TLDR 2022-07-04
Zuckerberg "turns up heat" π₯, Meta's product roadmap π±, first CRISPR drug π
Mark Zuckerberg warns staff Facebook will be βturning up the heatβ to weed out underperformers (3 minute read)
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.
Meta warns employees of βserious timesβ in internal memo listing key product bets (6 minute read)
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.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
The first CRISPR gene-editing drug is comingβpossibly as soon as next year (4 minute read)
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.
Methane converted into methanol at room temperature β just add light (3 minute read)
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.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
Enrich Time Series Data with Data from PostgreSQL (Sponsor)
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the Flux query language to enrich time series data stored in InfluxDB time series database by combining it with metadata stored in a relational database. Learn more.
Copper (GitHub Repo)
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 (GitHub Repo)
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.
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