TLDR 2022-07-13

GPT-3's open source competitor 💻, Magic Leap AR headset 🕶, clever CSS tricks 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Magic Leap 2 Arrives September 30, Starting At $3299 (2 minute read)

The Magic Leap 2 AR headset will be available from September 30 in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There will be three variations of the self-contained AR glasses, with prices starting from $3,299. The developer version will come with developer-focused software and sample projects and the enterprise version will have two-year support for enterprise-ready software. Magic Leap's headset is targeted at the health care, defense, and manufacturing industries.

Google is suing to permanently ban Tinder owners from its app store (2 minute read)

Google has filed a lawsuit against Match Group, demanding monetary compensation and to permanently deprive the company of access to its app store. The tech giant has accused the dating app company of bad faith dealings and breach of contract. It alleges that Match Group doesn't want to pay to use the Google Play Store. The lawsuit is in response to Match Group suing Google in May for its monopolistic billing practices.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

SpaceX starts testing its Super Heavy booster, and it’s “not good” (3 minute read)

Tesla's ground-based test of its Super Heavy rocket on Monday afternoon ended up in flames. It was the first test of a booster stage. SpaceX was testing the spin start portion of the rocket's ignition sequence, which did not involve igniting the engines. SpaceX is targeting a potential orbital launch attempt for the Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage in August, but technical issues like this one may cause delays. The company has yet to get a formal launch license from the FAA for its orbital launch attempt.

Doctors Gene-Edit Patient's Liver to Make Less Cholesterol (2 minute read)

Researchers from Verve Therapeutics have injected a gene-editing serum into a live patient's liver. The treatment is designed to lower the patient's cholesterol by making a single spelling change in their liver's DNA to permanently turn off a disease-causing gene. It is able to permanently lower levels of LDL cholesterol, which could prevent diseases such as heart attacks. This is the first time that the technology has been used in humans. Early animal experiments have yielded hopeful results.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

A thread of my favorite clever CSS tricks (2 minute read)

This Twitter thread contains several CSS tricks used by companies like Apple, Tesla, Airbnb, and Nike. It links to examples and explanations of how the code works.

Ultra (GitHub Repo)

Ultra is a modern streaming SSR React web app framework in Deno. It leans hard into browser-native features while still supporting popular non-standards. A project example is available.
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Miscellaneous

Ev Williams is stepping down as CEO of Medium after more than 11 years at the helm (3 minute read)

Ev Williams has stepped down as CEO of Medium and will be replaced by Tony Stubblebine, the chief executive of Coach.me. The writing platform has struggled to find a sustainable business model for itself and writers on the platform since it launched in 2011. Williams plans to spend more time with friends and family and launch a new holding company/research lab. He is the latest in a string of high-profile CEOs to step down since Jeff Bezos kicked off the trend in 2021.

An open-source model that dwarfs GPT-3 aims to free AI from Big Tech (3 minute read)

BLOOM is a Large Language Model (LLM) that is available for free to anyone. LLMs are prohibitively expensive to create and run. They are rarely open-sourced, especially when they provide competitive advantages. BLOOM's 176-billion-parameter model is larger than OpenAI's GPT-3 and MetaAI's OPT. It will give researchers a unique chance to explore the risks and benefits of LLMs. BLOOM can generate text in 46 languages and dialects and 13 programming languages.
Quick Links

Guest WiFi using a QR code (1 minute read)

This article teaches readers how to create a WiFi QR code.

Spotify acquires music trivia game Heardle (3 minute read)

Heardle will help keep music nerds engaged and act as a music discovery tool.

The CSS behind Figma (5 minute read)

This article discusses the new capabilities for building layouts that Flexbox and Grid provide.

Marvel at the first batch of full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (8 minute read)

This article contains the first batch of images released by NASA gathered by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope.

Read the memo Google’s CEO sent employees about a hiring slowdown (3 minute read)

Google will slow down the pace of hiring for the rest of the year and work with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger.

MPL Plotter (GitHub Repo)

MPL Plotter is a Matplotlib-based Python plotting library.
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