TLDR 2018-10-29

FBI investigates Tesla πŸ•΅, IBM buys Red Hat πŸ’°, MIT's social experiment πŸ”¬

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Big Tech & Startups

Tesla Model 3 production reportedly under investigation by the FBI (1 minute read)

The FBI is investigating Tesla for possibly making misleading statements about its Model 3 production capabilities in 2017. In July 2017, Elon Musk tweeted "Looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec." However, they only produced 2,700 Model 3s in all of 2017. Tesla says that it always sets truthful, ambitious targets, and "While Tesla gets criticized when it is delayed in reaching a goal, it should not be forgotten that Tesla has achieved many goals that were doubted by most."

IBM to acquire Red Hat in deal valued at $34 billion (2 minute read)

IBM is acquiring Red Hat for $34 billion. Red Hat is an open source, enterprise software company best known distributing and supporting their enterprise version of Linux. IBM will pay cash to buy all Red Hat shares at $190 per share. Red Hat shares closed at $116.68 on Friday so this is a huge premium. Red Hat will become part of IBM's Hybrid Cloud division.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Snap Camera (Desktop App)

This is Snapchat's desktop app that will let you use Snapchat lenses (like the doggy face, rainbow barf, etc.) while video chatting on your computer. The cool thing about this is that it allows you to use any third party video chatting services (like you can stream with Twitch while using Snapchat lenses), you just have to select Snap Camera as your webcam device, and the filters will be available.

ESNext News (Newsletter)

This is a newsletter about advanced topics in Javascript. If you're an experienced programmer and want to learn more about Typescript, the V8 runtime, build toolchains, and stuff like that, definitely check this out. Curated by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer and Johannes Weber, two serious javascript experts.

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley (8 minute read)

Tim Cook won't let his nephew join social networks. Bill Gates banned cellphones for his kids until they were teenagers, and Melinda wished they had waited even longer. Steve Jobs wouldn't let his young children near iPads. Former editor of Wired, now CEO of a robotics company Chris Anderson says "On the scale between candy and crack cocaine, it’s closer to crack cocaine...This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." The sentiment is pervasive enough that one Google engineer that lets his 3-year-old play with an iPad says that he feels there's a "stigma" against it. In one interesting case, an executive only lets his daughter watch Italian language videos in order to help her learn the language. In any case, it seems like there is a reckoning in Silicon Valley as executives and engineers caution their kids against using the addictive and manipulative products that they have created.

First Restaurant With Fully Automated Kitchen Opens In Beijing (2 minute read)

Haidilao, a Chinese hotpot chain, opened the world's first fully automated restaurant on Sunday. Robots will take orders, prepare food, and deliver it to customers. There's an automated restaurant in the US as well, in Boston 4 MIT grads have created a mostly automated kitchen at Spyce, a fast casual restaurant that serves meals for $7.50 and has them ready within 3 minutes. Humans are still required for putting the final garnishes on food. There's a video in the article giving a tour of Spyce's automated system of kiosks and woks used to automate delicious asian fusion looking food.

MIT is giving you control of a real person on Halloween in a dystopian game that sounds like an episode of 'Black Mirror' (3 minute read)

MIT's media lab is creating an online game that will start at 11pm ET on Halloween. The game, BeeMe, is about an evil AI called Zookd that has accidentally been released. The audience will collectively control an actor (a person who follows the commands of the audience voting online) in order to stop the AI. The whole thing will be streamed live.
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