🍔🧠 1 App to Slice Through Front End Interviews

🍔  THIS WEEK’S MENU  🥗

• 📚 Successfully prepare for front-end interviews, scale an app to 10 million users on AWS, discover the promptoftheyear repo.

• 🗞️ Apple plans to release Vision Pro soon, Amazon to produce hydrogen fuel, and scientists use AI to discover new antibiotics.

• 👨🏻‍💻 Quick byte: Generators in JS pause and resume function execution.

Reading time: 5 minutes

Food for Thought
A mindset, an example, and an action item to start the week

Mindset: Embrace resilience; every setback is a setup for a remarkable comeback.

Example: Airbnb, pivoting during the COVID-19 crisis, shifted to virtual experiences, demonstrating resilience.

Action Item: Identify one challenge you're facing and brainstorm three ways to overcome it today.

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The Rabbit Hole
Deep dives, trends, and resources curated to stay ahead

💾  SIDE DISHES  💾

ARTICLE (2023 for CS) → The biggest discoveries of 2023 for AI and computer science

GITHUB REPO (stream it) → Realtime pipeline for image generation with AI

ESSENTIAL (hop-hop) → 7 rules for successful job hopping as a software engineer

ARTICLE (sam’s advice) → 17 things Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) wishes he knew sooner

GITHUB REPO (UI lib) → Beautifully designed components that you can copy and paste into your apps.

ARTICLE (fast web) → Web performance 101 when you’re lost

The Weekly Digest
Software, AI, and startup news worth your time

👓 Apple Vision Pro Tipped for Late Jan/Early Feb Release (2 min)

Brief: Apple's highly anticipated Vision Pro, a $3,499 "spatial computing" headset, is reportedly set for a "late-January/early-February" release date, with initial shipments of around 500,000 units for the year.

Takeaway: As Apple's most significant product of 2024, the Vision Pro represents a bold move into a new category and technology, but the company faces challenges in the highly competitive virtual reality market, especially with a high price point and past disappointments in the industry.

🔥 Amazon Plans to Produce Hydrogen Fuel at Fulfillment Centers (2 min)

Brief: Amazon partners with Plug Power to produce hydrogen fuel on-site at its fulfillment centers, starting with a facility in Aurora, Colorado, to decarbonize operations and explore energy-efficient alternatives for transportation.

Takeaway: Amazon's move to produce hydrogen fuel reflects its commitment to sustainability and signals a potential shift in the supply chain for hydrogen as companies strive to meet climate goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

🔬 Scientists Discover the First New Antibiotics in Over 60 Years Using AI (2 min)

Brief: Scientists unlock the first new antibiotics in 60 years by leveraging transparent deep learning models to discover a compound that kills drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

Takeaway: This breakthrough showcases the potential of AI in medicine by enabling faster drug discovery and combating antibiotic resistance, a pressing global health challenge.

📰 New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft for Copyright Infringement (2 min)

Brief: The New York Times accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of "copying and using millions" of its articles to build AI models that now "directly compete" with its content, jeopardizing high-quality journalism and revenue streams.

Takeaway: This lawsuit highlights the growing tension between news outlets and tech giants as the pursuit of AI technology intersects with questions of copyright protection and fair compensation for original content.

🍏 Apple in Talks with News Publishers for Licensing News Archives (2 min)

Brief: Apple is in discussions with major news publishers to license their news archives to train its generative AI systems, with potential "multiyear deals worth at least $50 million," but publishers have concerns about legal liabilities and Apple's vague news and generative AI plans.

Takeaway: Apple's pursuit of licensing news archives for training its generative AI systems reflects its determination to catch up with rivals in the AI space, while also showcasing the importance of leveraging historical data and content to enhance AI capabilities. This move signifies the increasing convergence of technology and media industries, where partnerships between tech giants and news organizations become pivotal in shaping the future of AI-powered journalism.

🚄 Hyperloop One Shuts Down Operations, Ending Long-Running Venture (2 min)

Brief: Hyperloop One, once a promising hyperloop startup backed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group, is set to cease operations by the end of the year. Despite raising significant funding and going through multiple transformations, the hyperloop concept has faced numerous challenges and failed to gain traction in the tech industry.

Takeaway: The closure of Hyperloop One highlights the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding the practical implementation of the Hyperloop idea, originally proposed by Elon Musk. This development serves as a reminder of the intricate nature of integrating new transportation technologies into existing infrastructures and the challenges that arise from navigating legal, financial, and geopolitical obstacles.

The Quick Byte
One coding tip because you’re technical after all

Generators are a feature in JavaScript that allows you to pause and resume the execution of a function. They are defined using the function* syntax and make use of the yield keyword.

Wen?

• Asynchronous Operations: Generators can be used to handle asynchronous operations that require pausing and resuming execution, such as making API calls or iterating over large data sets.

• Lazy Evaluation: Useful when you need to lazily evaluate a sequence of values without having to calculate all of them upfront.

• Performance issues: When you need to compute a high number of values but don’t need them all at once (progressive rendering)

Why?

• Controlled Flow: Generators allow you to control the flow of execution by pausing and resuming the function as needed. This can be helpful when dealing with long-running or asynchronous operations.

• Simplified Asynchronous Code: By combining generators with promises or async/await, you can write asynchronous code with a more sequential and readable syntax, making it easier to understand and maintain.

• Efficient Memory Usage: Generators enable lazy evaluation, allowing you to generate values on demand instead of calculating them all upfront. This can help optimize memory usage, especially when dealing with large datasets.

Burp-A-Laugh
The most important meal of your day