TLDR 2021-10-18

The market share of Apple's app advertising business has grown threefold in the six months after the introduction of the AppTrackingTransparency framework. The AppTrackingTransparency framework stops apps from tracking iPhone users across apps and targeting ads at them. Apple's Search Ads sells sponsored spots in App Store search results. They account for 58 percent of all iPhone app downloads from clicks on advertisements. Search Ads is primed to bring in $5 billion from ad revenue this fiscal year.

Ego4D is a research project at Facebook that is using first-person video data to train AI to develop skills such as episodic memory, forecasting, and audio-visual diarization. It could result in AI systems that can remember who said what when and answer questions such as 'where did I leave my keys?'. Facebook stresses that this is a research project rather than a commercial development. It partnered with 13 universities to record 3,205 hours of first-person footage for researchers to use to train AI systems. A 5-minute video from Facebook explaining Ego4D is available in the article.

Radiant is a startup made up of a team of former SpaceX engineers that is developing portable nuclear microreactors aimed at commercial and military applications. The microreactors will each be able to power approximately 1,000 homes for up to eight years. They will use an advanced particle fuel that does not melt down and is capable of withstanding higher temperatures than traditional nuclear fuels. The technology will allow people in remote locations to use clean energy without needing constant shipments of fuel.

Researchers found that an injection of green algae and cyanobacteria into the brains of suffocated African clawed frog tadpoles resulted in increased local oxygen and the revival of the tadpoles. The human brain can't survive without oxygen for more than five minutes before irreversible damage occurs. While the method may one day provide a way to directly increase oxygen levels in human brains, there are many factors that make it unviable. Even if the method works on human brain cells in the lab, it does not mean it will actually work in humans.

Elf is a reactive immutable state management solution built on top of RxJS. It is modular by design and it features a CLI, first class entities support, persistent states, devtools, and more. Examples are available.

Undermoon is a self-managed Redis clustering system based on Redis Cluster Protocol. It features horizontal scalability, high availability, cluster management, automatic failover for both master and replica, and fast scaling. An explanation of the architecture behind Undermoon is available.

Our Sun's transformation into a white dwarf will be a violent process that will destroy an unknown number of planets. The recent discovery of an exoplanet that survived the death of its star may help us predict which planets will survive the death of the Sun. The new exoplanet is similar to Jupiter in both mass and separation. It likely barely survived its star's expansion when it became a red giant. The data suggests that Jupiter, and maybe even Mars, will survive after our Sun dies.

This article looks at the reasons why junior developers are having a hard time landing jobs. It makes some suggestions on what to do to help improve the market. While the number of job opportunities and salaries skyrockets for software developers around the world, fresh grads and junior developers struggle to even get invited for interviews. Companies are reluctant to hire junior developers as they require training and the investment is lost if the developer gets another job once they're trained.