TLDR 2024-08-14

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EVERYTHING GOOGLE ANNOUNCED AT THE PIXEL 9 LAUNCH EVENT

The Made By Google hardware event saw a refreshed Pixel 9 lineup and updates across Google's other devices. Customers now have a smaller Pixel 9 Pro option measuring 6.3 inches. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is taller and thinner than its predecessor and features an inner display with a peak brightness of 2,700 nits. The Google Pixel Watch 3 now has a larger 45mm option. More details about the announcements Google made at the event are available in the article.

US CONSIDERS A RARE ANTITRUST MOVE: BREAKING UP GOOGLE

The Department of Justice is considering breaking up Alphabet following a ruling that found the company monopolized the online search market. The most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Chrome web browser. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products. The government will likely see a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of the case.

AMAZON VIES FOR NUCLEAR-POWERED DATA CENTER

Proposals for co-locating data centers next to nuclear power have popped up in several places. The setup allows for data centers to draw clean electricity directly rather than from the grid while avoiding paying fees that would otherwise help maintain grids. It also means that data centers are hogging hundreds of megawatts that could be going to other customers. Amazon is currently dealing with regulatory hurdles over a deal that would give one of its data centers an extra 180 megawatts of power as it would hurt all of the customers that buy from the facility.

THE WEBB TELESCOPE FURTHER DEEPENS THE BIGGEST CONTROVERSY IN COSMOLOGY

An analysis of observations from the James Webb Space Telescope shows conflicting cosmic expansion rates from different types of data. The cosmic expansion rate has been consistently measured to be higher than the theoretical prediction for how fast space should be expanding. However, different teams have come up with different rates of expansion. These discrepancies suggest that the theoretical model of the cosmos might be missing something.

THE NEW POSTGRESQL 17 MAKE DIST

Creating a source code tarball is quite tricky to do by hand. While it is possible to just run 'tar' over a currently checked out source tree, developers need to be careful that the checkout is clean and not locally modified and ensure that all the files that belong in the tarball end up there and no other files. The resulting tarball should work consistently across platforms and across time. This article looks at how PostgreSQL makes a release.

MIXWAVE

Mixwave allows users to convert, package, and manipulate video on the fly. It contains a comprehensive toolset designed to streamline video workflows that covers everything from transcoding and packaging to playback. Mixwave has a user-friendly API that makes self-hosting videos easy.

DEEP-LIVE-CAM GOES VIRAL, ALLOWING ANYONE TO BECOME A DIGITAL DOPPELGANGER

Deep-Live-Cam can take a person's face and apply it to a live webcam video source while following pose, lighting, and expressions - from a single photo. It is available for download for free on GitHub. There are many face-swapping software projects out there - while most of them take some knowledge to install, it is only a matter of time before these tools become more accessible. Examples of face swaps produced with the tool are available.

AMERICAN VULCAN

Palmer Luckey was born in 1992 to Donald and Julie Freeman Luckey. He was homeschooled along with his three younger sisters on the bottom floor of a small multifamily home in Long Beach, at the edge of Los Angeles. Luckey single-handedly turned virtual reality from the laughingstock of the technology industry into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by inventing the Oculus Rift in a camper trailer. The facts of Luckey's life are uniquely bizarre - this article takes a look at his life and what he's done since selling Oculus to Facebook for $2.7 billion.

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HUAWEI READIES NEW CHIP TO CHALLENGE NVIDIA, SURMOUNTING U.S. SANCTIONS

Huawei's latest processor, the Ascend 910C, is reportedly comparable to Nvidia's H100, which isn't directly available in China.

THE PERILS OF FUTURE-CODING

Future coding, one of the most insidious forms of technical debt, is when developers write overly elaborate code to preemptively handle probable future use cases.

RODNEY BROOKS'S THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

The appearance of a robot should give a clue to its function, robots must not take away from people's agency, and it takes about a decade for technologies to mature and become reliable.

AGAINST NAMES

Not naming things can improve some situations.

NETFLIX IS BRINGING AN IN-PERSON SQUID GAME EXPERIENCE TO NEW YORK CITY

The experience will open in New York City in October and in Asia and Europe in the fall.

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER MASSIVE RESERVOIR OF WATER HIDING ON MARS

The water reservoir, which is trapped miles beneath Mars' surface, could theoretically sustain life.