TLDR 2024-04-16

Elon Musk sent a memo to Tesla employees saying that the company will lay off more than 10% of its global workforce. Tesla had 140,473 employees as of December 2023. Its shares have fallen 31% year to date. Electric vehicle sales are gaining popularity worldwide, but the company is facing more competition now than ever. It is also dealing with other challenges, such as logistical problems caused by Yemeni Houthi maritime attacks in the Red Sea and production suspension at its gigafactory near Berlin due to suspected arson at a nearby electricity substation. A copy of the memo from Musk is available at the end of the article.

Tesla has canceled dozens of Cybertruck deliveries due to an unexpected delay. The reason for the suspended deliveries is unknown. There is some evidence that it may be due to an issue with the electric pickup truck's accelerator. Several sources have reported issues with sudden acceleration, with some pointing to possible causes for the issue.

The Limitless Pendant is a device that records everything its wearers hear and then uses AI to help them remember and make sense of it. Designed to be clipped onto a shirt or worn on a string around the neck, it uses a beam-forming technology that can more clearly record people around the user and not the rest of the room. The Pendant is part of a system that uses data from different apps to provide users with useful information. The company plans to eventually create AI agents that do things on users' behalf.

Lenire is a device that treats tinnitus using electrical stimulation of the tongue. Approved by the FDA in March last year, the device consists of a plastic mouthpiece with stainless steel electrodes. A clinical trial found that 84% of participants who tried Lenire experienced a significant reduction in symptoms. While the device costs around $4,000, more than 80% of the participants in the clinical trial said they would recommend the device to a friend with tinnitus. It is unclear how long the benefits last as clinical trials have only evaluated the device over a 1-year period.

Redka is Redis re-implemented with SQLite. The project aims to reimplement the good parts of Redis with SQLite while remaining compatible with Redis API. It features ACID transactions, SQL views for better introspection and reporting, Redis-compatible commands and wire protocol, and more. Redka does not support Lua scripting, authentication and ACLs, multiple databases, watch/unwatch, Cluster, or Sentinel.

OpenAI's Batch API helps developers save costs and get higher rate limits on async tasks such as summarization, translation, and image classification. Developers just have to upload a file of bulk requests and they'll receive results within 24 hours, with 50% off API prices. A link to the Batch API reference docs is available.

The Linux Foundation is fighting against the rise of faux open source licenses such as BSL and SSPL. It is actively promoting open source projects such as OpenTofu and Valkey, whose faux open source parent companies switched to more restrictive licenses after profiting on top of open source projects. While some companies are ticked off by the move, the Linux Foundation is simply defending the method these businesses used to build their fortunes on in the first place.

This article takes a close look at how California's tech industry has changed over the last few years as well as how this has impacted the state itself and the rest of the tech industry in the US. Many of the tech industry's traditional hubs have suffered significantly since late 2022, with nowhere more so than California. The state has lost its share of US employment across wide swaths of the tech industry. Its share of jobs in subsectors like software publishing and computer system design has fallen to some of the lowest levels on record. The drop has been especially pronounced within Silicon Valley.

This article presents a framework to help B2B founders find product-market fit faster.

Changing how engineers and operators think about telemetry production and consumption can result in vastly decreased costs and increased fidelity for helping to understand and fix product issues that are actively problematic.

Scammers are offering current and former T-Mobile employees $300 per SIM swap.

The replies are mixed, but it's important to check how long you are required to stay with the company if you take up the offer.

Meta is launching a new hub later this year that will let teachers access education-specific apps, features, and tools on Quest headsets, along with tools to manage all Quest headsets in a classroom.

Framework is working on new features, security updates, and Linux support.