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Big Tech's AI playbook 🤖, Pixel 9 uses iPhone screens 📱, Google's next-gen version control  👨‍💻

Big Tech has turned to aquihiring - hiring most of a company's employees and acquiring everything in a company but its name 

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TLDR 2024-07-02

Watch On-demand: Build Real-Time Customer Experiences with SAP Datasphere and Cloud-Native Apache Kafka (Sponsor)

Confluent and SAP have partnered to bring the power of real-time data streams to SAP customers. Watch the recorded demo and Q&A to learn how to:

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📱

Big Tech & Startups

This is Big Tech's playbook for swallowing the AI industry (4 minute read)

Building leading AI models is extremely costly - raising $400 million isn't even enough to compete these days. Big Tech has the cash, but it isn't allowed to buy companies like it once did due to antitrust enforcement. It has turned to aquihiring - hiring most of a company's employees and acquiring everything in a company but its name. While the current antitrust enforcement regime will likely try to block these types of acquisitions, it may not have a strong legal argument for doing so.
Google Pixel 9 series reportedly uses the same display as iPhone 16 Pro (2 minute read)

Google is reportedly planning to use the same Samsung OLED display in the Pixel 9 series as Apple will use in the iPhone 16 Pro. It will be utilizing an updated M14 OLED panel from Samsung in the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. The Pixel 9 series is set to launch on August 13, well ahead of the company's usual schedule and ahead of the launch of the new iPhones expected in September.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scientists Create Robot Controlled by Blob of Human Brain Cells (3 minute read)

Chinese researchers have created a robot controlled by a tiny organoid made from human stem cells. The brain tissue is hooked up to a neural interface, allowing it to pass instructions to the humanoid robot body. The setup will allow researchers to study brain-computer interfaces and help develop techniques for integrating organoids with the human brain. Organoids could one day be used to repair the human brain through transplantation.
Chinese space firm unintentionally launches its new rocket (2 minute read)

Chinese space startup Space Pioneer accidentally launched its Tianlong-3 rocket during a static fire test. The booster broke free from the test stand due to a structural failure. It flew several hundred meters into the sky before crashing explosively into a mountain 1.5 kilometers away from the test site. The test site is located about 5 kilometers away from the downtown area of a city with 800,000 people and less than a kilometer from a smaller village. The company reported that there were no casualties as a result of the accident.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Case study: Bland AI gains Slack-breaking number of leads and 20,000 clicks with TLDR (Sponsor)

Bland AI ran ad placements in TLDR newsletters to drive brand awareness and visibility amongst decision-makers at scale-ups and enterprises, as well as generate leads to fuel growth. Bland AI's Head of Growth calls out TLDR being one of their top performing channels and his experience working with TLDR's team as reasons for their multiple placements in several TLDR newsletters. Read the full case study here.
jj init (72 minute read)

Jujutsu is a new version control system that is on track to replace Google's existing version control systems. It has an interesting approach to its design choices in terms of both implementation details and user interface. Jujutsu can be used with existing Git repositories. This article introduces the system and walks readers through how to use it.
Problematic second (13 minute read)

The leap second was invented to compensate for the difference between the value measured by atomic clocks and the actual time the Earth revolves around the Sun. These seconds are usually added on the last day of June or December. Poor time synchronization can lead to data loss and other problems. Leap seconds are added rarely, so they inevitably cause problems almost every time they are added. This article looks at leap seconds and the various problems they have caused.
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Miscellaneous

Supreme Court protects the future of content moderation (11 minute read)

A decision issued by the Supreme Court on Monday explicitly extends First Amendment protections to how social media platforms organize, curate, and moderate their feeds. The compilation and curation of others' speech into an expressive product of its own is entitled to First Amendment protection. Platforms are making expressive choices when they use their Standards and Guidelines to decide which content to display or how the display will be ordered and organized. The government cannot get its way just by asserting an interest in better balancing the marketplace of ideas.
Living In A Lucid Dream (24 minute read)

This article looks at lucid dreaming, the history behind its research, what the experience is like, how to get into a lucid dream, and more. More than half of adults will have a lucid dream experience or one like it at some point in their lives. It is possible to learn how to lucid dream. The path to learning the skill involves developing an awareness of the difference between waking and dreaming. This usually results in small habits that spill into dreams that help identify whether a person is dreaming.

Quick Links

Tesla stock jumps and some think it's because of this Elon Musk move (2 minute read)

Some believe that Tesla stock jumped because CEO Elon Musk followed Uber founder Travis Kalanick on X.
New Web Development. Or, why Copilots and chatbots are particularly bad for modern web dev (24 minute read)

Web development is on the verge of a paradigm shift - built-in browser APIs are much more capable than they were when React was first invented.
Let's Stop Asking "Why Do You Want To Work for Us?" in Interviews (1 minute read)

Most people want to work for a company because they need money, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Netflix and Amazon Dominate Commissioning by Streamers, Tilting the Content Market Away From U.S., Towards Local: Study (3 minute read)

Netflix and Amazon accounted for more than half of worldwide streamers' commissions from January to March this year.
Elon Musk says Grok 2 due in August, Grok 3 by end of year (2 minute read)

Not too much is known about the models, but Elon Musk has mentioned that Grok 3 will be trained on 100,000 Nvidia H100s.
doggo (GitHub Repo)

doggo is a modern command-line DNS client that outputs information in a neat concise manner and supports protocols like DoH, DoT, DoQ, and DNSCrypt.

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