programming work, but using them requires practice. Communicating poorly is a great limitation. Many programmers communicate poorly despite being very capable in their field. Asking LLMs the right questions is a fundamental skill that can be improved with practice.

The Nix Thesis (35 minute read)

This blog post extracts some of the insights from 'The Purely Functional Software Deployment Model' by Eelco Dolstra into short-form content to inspire others to read the full text. The book is an often recommended resource for learning about Nix, a powerful and flexible package manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems. It is still remarkably relevant given its age. A significant portion of the book is philosophical rather than technical.

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Miscellaneous

Why Wall Street Might Be Falling in Love With Bitcoin (8 minute read)

Fees, delays, and existential risks of crypto exchanges have led most of the investing public to remain on the sidelines with Bitcoin. However, the widely expected approval of numerous bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the coming days could change all that. ETFs are one of the world's most popular ways to invest. An ETF would make investing in bitcoin easy and relatively more safe. A bitcoin ETF could, in theory, push the price of bitcoin even higher over the coming weeks, months, and years.

2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business (6 minute read)

Apple is facing a series of regulatory decisions by US and EU authorities that will determine its future. If Google loses its antitrust trial, it could be forced to stop making regular payments to Apple worth an estimated quarter of the annual revenues earned by Apple's services arm. Apple and other tech giants are being forced to change their app store policies to allow sideloading of apps. Both of these changes will have large impacts on Apple's revenue.

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Quick Links

Thoughts on PostgreSQL in 2024 (18 minute read)

A look at the features and improvements coming to PostgreSQL in 2024 and reflections on where the project is headed.

Push Notifications - What to Push, What Not to Push, and How Often (18 minute read)

The ideal messaging frequency varies from individual to individual - try to push helpful messages and minimize harm.

I'm a different engineer than I was 3 years ago (8 minute read)

Reflections and advice from someone who has worked in both a zombie startup, where nothing was happening, and a startup that had to deal with a rapid 20x growth in paying users.

Images altered to trick machine vision can influence humans too (7 minute read)

Exploring the similarities and differences between AI visual systems and human perception will help scientists build safer AI systems.

ParadeDB (GitHub Repo)

ParadeDB is an ElasticSearch alternative built on Postgres currently in public beta.

Category Creation & Capital in technology (14 minute read)

The next decade might see disruption and market cap destruction within the tech industry.

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SpaceX launches cell satellites 🛰️, impending Bitcoin ETF 🪙, LLMs and programming in 2024 👨‍💻

TLDR 2024-01-03

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Amazon's silent layoffs 💼, AI learnings in 2023 🤖, GitHub Copilot Chat launches 👨‍💻

Inside Apple's gaming push 💻, Vitalik's Ethereum manifesto 🪙, impactful prompts across domains 🤖

Tesla's Model Y upgrade 🚗, gen AI short films 🤖, new age of CSS 👨‍💻

Microsoft's ChatGPT competitor 🤖, Apple Watch ban starts ⌚, rethinking Unix 👨‍💻

Apple's open source LLM 🤖, next-gen self checkout 🛍️, making LLMs fast 👨‍💻

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