Meta is cutting back on hiring as slow growth and macroeconomic headwinds push the company to downgrade its economic outlook. It will hire 30% fewer engineers this year than planned. The company will also start weeding out staff who are unable to meet certain KPIs. Meta ended the first quarter of 2022 with 28% more full-time employees than it had a year earlier. It started a hiring freeze in May as user growth and ad revenue started decreasing.
An internal memo at Meta outlines the company's priorities and challenges to its business going forward. Privacy changes are affecting Meta's ad business. Meta will deepen its investments in metaverse products, AI, messaging, Reels, monetization, and meeting new privacy requirements. Its teams will have to prioritize more ruthlessly without the help of new staff or budgets. A full copy of the memo is available in the article.
The first CRISPR gene-editing drug, Exa-cel, could be on the market by 2023. Exa-cel can help patients with beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The drug was found to be extremely effective in tests, providing long-term benefits for most patients. There are now around 20 cell and gene therapies approved by the FDA, but none are based on CRISPR technology.
Researchers have developed a new technique to convert methane to methanol by using a metal-organic framework (MOF) as a catalyst. The technique involves mixing methane and oxygen into water and then pumping it through the MOF catalyst. Exposing the catalyst to sunlight triggers a reaction that converts the gas into liquid methanol, which can be easily extracted and converted into valuable products. The technique could reduce methane emissions and the environmental footprint of methanol production.
Copper is a Go toolkit for building web apps. It ships the frontend and backend in a single binary. Copper includes a command-line interface, lint, dev server, config management, and more. It also has packages for authentication, pub/sub, queues, emails, and WebSockets.
Virgil is a programming language designed for fast, dependency-free programs. It can produce standalone native executables, WebAssembly modules, and JARs for the JVM. Virgil is a statically-typed language that features classes, functions, tuples, type parameters, and algebraic data types.
This article looks at GPU prices in different markets, the factors that are affecting these prices, and whether it is worth buying a GPU in the current market. Graphics cards have been difficult to obtain for almost two years. They are now back on shelves, and reseller prices have hit MSRP. One of the reasons for the price drop is that the chips on these GPUs are now two years old. Many crypto miners are selling their used cards due to the crash.
This Twitter thread contains advice for startup owners about setting up a business. Many things should be done from a tax and estate planning perspective that aren't usually taught. The thread covers how to structure a startup and how to structure an estate.