TLDR 2023-09-25

Tesla's robot demo 🤖, Pixel 8 camera features 📱, building engineering strategy 👨‍💻

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Big Tech & Startups

Tesla’s Optimus robot can now sort objects autonomously (3 minute read)

Tesla's Optimus robot can now sort objects on its own using its end-to-end trained neural network. The company shared a video showing the robot self-calibrating and physically sorting colored blocks into trays. The robot is able to adapt and adjust to its environment dynamically. Tesla is encouraging people to come and work with the company to help develop Optimus. The video is available in the article.

Google Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro camera features revealed through promo video (4 minute read)

A promo video released by Google shows off the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro from all angles. The devices are set to launch on October 4. The Pixel 8 line seems to focus on new camera features. The Pixel 8 Pro will have new camera features, including Pro controls, Real Tone, Night Sight, Astrophotography, Super Res Zoom, and the ability to swap faces in an image. A list of the complete camera specifications for both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro is available in the article.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

NASA collected a sample from an asteroid for the first time — here’s why it matters (10 minute read)

A capsule containing material from an asteroid was released from a passing spacecraft and retrieved by NASA this morning. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected several hundred grams of asteroid material. The capsule will be processed to prevent any contamination before it can be opened. NASA hopes to investigate the asteroid material to discover whether the basic building blocks of life were formed on ancient asteroid bodies and delivered to Earth from outer space.

‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature spotted off Japan has finally been identified (4 minute read)

A creature discovered off the coast of Okinawa, Japan in 2018 left biologists baffled as it wasn't like anything else they've seen before. The creature has now been determined to be a type of parasitic flatworm. It is made up of two forms of the parasite that cooperate together. This article tells the story of how scientists identified the creature. Pictures of the flatworm are available.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Solving the Engineering Strategy crisis (16 minute read)

This article discusses a unified theory of Engineering strategy. It focuses on how individuals can drive strategy even if they are not the company's CTO. The article discusses what engineering strategies are, why some strategies are more effective than others, why written strategy is powerful, and how to drive engineering strategy as an individual. Solving the engineering strategy crisis only requires two straightforward steps: write down the existing strategy and then improve the quality of the strategy.

CloudNativePG (GitHub Repo)

CloudNativePG is an operator designed to manage PostgreSQL workloads on any supported Kubernetes cluster running in private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. It leverages Kubernetes by extending its controller and defining all the actions that a good database administrator would normally do when managing a highly available PostgreSQL database cluster. CloudNativePG covers the full life cycle of a PostgreSQL database cluster with a primary/standby architecture using native streaming replication.
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Miscellaneous

Unity apologizes to devs, reveals updated Runtime Fee policy (5 minute read)

Unity's runtime fee will no longer apply to games built on Unity Personal. It will only apply to developers on the Pro and Enterprise plans using the next LTS version of Unity arriving in 2024. The fee will not apply to games made with previous versions of Unity unless they are upgraded to the next version of Unity. Games with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be exempt from the fee.

A strange sign of the times (14 minute read)

The FBI seized stolen credentials for 80 million accounts from a darknet marketplace in April. It decided to work with the owner of data breach notification service 'Have I Been Pwned' to notify people whether their data was part of the seized data. Have I Been Pwned is run by a couple in Australia. This article tells the story of how the service started and why the FBI decided to work with it.
Quick Links

How Shopify’s anti-meeting, anti-mandatory-office experiment is going (8 minute read)

Many organizations and even a few government institutions have reached out to Shopify to request a Meeting Cost Calculator of their own after the company's success with the tool.

Expert CSS: The CPU Hack (12 minute read)

This article discusses how to continually crunch data and reevaluate state using CSS without ever touching JavaScript.

Britain set to approve amended Microsoft-Activision deal (3 minute read)

The amended Microsoft-Activision deal involves the sale of Activision's cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft.

Choose Postgres queue technology (13 minute read)

Postgres queue technology is a relatively obscure tech that announces and listens for new jobs and enables row locks.

A monopoly-busting Amazon lawsuit might be Biden’s boldest move yet to tame tech (3 minute read)

The Federal Trade Commission has been preparing a complaint against Amazon since at least the start of this year and it will file an antitrust case against the online retailer as soon as Tuesday.

My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years (19 minute read)

The story of how one solopreneur created four successful products and built an audience of 97,000 followers on Twitter to bring in a total revenue of around $45,000 a month in just two years.
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