Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees (2 minute read)
Google has eliminated around a thousand positions across its Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, Core engineering, and Assistant teams. The company may still be planning further layoffs. Google's parent company Alphabet employed 182,385 employees as of September 30 last year. The layoffs so far represent around half a percent of the company's total employees.
|
“Such signal, much wow”: Starlink’s first texts via “cellphone towers in space” (1 minute read)
SpaceX has successfully sent and received its first text messages using the T-Mobile network spectrum through one of its new direct-to-cell satellites. The new satellites are expected to provide text messaging services around the world sometime this year, with voice and data services beginning sometime in 2025. They are equipped with custom silicon, phased array antennas, and advanced software algorithms. The satellite-to-phone service should work just about anywhere on the planet, but it will be most useful in areas with no coverage due to terrain limitations, land-use restrictions, and other factors.
|
|
Science & Futuristic Technology
|
Meet the eTH, an expandable electric RV that turns into an off-grid luxury mini-home (3 minute read)
The Electric Transformer House is an expandable luxury mini-home with 400 square feet of living space, solar panels, and much more. The RV features a luxurious interior, smart tech, and clean energy for off-grid capabilities. It has a gourmet kitchen, a spacious living and dining room, and a private bedroom. Its cockpit features a flexible dashboard/office desk, integrated entertainment, drive assist tech, and a Starlink connection. Pictures and videos showing the RV in both its vehicle and mini-home modes are available in the article.
|
Chinese Rival to SpaceX Pulls Off Rocket Launch at Sea (1 minute read)
Orienspace declared a complete success after launching a rocket at sea into low-Earth orbit on Thursday. Its rocket deposited a total of three satellites into orbit using its Gravity 1 commercial launch system. The three-stage, 100-foot-tall spacecraft is the world's largest solid launch vehicle. Launching from the sea offers several advantages, including less chance of damage and lower costs.
|
|
Programming, Design & Data Science
|
GitHub Actions as a time-sharing supercomputer (12 minute read)
GitHub Actions can be used for batch jobs. Developers can submit work to the service and receive the results later on asynchronously. actions-batch is a command-line tool that is essentially an API that turns GitHub Actions into a time-sharing computer. It creates new GitHub repositories, writes a workflow that runs 'job.sh' upon commits, and triggers jobs when a local bash file is written to the repository as 'job.sh'. actions-batch can be used for jobs like building kernels and running machine learning inference using Llama2.
|
Google challenges cloud rivals by making it free for customers to transfer data when they leave (2 minute read)
Google's cloud unit will stop charging data transfer fees when customers want to leave. The change applies to all customers globally. Data transfer fees are a profitable source of revenue for tech companies and they can reduce churn as they punish clients for going elsewhere. Google is part of the Bandwidth Alliance, a group of companies whose aim is to reduce or eliminate data transfer fees. Alibaba, Microsoft, and Oracle are also members of the alliance.
|
|
Chrome Users Now Worth 30% Less Money Thanks to Google's Cookie Killing, Ad Firm Says (6 minute read)
Google disabled tracking cookies for 30 million Chrome users last week, about 1% of the browser's user base. Analysts estimate that the change made cookieless users bring in 30% less revenue. Google plans to block cookies for all users by the end of the year and replace them with a new tracking system called the Privacy Sandbox. The new system will keep all user data on users' devices but let companies still know what topics they're interested in.
|
Understanding Bridge-Based Ranking (11 minute read)
Bridge-based ranking is a way to score and rank content by adjusting for user polarization. The algorithm works by attempting to model why content receives the reactions it gets and then correcting for bias. It can cancel out the effects of bias. This article explains Bridge-Based Ranking and shows how and why it works. Bridge-based ranking allows communities to self-moderate by preventing influence from user polarization.
|
|
Want the best of TLDR? 🏆
Refer a friend to TLDR using the referral link below, and we will send you the TLDR Hall of Fame, our 50 best stories of all time!
Your Referral Link -
https://tldr.tech/tech?ref=2775316
|
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
|
|
| |