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This repository contains a GitHub profile template that can be forked for personal use. The template provides a quick overview of the user's skills and activity across GitHub and other platforms using animated graphs and other components.
This post outlines the engineering techniques that WhatsApp used to scale quickly. WhatsApp was able to support 50 billion messages a day from 450 million daily active users with only 32 engineers. The company focused on messaging, its core feature, and eliminated feature creep at all costs. With this focus, the team was able to prioritize reliability over everything else.
This article looks at the history of North Korean Sci-Fi and how it changed throughout the decades. North Korean Sci-Fi has its roots in Soviet literature. Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea, thought that literature could be used to push propaganda and recommended that authors translate Soviet works. They were also told to write their own stories depicting a thriving communist society.
WordPress has a new plan that allows users to register and host their websites for a century. It is aimed at providing companies and families a way to preserve content beyond a generation. The plan includes unmetered bandwidth and 24/7 personalized support. It costs $38,000. WordPress will keep multiple backups of the content across distributed data centers.
The group had plans to transform tens of thousands of acres to create a city that would generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris.
X has rolled out its Hiring feature in beta and job postings are already showing up on some accounts.
Neutrinos are tiny and neutrally charged particles that are estimated to be some of the most abundant particles in the universe, but observing them has so far proved to be highly challenging.
Instacart's IPO may be the first significant venture-backed tech IPO since December 2021.
Sand is abundant and able to store energy with almost no limits.
This article contains excerpts from a live discussion about the path to commercialization of chiplets with several major figures in the industry.
Tesla's Cybertruck design, which features sharp edges and a stainless steel finish, will require the manufacturer to achieve a level of accuracy in the single-digit micron range on all parts in order for it to look perfect. The straight edges of the design will amplify every imperfection. Elon Musk compared the approach to the requirements of products like LEGO and soda cans. Tesla has been criticized for its fit and finishes in the past, but it is generally accepted that the quality of its products has improved over the years.
Meta has released Code Llama, a large language model built on top of Llama 2 that specializes in generating and debugging code. It has also released a Python-specific version and another version that can understand instructions in natural language. These models are not interchangeable. Meta claims that Code Llama performs better than other publicly available LLMs on coding tasks, but it did not specifically name which models were tested.
The constant evolution of EV tech has made it challenging to create infrastructure that can support the wide range of technologies available. A group of researchers have created a novel battery charger that can support a vast range of present and future generations of EV battery packs. The charger is compatible with batteries between 120 and 900 volts with an efficiency consistently greater than 94%. It can be used as a portable unit. The researchers have filed a patent and are in the process of commercializing the technology.
Researchers at North Carolina State University have enlisted the help of robots to help search for the ideal perovskite. Perovskites are a type of material with a rhombus-in-a-cube crystal structure that can be used to create highly efficient solar cells. There are a vast number of possible perovskite materials. Predicting and testing the potential properties of all these materials is time-consuming and difficult. The robot combines chemicals in different proportions to form perovskites and then applies them onto a surface for testing. It speeds up the synthesis and characterization of materials by a factor of 14 compared to manual exploration.
pixi as a cross-platform multi-language package manager and workflow tool. It supports Python, C++, and R on Linux, Windows, and macOS. pixi provides a Cargo-like command-line interface that allows developers to install tools per-project or system-wide. A short video demo is available.
Expresso TS is a TypeScript and Node.js framework for building scalable, easy-to-read-and-maintain server-side applications. It streamlines repetitive and time-consuming processes so that developers can focus on the important things. Expresso TS handles configuring logging systems, authentication, connecting to databases, and more.
Tor's Proof-of-Work (PoW) defense for Onion services is designed to prioritize verified traffic as a deterrent against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Tor Onion services are vulnerable to DoS attacks as Tor obfuscates IP addresses. PoW defense will start prompting incoming client connections to perform a number of successfully more complex operations when an Onion service is under stress. The Onion service will then prioritize connections based on the effort level demonstrated by the client. This will thwart DoS attacks without compromising user privacy.
Zoom is requiring employees living within 50 miles of an office to report to the office a minimum of two days a week. The company's CEO, Eric Yuan, says that it's difficult for employees to build trust with each other on a computer screen. He claims that it's too difficult to have innovative conversations and debates on Zoom as it makes people too friendly. His comments point towards the company's belief in the ability of its platform.
The partnership with Wing will allow Walmart to deliver to an additional 60,000 homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
This article tells the story of how a former engineer at Alameda Research met Sam Bankman-Fried and provides a few anecdotes from their time working at the firm.
Flannery Associates and its parent company, Flannery Holdings, have purchased approximately 140 properties for more than $800 million in Solano Country at premium rates since 2018.
Mythic Computer is a company that makes handmade wooden computers that look nothing like your average computer.
Email apnea, which, according to an informal survey, happens to roughly 80% of people, is a phenomenon where people periodically hold their breath or alter their breathing when checking their emails.
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There’s no question that compliance is critical. But for dev teams, it can be a drag. If you’re a developer, you were hired to build products — not tinker with screenshots and spreadsheets for compliance audits.
Google has fallen behind in the AR/VR space despite dabbling in it for over a decade. The company is working with Samsung and Qualcomm to create a competitor to Apple's Vision Pro headset. It is planning to launch the headset around summer 2024. Inside reports from Google employees say that the company's AR/VR plans are a bureaucratic mess.
