Meta is letting members of the public in the US talk to its new state-of-the-art chatbot to collect feedback on its capabilities. BlenderBot 3 can engage in general chitchat and answer queries like a digital assistant. It is able to search the internet in order to talk about specific topics and users can click its answers to view its sources. Meta is also publishing the underlying code, training dataset, and smaller model variants. A link to the chatbot is available in the article.
Amazon has agreed to acquire iRobot for approximately $1.7 billion. The deal is subject to approval by shareholders and regulators. Amazon hasn't had much success with household robots, but the acquisition will provide a massive foothold in the consumer robot market. iRobot's CEO Colin Angle will remain in his position. The purchase of iRobot is Amazon's fourth-largest acquisition.
Polaris Dawn is planning its first crewed launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in December. The mission will last five days and include the first spacewalk on a private mission. Its crew will include billionaire Jared Isaacman and three others. SpaceX will have to upgrade the life support systems on the Crew Dragon spacecraft for the mission.
Researchers from the UK and Switzerland have developed a comprehensive map of the network of connections that make up the human immune system. The map highlights the individual cell types, messengers, and relative speed of each conversation taking place between immune cells. It could revolutionize how researchers approach drug development and immunotherapies. The map includes many previously unknown interactions and provides a new understanding of the cell-to-cell signals happening in the immune system.
Froebel is a strictly typed TypeScript utility library. It contains TypeScript helper functions and utilities from various projects. Froebel runs in Deno, Node.js, and the browser.
This article contains advice for entry-level software engineers. While the job market was heated in the second half of 2021, there wasn't a huge demand for less experienced software engineers. Neither demand nor compensation for entry-level software engineers increased during this time. The market has now cooled down for experienced software engineers, making it even worse for those with less experience.
This Twitter thread talks about how Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy blew up the digital advertising ecosystem. ATT disrupts behavioral profiling across apps and websites. The move bolstered Apple's ads business while positioning the company as a champion of consumer privacy. Companies like Facebook were unable to defend against the policy and have seen their revenues severely diminished.
The Tesla Model Y will likely be the best-selling vehicle by total volume next year. It is on track to be the best-selling vehicle by revenue this year. The current best-selling vehicle in the world is the Toyota Corolla. Tesla is expected to have the capacity to produce over 1 million Model Y vehicles per year by the end of this year.