NameDrop is a new way for iPhone users to share contact information with each other. It allows users to simply tap their phones together to swap information. The feature is available to all users with supported iPhones on iOS 17. Users will be able to select what information they share with other people. The feature can be turned off via a toggle in the settings.
Google announced the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel Watch 2, and many other goodies at its Made By Google event yesterday. This article contains summaries of the most important part of the keynote. The main draw to this year's Pixel phone upgrades seems to be the camera specs and the new Tensor G3 processor. Android 14 has started rolling out to supported Pixel devices and will roll out to other Android devices later this year.
Amazon is gearing up to launch two demo internet satellites on Friday. The satellites will ride aboard United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Amazon aims to provide Internet service to both individual users and large corporations. It will safely deorbit the two satellites after the mission's conclusion.
The Giant Magellan Telescope aims to surpass current space telescopes in sensitivity and resolution, promising unparalleled astronomical insights by the decade's end. It has begun the four-year process of fabricating and polishing its seventh and final primary mirror. The mirror will complete the telescope's 368 square meter light collecting surface. Pictures showing some of the mirror fabrication processes are available in the article.
CSS Scope Inline monitors the DOM and scopes styles to whatever the parent element is the moment a new style tag is seen. It doesn't touch existing styles, allowing users to mix and match at their leisure. CSS Scope Inline pairs well with HTMX and Surreal. It provides an easy inline vanilla CSS experience without Tailwind CSS.
TLDR is a full-featured, mostly Minitest-compatible Ruby test framework that stops running tests after 1.8 seconds. It shuffles and runs in parallel, allowing developers to catch any problems much earlier than usual. TLDR provides several escape hatches to sequester tests that aren't thread-safe.
The Google Pixel 8 Pro has an ultrawide angle camera, a main wide-angle camera, and a telephoto camera. A new Video Boost feature improves videos taken in dim and dark conditions. Implementing the feature required a new image sensor technology in the main camera. The Tensor G3 GPU is responsible for preprocessing video for Video Boost. Video Boost relies on compute from Google's data centers to reduce noise, stabilize video, and sharpen low-light images.
OpenAI's Residency is an initiative to empower exceptional researchers and engineers from diverse fields to transition into the world of AI and machine learning. It is especially beneficial for researchers specializing in fields outside of deep learning and welcomes software engineers seeking to pivot into AI research roles. Residents will tackle real AI challenges while receiving a full salary.
Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) are a kind of data structure that is great for building rich collaborative apps without requiring a central server to sync changes.
Tsubame Industries, a Tokyo-based startup, has made its Archax pilotable robot units available for preorder for around $2.7 million - a video of the robot is available in the article.
A startup called Aquagga has successfully deployed a PFAS destruction unit housed inside a modest 10-feet-long by 8-feet-wide shipping container - PFAS chemicals are great at deflecting water, stains, and grease, but the long-lived chemicals have contaminated drinking water everywhere.
A combination of individualistic culture and being chronically online has caused some people to come to expect every experience to be hyper-personalized.
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