TLDR 2023-05-24

Windows Copilot πŸ€–, Uber robotaxis πŸš•, productive GPT-4 programming tips πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»

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Big Tech & Startups

Uber teams up with Waymo to add robotaxis to its app (2 minute read)

Uber users in Phoenix will be able to hail Waymo's robotaxis for rides and food delivery later this year. The multi-year partnership will see a set number of Waymo vehicles servicing an area of 180 square miles. These vehicles will not be exclusive to Uber. Uber and Waymo have a preexisting partnership involving autonomous long-haul trucking. Uber also has a partnership with Motional to make robotaxis available in Las Vegas.

Built-in ChatGPT-driven Copilot will transform Windows 11 starting in June (3 minute read)

Microsoft is adding a new ChatGPT-driven Copilot feature in Windows 11 that can be used alongside other Windows apps. It will be available to Windows Insiders starting in June. Windows Copilot will appear in a separate window and will assist with various tasks based on what it is asked to do. It can change Windows settings, rearrange windows with Snap Layouts, summarize and rewrite documents, open apps, and more. There will be a dedicated button for Windows Copilot on the taskbar. Microsoft has not revealed details about how the feature will deal with the privacy or security of its users.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

New kind of chicken lays eggs that don’t have allergy protein (2 minute read)

Up to 2% of children experience egg allergies. They usually outgrow their egg allergy by the time they are 16, but until then, they have to avoid eating eggs and products that contain eggs, including flu vaccines. Researchers from Japan have used gene-editing technology to create chickens that lay eggs without the protein most likely to trigger an egg allergy. As even a small amount of the protein can be life-threatening to someone with a severe egg allergy, the researchers plan to perform more studies on these eggs before claiming that their eggs will not trigger reactions.

Apptronik readies its humanoid robot for a summer unveil (6 minute read)

Apptronik is developing a general-purpose robot. It currently has two halves of a robot: Astra is an upper body designed to be mounted on another robot and Draco is a set of robot legs. The company's approach is markedly different from that of Tesla's Optimus. Apptronik will be exploring a Series A funding round following the unveiling of the full robot this summer. The article contains photos and videos of both Astra and Draco, as well as other technologies that Apptronik has developed.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Scikit-LLM (GitHub Repo)

Scikit-LLM allows developers to seamlessly integrate language models into scikit-learn for enhanced text analysis tasks. It features zero-shot text classification, multi-label zero-shot text classification, and text vectorization. Scikit-LLM is still under development and it plans to add support for more models and fine-tuning.

Introducing the popover API (5 minute read)

The popover API is a new set of declarative HTML APIs for building popovers that will come to browsers soon starting with Chromium 114. The API allows developers to build functional popovers without JavaScript. It supports promotion to the top layer, light-dismiss functionality, default focus management, accessible keyboard bindings, and accessible component bindings. Future versions of the API will support interactive entry and exit and anchor positioning.
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Miscellaneous

Most remote workers say they'd take a pay cut to continue being allowed to work from home, a new poll shows (3 minute read)

According to a recent poll from Washington Post and Ipsos, over half of fully remote workers in the US would take a pay cut to keep working from home. A majority of workers would return to the office for a salary bump. 80% of workers polled would go to the office a couple of days a week for more pay. Several tech leaders, including Elon Musk, have taken a harsh stance on remote work. Workers in some companies, like Amazon, Disney, and Starbucks, have started petitions and protests to reverse return-to-office policies.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott thinks Sydney might make a comeback (46 minute read)

This article features a transcript from an interview with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, who oversees Microsoft's AI efforts. Microsoft is integrating Copilot into Windows 11 in collaboration with OpenAI. The interview covers why Microsoft decided to partner with a startup instead of building AI tech internally, where the two companies disagree, how they resolve their differences, and why Microsoft is choosing to build for itself instead of relying on OpenAI. The audio for the interview is available.
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Quick Links

Ask HN: Those with success using GPT-4 for programming – what are you doing? (Hacker News Thread)

Using GPT-4 in the wrong way can result in a lot of wasted time - this Hacker News thread discusses effective ways to use the large language model for programming.

Microsoft Employees Blast Pay and Morale in Internal Messages to Execs (8 minute read)

An employee made a spreadsheet showing how Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella made 289 times the pay of the company's median employee in 2022.

Strawberry (Website)

Strawberry is a tiny frontend framework that provides reactivity and composability without dependencies or a build step.

Samsung Display demos long rollable and a health-sensing OLED (2 minute read)

Samsung's Rollable Flex screen can be unrolled from 49mm to 254.4mm - a picture of the screen in its rolled and unrolled forms is available in the article.

Bing Search is coming to ChatGPT (1 minute read)

Bing will be the default search engine for ChatGPT, allowing the model to pull answers from the internet and provide citations.

Almost 200,000 Job Cuts in Tech Pushes New Grads to Wall Street (5 minute read)

Many young people who had dreamed of working in tech are now turning to finance.
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