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SPACEX'S STARSHIP TOOK A BEATING, BUT HELD ON FOR FIRST RETURN FROM SPACE

SpaceX's Starship launched successfully and made a controlled splashdown for the first time on Thursday. The test fell short of total perfection, but it was still a large success. Two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed and there was damage to the ship's thermal protection tiles and one of its control flaps. SpaceX has already test-fired the ship for the next test flight, and the booster could be hot-fired soon. The next test flight, which could happen within a couple of months, may involve an onshore landing.

NETFLIX'S LATEST REDESIGN AIMS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR HOMEPAGE

Netflix is testing a homepage redesign on its TV app that replaces the static tiles with boxes that extend when they're selected. It is also removing the menu that pops out from the left side of its homepage and replacing it with a more streamlined selection of options at the top of the screen. The new homepage will be tested among a small group of users to start and expanded to more members if it goes well.

MOST LIFE ON EARTH IS DORMANT, AFTER PULLING AN ‘EMERGENCY BRAKE'

Researchers have discovered a new hibernation factor called Balon. The protein is very common, being present in 20% of all cataloged bacterial genomes. Balon inserts itself into every ribosome in a cell, interrupting even active ribosomes in the middle of their work. Its mechanism is a reversible process. Unlike other hibernation factors, Balon can be inserted to stall growth and then quickly ejected.

SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ULTRA-THIN BATTERY FOR SMART CONTACT LENSES THAT COULD BE CHARGED BY TEARS

Researchers have created an ultra-thin battery about 0.2 millimeters thick. Powered by a biocompatible saline solution, the battery is thin enough to fit inside a 0.5-millimeter contact lens. The battery can use the glucose in tears to power up. Its capacity and voltage are currently very low and insufficient for powering data storage or an internet connection.

DOWN FOR LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES A MONTH: HOW AWS DEPLOYS CODE

AWS gives customers service credits if it fails to maintain 99.9% uptime. It uses automation to respond to issues - its Monthly Uptime Percentage commitment means there's no time for manual action at all. This article takes a look at how AWS achieves this feat. While some of its deployment processes can be hard to adopt without AWS' scale and maturity, most of the core principles can be applied by startups.

AI IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AT GOOGLE: PROGRESS AND THE PATH AHEAD

This blog post, written by the team responsible for the software development environments where Google engineers spend the majority of their time, covers Google's newest AI-powered improvements within its internal software development tools. It also presents a methodology on how to build AI products that deliver value for professional software development. There is widespread enthusiasm among software engineers about how AI is helping write code. The team achieved its highest impact with a UX that naturally blended into users' workflows.

U.S. CLEARS WAY FOR ANTITRUST INQUIRIES OF NVIDIA, MICROSOFT, AND OPENAI

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry. The Justice Department will take the lead in investigating Nvidia, while the FTC will examine the conduct of OpenAI and Microsoft. A similar deal in 2019 resulted in Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta being sued on claims that they violated anti-monopoly laws.

TESLA CEO ELON MUSK COULD LEAVE IF $56 BILLION PAY PACKAGE NOT APPROVED, SHAREHOLDERS WARNED

Tesla shareholders will decide whether to approve a $56 billion compensation package for Elon Musk on June 13. Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm wrote a letter to shareholders, urging them to approve the package. Not approving the package may mean Musk may leave the company. While several proxy firms have recommended against approving the pay proposal, early voting suggests that the package will be approved.

APPLE WILL REPORTEDLY BUILD A DEDICATED PASSWORDS APP FOR THE IPHONE AND MAC

Apple's Password management app will be revealed at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10.

APPLE ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF THE 2024 APPLE DESIGN AWARDS

The Apple Design Awards honors 14 of the best-in-class apps and games chosen from 42 finalists.

HOW TO BUILD A DOA PRODUCT: HUMANE AI PIN FOUNDERS BANNED INTERNAL CRITICISM

Humane's founders preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to disregard warnings from employees about the AI Pin.

STUDY FINDS 268% HIGHER FAILURE RATES FOR AGILE SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Agile's problems may stem more from its implementation rather than from the principles themselves.

INTEL ABANDONS HYPERTHREADING FOR LUNAR LAKE CPUS

Intel is disabling hyperthreading, which lets more than one thread run on a single CPU core, on all Lunar Lake CPU cores as it wants to maximize power efficiency in portable laptops.