A new report claims that TikTok is planning to ban links to outside e-commerce sites. The move will force people to use TikTok Shop if they want to purchase an item they see on the app. TikTok Shop is on track to lose more than $500 million in the US this year. It is unknown when TikTok plans to introduce the ban.
Scientists have created a full genetic map of the male sex chromosome. The breakthrough could help researchers decode conditions ranging from infertility to cancer. The Y chromosome comprises nearly 60 million base pairs. The researchers aim to make the data widely accessible to expand genetic studies of human disease and provide new insights into basic biology. A link to the original research paper is available.
Decades of research are starting to pay off for the field of humanoid robotics. Many startups have come out of the woodwork since Tesla announced plans to build a robot in April 2022. This article looks at Apptronik's Apollo humanoid robot, which can perform a variety of tasks including walking, unloading trailers, palletizing, and case picking. Apptronik has already managed to sign a handful of pilot tests for Apollo. Pictures and GIFs of the robot are available in the article.
React Stately is a library of React Hooks that provides cross-platform state management for design systems. It is design-agnostic and provides state management intrinsic to the functionality of the component. React Stately handles state management for common components through an easy-to-use interface. It is designed to help developers build adaptive, accessible, and robust user experiences.
Roboflow Inference is a tool for running inference on state-of-the-art computer vision models. It can be deployed on a range of devices and environments with no prior knowledge of machine learning. Roboflow Inference supports object detection, classification, instance segmentation models, and foundation models. A video of Roboflow Inference running on a video of a football game is available.
Two things to avoid during salary negotiations are revealing information too early and negotiating before being ready for it. This post explains why these two mistakes sabotage salary negotiation efforts and what to say to recruiters instead. Being in a 'passive information gathering' mode will help most interviewees with their recruiter interactions. Negotiation is about laying a foundation and then swooping in on offers once they come in.
India is the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon. The Chandrayaan 3 is the country's second attempt at a lunar landing. Its first attempt in 2019 failed when higher-than-expected thrust from its braking rockets drove the lander off course. Chandrayaan 3 cost the Indian government roughly $90 million.
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Nvidia's overall sales grew 171% year-over-year in the quarter that ended July 30.
SSH is a powerful tool, but sometimes the syntax and other concepts can get in the way.
Developers now have the option to get 100% of their game's sales revenue with Epic in exchange for being exclusive in its game store for six months.
Roman Semenov and Roman Storm have been charged with three conspiracy counts in relation to the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixing service.
SpaceX and Cloudflare are working on a way to increase Starlink's network of mini data centers to deliver faster network speeds to customers.
Bing's market share hasn't grown at all despite Microsoft's $10 billion bet that AI would enable its search engine to surpass Google.
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This technical deep dive
Meta's Threads has started rolling out on the web. The web version will be improved to look more like the mobile app over the coming weeks. Meta is currently working on a search feature to improve functionality on Threads and make it more of a competitor to X. The company has no plans to monetize the service until it is more established.
Netflix is shutting down its DVD rental service on September 29. Customers can keep any remaining DVDs they have after the service shuts down. Subscribers can potentially receive up to 10 discs for free as Netflix clears out its inventory. Netflix will allow people to sign up to its DVD plan until midnight on August 28 for a chance to win the DVDs.
Embryonic stem cells are difficult to obtain and they can be rejected following transplants if they don't match the recipient's DNA. Australian researchers have developed a technique to reprogram adult cells to be more like embryonic stem cells. These cells can then be reprogrammed to become any kind of cell. The technique potentially unlocks an endless supply of stem cells for research or treatment.
SeamlessM4T is a multimodal AI model for speech and text translations. It can perform text-to-speech, speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, and text-to-text translations for up to 100 languages. Meta developed the model to help people who speak different languages communicate with each other more effectively. SeamlessM4T has been released under a research license. Its code and weights are available on Hugging Face.
Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel. A public preview of the feature is now available. Excel users can now manipulate and explore data in Excel using Python plots and libraries in combination with Excel's formulas, charts, and PivotTables. No additional software is required to access the functionality. Microsoft plans to add a feature that will expose Python data within the grid of an Excel spreadsheet.
Flakes are libraries for deployment, packaging, secrets management, system compatibility, and more. FlakeHub is a collection of ready-to-use flakes designed to help developers get to production faster. It brings modern development practices to Nix. FlakeHub allows developers to improve their APIs without disturbing user stability.
This article introduces readers to the world of game development and compares it to the software engineering approaches at tech companies. The game development world is very different from the software development world. Video games are very complex pieces of software and are built in different conditions under different constraints than business applications. The article covers typical roles within game development, how games typically get built, and the game development lifecycle.
Hackers have obtained personal information from credit bureaus and are advertising access to the data in group chats used by violent criminals. The information includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, data contained within driver's licenses, and social security numbers. It only costs around $15-$20 in Bitcoin to access the information. The data includes information on high-profile targets, such as Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and President Joe Biden.
This post looks at Worldcoin's system from a privacy-skeptical point of view to understand how risky the project actually is.
Conformant OpenGL ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and M2-family GPUs in Linux.