Apple has launched two big products with Goldman Sachs’ help over the past three weeks. 

TLDR

Together With Swarmia

TLDR 2023-04-24

Non-toxic engineering metrics (Sponsor)

Between GitHub, Jira/Linear, and Slack, engineering teams create a lot of data. But measuring the wrong things can destroy motivation and productivity.

Swarmia has identified key metrics that are more signal than noise (including DORA and SPACE) — and makes them available to engineering leaders, managers, and teams. No leaderboards, no individual performance data.

Swarmia is trusted by high-performing engineering teams at Vercel, Outreach, and Pleo. You can check it out with a 14-day free trial, a live demo, or the free-forever startup edition for smaller teams.

Learn more about what you can (and can’t) measure with Swarmia

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Big Tech & Startups

Will Apple take a big bite out of the banks? (11 minute read)

Apple has launched two big products with Goldman Sachs’ help over the past three weeks. Apple Pay Later allows consumers to borrow funds and Savings is a high-yield savings account that offers a 4.15% interest rate. Apple's scale makes many banks and other providers of financial services look small. The company has been vocal in its ambitions to replace the wallet. Apple typically expands into new sectors through incremental steps that give it a sustainable advantage over time.
Apple will launch a journaling app in iOS 17, but that’s bad news for some devs (2 minute read)

Apple will unveil a personal journaling app at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The app will be pre-installed on iOS 17 and deeply integrated with location services, contacts, and other phone features. Apple plans to position the app as a mental health tool. The app will look at local data to determine what a typical day looks like for the user and make recommendations on what users might want to journal about. Its close integration with user data and other pre-installed apps will make it difficult for other journaling apps to compete.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scientists May Have Figured Out How to Regenerate Lost Hearing (2 minute read)

Harvard Medical School scientists have created a cocktail of molecules that they claim can successfully regenerate hair cells in the inner ear that enable hearing. The treatment works by reprogramming genetic pathways in the inner ear. It has been tested in mice and the scientists are now working towards human clinical trials. If successful, the research could have a profound impact on individuals with hearing loss.
Watch a rocket-powered spaceplane fly for the first time (3 minute read)

Dawn Aerospace flew its rocket-powered spaceplane for the first time on March 29. The New Zealand-based company conducted two more tests in the next two days. Dawn's rocket-powered spaceplane is designed to fly to space twice a day. Its reusable design means that it can send objects into space for cheaper. The spaceplane is able to fly without clearing each flight with regulators as it takes off and lands horizontally from a runway. A video of the spaceplane taking off is available in the article.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Kuasar (GitHub Repo)

Kuasar is a container run time that supports multiple sandbox techniques. It provides cloud-native, all-scenario container solutions and an optimized framework to accelerate container start up and reduce unnecessary overheads. Kuasar features unified sandbox abstraction, multi-sandbox colocation, and an open and neutral attitude towards sandbox technologies.
Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting (14 minute read)

Blind prompting, a method of creating prompts using a crude trial-and-error approach paired with minimal or no testing, is not prompt engineering. Many people who claim to be prompt engineering are really just blind prompting. Prompt engineering is a real skill that can be developed based on real experimental methodologies. This article uses a realistic example to walk through the process of prompt engineering a solution to a problem that provides practical value to an application.
Avoiding mass assignment vulnerabilities in Node.js (Sponsor)

Mass assignment vulnerabilities are common in Node.js applications that send payloads in POST requests to the database. Check out Snyk’s article on how an attacker can exploit a mass assignment vulnerability in a Node.js project and ways to protect a web application against it.
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Miscellaneous

Career Advice No One Gave Me: Give a Lot of Notice When You Quit (8 minute read)

Giving employers a lot of notice before quitting has several benefits for both the employee and the company. The employee is able to work stress-free for several weeks, usually on preferred projects. Managers are able to retain more competent engineering hours and also have an excuse if they are unable to meet important milestones. More notice allows for a smoother and less expensive transition. This article discusses the benefits of giving lots of notice before quitting, how to quit, and how to negotiate a more favorable exit from current employers.
Layoff Runbook (5 minute read)

This runbook was designed to help those who have been laid off get on track. It covers what to do before and after losing access to work systems and how to go about searching for jobs. The guide contains links to job marketplaces and other places to look for work. It is mainly geared towards software engineers, but most of the information can be applied to any profession.
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Quick Links

World’s largest battery maker announces major breakthrough in energy density (2 minute read)

CATL has announced a new condensed battery with 500 Wh/kg that will go into mass production this year.
Games are problems people pay to solve (7 minute read)

Games are problems that people willingly pay with time or money to solve.
When a plan comes together: Inside a massive Eve Online corporate heist (8 minute read)

The story of how and why an Eve Online player used the game's corporate share voting system to take control of in-game assets worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Google’s Bard AI chatbot can now help you code and create functions for Google Sheets (2 minute read)

Bard can now generate code, debug existing code, and help explain lines of code in more than 20 programming languages.
Chip designer Arm makes its own advanced prototype semiconductor (5 minute read)

Arm is developing its own chips as it seeks to attract new customers and fuel growth.
My High-Flying Life as a Corporate Spy Who Lied His Way to the Top (33 minute read)

This article contains an excerpt from Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street, a book by Robert Kerbeck that talks about his work as a corporate spy.

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