Starlink now provides internet to all seven continents. It is able to provide internet to extremely remote locations due to its space laser network, which reduces the need for ground stations. A Starlink terminal has been installed at a US Antarctic research station. The McMurdo Station is the largest community in Antarctica and is capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents. SpaceX has had conversations with Apple about possible Starlink connectivity for iPhones.
Google is adding iPhone Lock Screen widgets for a number of its popular apps. iOS 16 allows iPhone users to add widgets to their home screen in three different formats: circular, rectangular, and in-line. Google will release widgets for Search, Maps, Gmail, Translate, Lens, Chrome, and more. It has not yet announced a widget for Calendar. The widgets will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Action Transformer (ACT-1) is a model that can use several software tools. Users can type in high-level requests that ACT-1 will then carry out, for example, searching for properties on a real estate website or entering new leads into Salesforce. The model can look up Wikipedia to learn and it can be coached with feedback. It can complete tasks that require multiple programs. Video demos of ACT-1's capabilities are available in the thread.
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket experienced a mid-flight failure during a mission on September 12. The uncrewed flight exploded around 65 seconds into the mission. The crew capsule's emergency escape system activated successfully and propelled the capsule away from the explosion at high speed. It was the first midair failure in 23 flights.
GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer that helps developers write code faster with less work. It uses the Open AI Codex machine learning model to translate natural language into code. GitHub Copilot can be used for more than just generating code. This article presents 8 novel use cases for the tool that may be helpful to developers.
QR codes, or Quick Response codes, were invented by a subsidiary of Toyota to track parts. The company never exercised its patent and released the technology for free. QR codes can store data and be read from many angles. They can still be decoded even if parts of the code are obscured. This article explains how QR codes work.
Job hunting is… not great. Deciphering vague job descriptions + writing cover letters you suspect no one reads + mystery salaries =🤦♂️. Hired is a job platform with a twist—basically, companies headhunt you with salary details up front. With an 84% job acceptance rate and 5,556 open positions, it’s well-worth the 45 seconds it takes to sign up.
Backup and cloud storage company Backblaze has published data comparing the long-term reliability of solid-state storage drives and hard disk drives in its data center. The drives in the report were mostly 2.5-inch drives from Crucial, Seagate, and Dell, with little representation from Western Digital or SanDisk and no data from Samsung drives. SSDs failed at an overall lower rate than HDDs. After the fifth year, HDD failures increased significantly while SSD failure rates remained around the same. Home users may use their drives differently to Backblaze and so their experience may differ.
Zoom is preparing to launch email and calendar apps before the end of the year. The company aims to integrate more deeply with other businesses as the industry tightens spending. The integrations will turn Zoom into a full-fledged competitor to Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. Google still struggles to steal enterprise market share away from Microsoft despite its wildly popular free tools.
Pingora is an HTTP proxy built by Cloudflare using Rust that provides many benefits while requiring only a third of the CPU and memory resources of Cloudflare's previous proxy structure.
