TLDR 2019-05-01

iPhone sales drop, Indonesia's sinking capital city

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Big Tech & Startups

Oculus announces a VR subscription service for enterprises (1 minute read)

Oculus has announced business versions of their VR headsets, designed for enterprise use. The Oculus Go for business will start at $599 (64 GB) and the Oculus Quest for enterprise will begin at $999 (128 GB). Oculus for Business also provides enterprise device management and support at a fee of $180 per year per device. The fees for the first year of the Oculus for Business subscription is included with the purchase of a device.

Apple’s Q2 earnings: iPhone sales continue to drop as services keep growing (4 minute read)

Apple has reported its Q2 financial results, announcing a quarterly revenue of $58 billion, 5 percent lower than Q2 2018. iPhone and Mac sales were down, but iPad, wearables, home, accessories, and services all saw gains. Sales for iPhones have been dropping quarter after quarter, as customers are upgrading devices less frequently due to battery-replacement programs and the phasing out of carrier subsidies. Investors are very interested in Apple’s services business growth, especially with the upcoming releases of Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Indonesia Plans To Move Its Capital Out Of Jakarta, A City That's Sinking (3 minute read)

Indonesia has announced plans to move its capital out of Java, Indonesia’s main island. The current capital city, Jakarta, struggles with pollution, traffic gridlock, and is also sinking. The sinking is mostly due to the extraction of groundwater in the city, which has caused change to the ground levels and polluted surface water resources. While the location of the new capital city has not yet been announced, the government has stated that it is looking for a location on the eastern side of Indonesia.

NASA head warns: Expect a major asteroid impact in your lifetime (3 minute read)

At the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine opened his keynote with a warning about the likely scenario that we will have to deal with an asteroid impact within our lifetimes. In 2013, a 20 meter meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging thousands of buildings and sending more than 1,500 people to the hospital. There were three of these events in the 20th century, with one in 1908 causing damage to more than 2,000 square kilometers. NASA is currently attempting to track 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters and larger. It has enlisted the help of SpaceX to develop a rocket that will hopefully be able to steer asteroids off their course if they are aimed at Earth. NASA currently knows of no asteroid or comet that is on a collision course with Earth.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Pprint (GitHub Repo)

Pprint is a pretty printer for modern C++. To install, users just need to include the pprint.hpp in their code. There are many examples of how to use pprint available on the repository.

SynthWave '84 - VS Code theme (GitHub Repo)

SynthWave ‘84 is a Visual Studio Code theme inspired by the music and the cover artwork of modern Synthwave bands like FM-84, Timecop 1983, and The Midnight. It is written in plain CSS. The base theme is installed like any other VS Code theme, but if users want to enable the extra glow feature, a little more work is required. Full instructions are available on the repository.
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Miscellaneous

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt will leave Alphabet’s board after 18 years (2 minute read)

Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and former Alphabet executive chairman, has announced his decision to step down as a board member of Alphabet. He will be retained in the company as a technical advisor but wishes to focus on other things such as teaching and the work at his philanthropic organization. While Schmidt has been a key player in causing Google to become the company it is today, there has also been controversy with his leadership. Google has recently come under scrutiny for sexual misconduct within the company, and Schmidt had been named in a lawsuit involving harassment by multiple executives.

Google employees are planning a May 1st sit-in to protest retaliation (2 minute read)

Google employees will hold a sit-in protest to protest retaliation against employees on May 1. In November, more than 20,000 employees walked out to protest against the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations, and since then many employees have found that their job responsibilities have diminished. Employee protests at Google have been effective in creating change in the company. Google officially prohibits retaliation at the workplace, and a spokesperson has stated that the company has multiple channels, including anonymously, for employees to report workplace retaliation.
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