LET A THOUSAND SKYSCRAPERS BLOOM

Scaling effects are everywhere, from biology to business to civilization.

APPLE MADE ONCE-UNLIKELY DEAL WITH SAM ALTMAN TO CATCH UP IN AI

Apple and OpenAI have forged a partnership to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT into iOS. The agreement will be a key focus of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week. The partnership is likely a short- to medium-term relationship for Apple, which is developing its own AI features. Apple is still in talks with Google about using Gemini in its devices. The company is also looking beyond chatbots - it is currently working on a mobile robot that can follow users around and handle chores on their behalf and AI features for its AirPods and cameras.

NVIDIA IS NOW MORE VALUABLE THAN APPLE AT $3.01 TRILLION

Nvidia became the second most valuable company in the world on Wednesday afternoon as its market capitalization hit $3.01 trillion. It became a $1 trillion company in May 2023, hitting $2 trillion in February this year. The company reported $14 billion in profit in May. Its AI accelerators make up between 70% and 95% of the market share for AI chips. Nvidia has plans to launch a new AI chip every year.

BOEING'S STARLINER MAKES IT INTO ORBIT AT LONG LAST – WITH HUMAN CREW ABOARD

Boeing's Starliner crew capsule successfully blasted off on June 5 with two humans on board. The NASA-backed spacecraft is expected to rendezvous with the International Space Station at 16:15 UTC today. Previous launch attempts fared badly and there were many issues during Starliner's development. A video of the launch is available in the article.

NIGHT-VISION LENSES SO THIN AND LIGHT THAT WE CAN ALL SEE IN THE DARK

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) in Australia have developed a night-vision film that weighs less than a gram and can be placed across existing lensed frames. The technology captures visible and non-visible light in one image, unlike traditional night-vision systems which capture side-by-side views from each spectrum, resulting in a better-quality view of what's in the dark. It could change the way people work and play after dark. Details about how the tech works are available in the article.

REFLECTING ON ONE YEAR OF BEING AN ENGINEERING MANAGER

Being an engineering manager can be more rewarding than you think. The output is not as instant as with programming, but it allows you to focus on creating better outcomes. This article contains lessons learned from a year of being an engineer manager: everyone requires a unique approach, business outcome matters, and meetings are not bad if you get value from them.

DON'T FIX IT JUST BECAUSE IT'S TECHNICAL DEBT

Technical debt is when developers make a decision to borrow against their future productivity in order to achieve earlier product delivery, and because of that decision, they must make recurring interest payments in the form of wasted effort. While engineers hate waste, management sees the issue in terms of costs. If there are significant cost savings by spending time reducing wasted effort, then managers will see it as a good investment, otherwise they may think developers should just keep on wasting that effort. Companies exist to make money, not reduce wasted effort.

NEW TEXAS STOCK EXCHANGE TAKES AIM AT NEW YORK'S DOMINANCE

The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) plans to file registration documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission later this year. It aims to begin facilitating trades in 2025 and host its first listing in 2026. The exchange will be entirely electronic, but it will have a physical presence in downtown Dallas. It plans to compete for primary and dual listings and attract listings of exchange-traded products.

CHINA'S PLAN TO DOMINATE EV SALES AROUND THE WORLD

BYD picked Brazil for its first car-making hub outside of Asia after its founder met with the Brazilian president last year. The company has taken over an abandoned Ford factory in Camaçari. It plans to invest over a billion into the project and start producing electric and hybrid automobiles this year. The site will also produce bus and truck chassis and process battery materials. BYD is also looking for lithium mining assets in the country.

NOT JUST SCALE

Distributed systems offer better availability, durability, utilization, latency, specialization, isolation, and ability to deal with change than single-machine systems.

HOW APPLE FELL BEHIND IN THE AI ARMS RACE

Apple's caution and secrecy, as well as the care it takes in upgrading devices, have hobbled its early efforts in the AI arena.

BOWEL DISEASE BREAKTHROUGH AS RESEARCHERS MAKE ‘HOLY GRAIL' DISCOVERY

A gene called ETS2 is central to the inflammatory behavior of macrophages and their ability to damage the bowel in inflammatory bowel disease.

