TLDR 2022-04-28

Netflix's recent earning calls revealed lower than expected subscriber growth. Some are blaming the company culture for its troubles. Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of the company, pushed for quantity of content at the expense of quality. Cindy Holland, who played a key role in launching some of the service's originals, fought to increase the quality of shows but was criticized for spending too freely. The company culture changed profoundly after Holland's departure.

Apple has launched its Self Service Repair program. Customers in the US will now be able to repair their iPhones from home. The unexpectedly large kits will have all the tools required to repair an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 lineup model or the third-generation iPhone SE. They will be rented to customers for $49. A picture of the repair kits is available in the article.

Almost all demonstrations of atomically small machines are essentially assembled by hand. A team of scientists has successfully used a chemical reaction to bind two atomically thin materials, graphene and molybdenum disulfide, potentially paving the way for mass production. The bridge molecule can be used to alter graphene's behavior in different ways. Details about the technique are available in the article.

Superconductors could take supercomputing technology to a whole new level, but there are many challenges in trying to design superconducting components. A team of scientists recently discovered a technique that can direct superconducting electrons down a one-way street, which is needed for components like diodes, without external magnetic fields. There are still many problems with superconductivity to overcome before they can be used in next-generation computing. For example, the phenomenon typically only occurs in materials chilled to just above absolute zero.

FortuneSheet is a drop-in JavaScript spreadsheet library based on Luckysheet. It uses a data structure that is compatible with Luckysheet and has features that make it comparable to Excel and Google Sheets. An online demo is available.

Gradio makes it easy to create user interfaces for machine learning models in Python. It can generate shareable links and get feedback on model performance. Gradio has built-in manipulation and interpretation tools for debugging. A GIF demo is available.

West Japan Rail Company is using a giant Gundam-style robot to fix remote railway power lines. The robot is piloted by a human wearing a virtual reality setup. The robot is still just a prototype and won't be put to work widely until 2024. A video of the robot doing its job is available in the article.

Transparent solar panels have the potential to shift cities from major energy users to providers in an instant. There are several transparent solar panel technologies. Some can convert almost any glass sheet or window into a transparent solar panel. The more transparent a panel is, the less efficient it is, so scientists still need to increase the technology’s efficiency before it can be scaled up.