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TLDR 2024-05-02

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Big Tech & Startups

Airbnb's Icons allow you to drift off in the ‘Up' house or rest in Prince's ‘Purple Rain' mansion (4 minute read)

Airbnb's Icons is a new collection of experiences hosted by big names in music, film, television, arts, sports, and more. Current entertainment-focused Icons include a floating replica of the house from 'Up', a night in a VIP lounge with Kevin Hart, and a living room performance from Doja Cat. The experiences are all priced at under $100 per guest. Only a limited number of requests will be selected for each experience via a lottery. Airbnb also rolled out other new features this week, including the ability for groups of guests to more easily book trips together.

Email Microsoft didn't want seen reveals rushed decision to invest in OpenAI (5 minute read)

An email sent to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella by Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer with the subject line 'Thoughts on OpenAI' in mid-June 2019 detailed Scott's concerns about Google's developments in AI and how it might take Microsoft multiple years to even attempt to compete with Google. Microsoft had tried to keep the email hidden, but it was made public as part of the US Justice Department's antitrust trial over Google's alleged search monopoly. Mere weeks after the email, Microsoft had invested $1 billion into OpenAI, and it has increased its investment significantly further since.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Two giants in the satellite telecom industry join forces to counter Starlink (7 minute read)

Luxembourg-based SES is buying Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined fleet of around 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, more than twice the size of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator. It is expected to close in the second half of 2025 and is pending regulatory approvals. Satellite operators are seeing an uptick in demand, and the US military's appetite for commercial satellite communications is going up. Both companies maintain hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the US government each year.

Virtual Power Plants and software (13 minute read)

Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) reduce the need for gas and oil-based power plants by aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) such as rooftop solar and home/office batteries. These DERs help the grid by reducing or meeting demand through remote control so power plants can avoid having to burn dirty fuels during peak periods. They can also reduce the need for additional electricity grid transmission and distribution. VPPs provide a more predictable and easily managed way of helping the grid stay balanced. This article explains how VPPs work and discusses their future.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

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What's coming to PostgreSQL ? 🐘 (7 minute read)

PostgreSQL is undergoing a series of transformations that could redefine its role in the database landscape. This article explores some of the developments shaping the future of PostgreSQL. One of the most significant advancements coming to the PostgreSQL ecosystem is the separation of compute and storage. This will bring major benefits such as horizontal scalability, cost-effective scaling, seamless replication, high availability, and improved development experience.

Software Friction (11 minute read)

Friction is everywhere in software development. Two setbacks are more than twice as bad as one setback. Addressing friction can also create other sources of friction. Friction is inevitable and impossible to fully remove, but there are things that can be done to reduce it, and plans can be made more resilient to it. Things that can reduce friction include smaller scopes and shorter iterations, more autonomy, better planning, automation, and using checklists and runbooks.

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Miscellaneous

Google lays off hundreds of 'Core' employees, moves some positions to India and Mexico (6 minute read)

Google has laid off at least 200 employees from its Core teams. The reorganization will involve moving some roles to India and Mexico. The Core unit is responsible for building the technical foundation behind Google's flagship products and for protecting users' online safety. The Core layoffs also include the governance and protected data group, which will be at the center of regulatory challenges facing the company. Affected employees have access to outplacement services and will be able to apply for open roles within Google.

Magic machines (3 minute read)

Programmers tend to assign more trust to computers run by anyone but themselves. It's a lack of confidence in their own abilities that leads programmers to think that the people operating their cloud computers are smarter or better than they are. There are no magic machines and no magic operators: all systems have the same kind of potentially faulty bits and brains. It's all just computers and people.

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Anthropic releases Claude AI chatbot iOS app (1 minute read)

Anthropic has launched an iOS mobile app for its Claude 3 AI language models and introduced a new subscription tier designed for group collaboration.

Google pulls RISC-V support from generic Android kernel (3 minute read)

Google says due to the rapid rate of iteration, the company is not yet ready to provide a single supported image for all vendors.

Chrome's New Built-In AI Is the Biggest Update to the Browser in Over 15 Years (3 minute read)

Gemini can now be accessed in the Chrome desktop browser by typing @gemini into the address bar.

The Fermat's Last Theorem Project (7 minute read)

Fermat's Last Theorem is the claim that some abstract equations have no solutions in positive integers.

Please Don't Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here's Why! (6 minute read)

Mastodon is a federated platform, so requests to generate link previews are initiated across many connected instances, increasing the load on the website's server in a big way.

Google Paid Apple $20 Billion in 2022 to Be Default Safari Search Engine (2 minute read)

Court documents that Google provided in its antitrust dispute with the US Department of Justice show that the company was paying Apple 36% of the total revenue it earned from searches conducted on Safari.

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Airbnb Icons 🏠, Microsoft's OpenAI email leaks 🤖, software friction 👨‍💻

TLDR 2024-05-02

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

Older messages

Apple AI browser 🌎, Tesla fires Supercharger team ⚡, new sudo replacement 👨‍💻

China approves Tesla FSD 🚗, GitHub Copilot Workspace 👨‍💻, Mystery chatbot appears 🤖

Apple renews OpenAI talks 🧠, Google fires Python team 👨‍💻, React 19 beta ⚛️

TikTok threatens shutdown 📱, FCC passes net neutrality 🌐, the robotics renaissance 🤖

US TikTok ban 📱, Meta's $200B drop 📉, Node.js 22 👨‍💻

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