TLDR 2023-06-06

Apple Vision Pro, MacBook Air & iOS 17 🌎, StackOverflow moderator strike 👨‍💻, CSS blend modes 🎨

📱
Big Tech & Startups

Apple Vision Pro is Apple’s new AR headset (4 minute read)

Apple's augmented reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, will launch early next year starting at $3,499. The headset seamlessly blends the real and digital world. It doesn't need any controllers. Users control the device using their eyes, hands, and voice. Users who wear glasses can purchase optical inserts made by Zeiss. The Apple Vision Pro uses an M2 chip and includes a new chip called the R1. Many more details about the headset are available in the article along with photos and videos.

Apple Announces New MacBook Air With 15.3-inch Display and M2 Chip (3 minute read)

Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Air is 11.5mm thick and weighs 3.3 pounds. It is 12 times faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air. The fanless MacBook Air features an M2 chip, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, a three-microphone array, a six-speaker system, a battery that can last 18 hours on a single charge, MagSafe, two Thunderbolt ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It comes in four colors and starts at $1,299. Pre-orders for the MacBook Air 15-inch are now open, with deliveries beginning next week.
🚀
Science & Futuristic Technology

Common eye drops may provide hope for nearsighted kids (3 minute read)

A new study has found that a commonly-used eye drop could help slow the progression of nearsightedness in children. The eye drop is used to dilate pupils before eye exams. Children in the study who used the eye drops at bedtime had slower myopia progression than those who received a placebo, resulting in a lower prescription for glasses. Few side effects were reported.

Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half (3 minute read)

A late-stage study led by researchers at Yale University showed that taking the drug osimertinib after lung cancer surgery reduced the risk of patients dying by 51%. The study looked at whether the drug could help patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. Everyone in the trial had a gene mutation found in about a quarter of global lung cancer cases. Earlier trials of the drug showed that it also halves the risk of a recurrence of the disease.
💻
Programming, Design & Data Science

Mastering CSS Blend Modes (5 minute read)

CSS mix blend modes provide an easy and powerful way to create visually interesting designs. They allow developers to manipulate how elements interact with each other. CSS blend modes offer similar capabilities to photo editing software for manipulating the appearance of elements. This article uses the Tailwind framework to show what CSS mix blend modes can do. All examples apply to regular CSS.

Mercury (GitHub Repo)

Mercury allows users to build web apps in Jupyter Notebooks using only Python. It enables users to add interactive widgets in Python notebooks so they can share results without rewriting notebooks to web frameworks. Mercury can be used to create interactive presentations, build data-rich dashboards, create reports, and more.
🎁
Miscellaneous

Apple announces iOS 17 (5 minute read)

iOS 17 includes new safety features, a built-in journaling app, a new nightstand mode, redesigned contact cards, better autocorrect and voice transcription, and live voicemail. Users will be able to search through Messages using filter searchers and additional terms and a new feature called Check In allows users to share their location and status with someone else and automatically send a message when the user arrives home. Stickers and AirDrop also received updates. More details about what's new in iOS 17 are available in the article.

Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps (3 minute read)

Some of Reddit's biggest communities are planning to set themselves to private on June 12 over the site's new API pricing. The protest is planned to go on for 48 hours, but some subreddits will go away permanently until the issue is adequately addressed. Reddit's new API pricing will mean that many third-party apps will no longer be able to operate. Many subreddit moderators rely on third-party apps to manage their communities and the loss of these apps will significantly impact their ability to moderate efficiently. A link to a complete list of the communities taking part in the protest is available in the article.
Quick Links

To reduce motion sickness in VR, Apple developed the new R1 chip (2 minute read)

The R1 chip takes all the sensors embedded into the Vision Pro to create real-time 3D mapping and precise head, hand, and eye tracking to dramatically reduce motion sickness.

SEC sues Binance, says it evaded US law with “extensive web of deception” (4 minute read)

The US SEC alleges that Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao blatantly disregarded federal law and enriched themselves while placing investors' assets at significant risk and will be seeking fines, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with interest, and injunctions.

Nvidia unveils new kind of Ethernet for AI, Grace Hopper 'Superchip' in full production (4 minute read)

Spectrum-4, the world's first high-performance ethernet switch for AI, can route 128 ports of 400-gigabit ethernet or 64 ports of 800-gigabit ethernet without dropping packets.

Google just dropped a 100% free learning path on Generative AI with 9 Courses 👇 (Twitter Thread)

The learning path guides students through a curated collection of content on Generative AI products, from the fundamentals to how to create and deploy generative AI solutions.

Moderation strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers (10 minute read)

A large number of moderators, curators, and users from around Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange initiated a global moderation strike on June 5 in protest of recent and upcoming changes to policy and the platform regarding AI-generated content.

I spent 10% of my life contributing to the development of the #VisionPro (5 minute read)

A look at some of the technology behind the Vision Pro from someone who spent 3.5 years helping develop the headset.
Get the most important tech, science, & coding news in a free daily email. Read by +1,250,000 software engineers and tech workers.
Join 1,250,000 readers for