STRETCHY DISPLAYS SPORT BETTER RESOLUTION

Researchers have developed a stretchy organic light-emitting diode display that maintains 87 percent active OLED coverage when stretched.

COINBASE DEBUTS SMART WALLET, GUNNING TO BRING 1 BILLION USERS TO CRYPTO

Coinbase's Smart Wallet is designed to reduce hurdles for new users looking to get started in the DeFi space.

MANAGING MY MOTIVATION, AS A SOLO DEV

A list of tips on how to maintain the motivation to work as a solo developer.

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IT'S NOT JUST YOU: GOOGLE SEEMINGLY SCALED BACK AI OVERVIEWS AFTER ITS ROCKY LAUNCH

Google has scaled back AI Overviews. The AI-generated answers are now appearing in around 11 percent of queries, down from around 27 percent when the feature was launched last month. The company is still in the process of refining the feature. AI Overviews are appearing most in health-focused searches, despite the company highlighting the tool's use for shopping, restaurant recommendations, and travel in its marketing.

NVIDIA EMAILS: ELON MUSK DIVERTING TESLA GPUS TO HIS OTHER COMPANIES

Elon Musk redirected 12,000 H100 GPUs ordered by Tesla to X. He had told investors in April that Tesla had spent $1 billion on GPUs in the three months of the year. Tesla has been developing its own in-house supercomputer for AI, but Musk has previously said that it would be redundant if the company could source more H100s. X's order of 12,000 H100s will be redirected to Tesla.

FLAWED, SCANDALOUS TRIALS TANK FDA EXPERT SUPPORT FOR MDMA THERAPY

Advisors for the Food and Drug Administration have voted overwhelmingly against approving MDMA as part of a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. While results from clinical trials showed positive results, a deeper look at the data uncovered a large number of trial flaws that threw the validity of the positive results into serious question. The FDA is conducting an investigation into accusations of possible data manipulation during the trials. There were claims that some of the trial participants were discouraged from reporting negative responses to the therapy.

‘EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE': MELANOMA JAB TRIAL RESULTS EXCITE DOCTORS

A mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma halves the risk of patients dying or the disease returning after three years. The vaccine is custom-built for each patient and specific to each patient's tumor. The average risk of recurrence for the type of advanced cancer the study focused on is 50%, but the vaccine brought the risk of recurrence down to 25%. The data from the study suggests that levels of cancer relapse did not increase in people with high-risk, advanced-stage melanoma.

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SKIP SDKS IN SIMPLE INTEGRATIONS

SDKs are not always beneficial and can complicate the development process. They often organize API interactions differently to how developers want them, have hidden complexities, use outdated dependencies, and have learning overhead. Using direct API calls allows for offline development, custom typing information, and easier swapping of vendors. SDKs can still be useful for deep integration with a service, but for simple API integrations, they introduce too much unnecessary bloat and cognitive overhead.

INTRODUCING STAGING GROUND: THE PRIVATE SPACE TO GET FEEDBACK ON QUESTIONS BEFORE THEY'RE POSTED

Staging Ground is a private space where new askers on Stack Overflow can get help from experienced users to improve their questions before posting to the broader community. Reviewers provide feedback on how to improve questions by leaving comments and moving questions into different statuses based on how much the questions need to be improved. Staging Ground was created to improve the new user experience while also increasing the quality of questions on Stack Overflow. It is now available to all new question-askers on the platform.

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS (BOOK)

Everyone is talking about AI, but few know what is about to hit them. This book looks at what the future holds for AI. It discusses the road to AGI, superintelligence, scaling, security, and more. While many people may think that those in the AI industry are crazy, those that built the technology believe that it will change the world before the decade is out.

INBOX TEN

This post presents tips on how to stay up to date on information and how to maintain an information ecosystem. Your ability to be effective is a function of your ability to efficiently ingest the information around you. Stay informed and advance your own work while also keeping others informed so they can do the same. One of the most important tools to use is to just decline to engage - don't let things linger or get talked into work you don't think is a good use of your time.

"NOT YOUR MOM'S FACEBOOK:" INSIDE META'S PLAN TO WIN BACK THE YOUTH

Meta will refocus its core product suite to focus on the discovery of content relevant to younger audiences, put a greater emphasis on short-form videos within Facebook, and develop a professional mode to make the app more creator-friendly.