Apple has reportedly prioritized the development of xrOS, the operating system for its upcoming AR/VR headset. 
TLDR

Daily Update 2023-01-09

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Big Tech & Startups

‘xrOS’ for AR/VR headset takes priority over iOS 17 features, augmented reality Apple Store experience coming soon (1 minute read)

Apple has reportedly prioritized the development of xrOS, the operating system for its upcoming AR/VR headset. Engineering resources have been directed away from work on iOS 17 and macOS 14. iOS 17, iPad OS 17, and macOS 14 may have fewer major new features than originally planned. A new augmented reality feature for the Apple Store app is almost ready for release.
Microsoft plans adding OpenAI chatbot tech to productivity apps (2 minute read)

Microsoft is looking for ways to incorporate OpenAI's technology into its Office apps. The integration will give users the ability to fill documents with automatically generated text. Microsoft still has to improve its models' accuracy, as providing tools that create false or offensive responses may turn customers away. The company also has to develop privacy-preserving methods for models customized to individual clients. There is no definite timeline for when a greater push will be made to make Office apps rely more on AI.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

ISS astronauts are building objects that couldn’t exist on Earth (4 minute read)

A group of MIT researchers recently launched an object printing device scheduled to spend 45 days aboard the ISS. The device fills flexible silicone skins with a liquid resin that hardens when exposed to ultraviolet light. It is able to create objects without gravity affecting the process. If the experiment is successful, it could lead to a space-based manufacturing process that could reduce launch costs and make building infrastructure in space more feasible.
Kids' Incredible Learning May All Be Down to 1 Chemical in The Brain (3 minute read)

A team of neuroscientists from Germany and the US have discovered a link between GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) and kids' ability to learn quickly. They found that GABA levels in children increased rapidly during learning while GABA levels in adults remained consistent. The higher levels of GABA allows children to learn at a faster rate and retain more information than adults. The discovery could lead to new technologies or therapies that could help adults learn more efficiently.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

VALL-E: Microsoft’s new zero-shot text-to-speech model can duplicate everyone’s voice in three seconds (2 minute read)

Microsoft's VALL-E text-to-speech model can produce speech in any voice with just three seconds of training. The transformer-based model keeps the intonation, charisma, and style of voice intact in the generated speech. Microsoft has released samples of clips generated with VALL-E, a few of which are available in the article.
Your First 60 Days at an Engineering Job (4 minute read)

This is a guide for new engineers on how to approach their first job. It covers what to do before starting the role, the first steps to complete, how to make a contributing impact, and how to behave. It advises new engineers to find guides, understand the business, work hard, and try to make a contributing impact within the first 60 days.
Get the inside scoop on unit testing in Java (Sponsor)

Testing your Java code? Check out Snyk’s guide to writing unit tests with JUnit 5, VSCode, and Java 11 with Maven.
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Miscellaneous

The Key CES Trends That Are Shaping the Future of Tech (9 minute read)

This year's CES included a flood of interesting products and announcements that lay a vision for where tech may be headed in the coming months and years. Trends included a focus on sustainability, the car experience, less gimmicky TVs, foldable devices, smart home, and health monitoring devices. This article looks at some of the technologies presented at CES along these themes.
Leaked Slack all-hands meeting reveals a ‘strong culture clash’ and growing rift with parent company Salesforce (3 minute read)

Slack executives addressed employee concerns about the company's future and acknowledged a growing rift with its parent company Salesforce during an all-hands meeting on Thursday. Salesforce purchased Slack for $27 billion at the end of 2020. Its founder and CEO announced plans to leave Slack last month and will be replaced by Salesforce executive Lidiane Jones. Employees were told that they shouldn't be concerned about Slack going out of business.
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Quick Links

Don’t build a CSV importer (Sponsor)

OneSchema is a ready-made CSV importer for developers — which automatically corrects customer data. (Also: edge case handling, simple UI, bulk editing). See how OneSchema works
‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why (4 minute read)

The number of published research papers has skyrocketed over the past few decades, but the disruptiveness of those papers has dropped.
Why ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon (7 minute read)

ChatGPT has several factors preventing it from replacing search engines, including legal issues, cost, speed, and user experience.
Silicon Valley Can’t Quit Its Pizza Robot Obsession (20 minute read)

This article looks at Stellar, a company that makes pizza robots that has attracted the attention of ex-SpaceX engineers.
The End of Organizing (7 minute read)

Large language models like GPT-3 will be organizing our notes in the near future, allowing us to view the right notes at the right time in the right format when we need them most.
Elon Musk Updates the Timeline for Starship to Finally Launch to Space (2 minute read)

Elon Musk is hopeful that the first orbital flight of Starship could happen as soon as next month.
The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art (11 minute read)

Diffusion models are heavily inspired by nonequilibirium thermodynamics, a branch of thermodynamics that deals with physical systems like the spread of fluids and gasses.
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Jobs

TLDR - Senior Software Engineer (Remote, $120k-$200k)

TLDR is hiring our first engineer to help us build out our hiring platform along with other internal projects. Looking for someone with experience shipping side projects or on small teams, with experience in Next.js and Postgres/Supabase.
Sourcegraph - Head of Search (Remote, $235k)

Sourcegraph is hiring an engineering manager to take responsibility for a distributed, FAANG-bar team of roughly a dozen engineers, and lead them as a front-line manager while we become the Google of Code Search.
IMG.LY - Build Engineer (Remote, $63k - $85k)

IMG.LY is looking for a build engineer to improve and maintain the build process of our products, as well as enhancing the stability and efficiency of our CI/CD pipelines.
Justworks - Senior Security Engineer (New York City, US, $167k - $205k)

Justworks is hiring a senior security engineer to evaluate existing security controls and identify opportunities to enhance our security posture across network and infrastructure, application security, identity and access management, and more.
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