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Filings: Signature Bank borrowed $10B in Q4 from Federal Home Loan Banks, the system originally designed to support mortgage lending; Silvergate borrowed $3.6B (Eric Wallerstein/Wall Street Journal)

Eric Wallerstein / Wall Street Journal: Filings: Signature Bank borrowed $10B in Q4 from Federal Home Loan Banks, the system originally designed to support mortgage lending; Silvergate borrowed $3.6B  —  Signature and Silvergate turn to government-chartered lenders after customer withdrawals surge

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Robot Collects Ping Pong Balls For You

If you’ve ever played ping pong, table tennis, or beer pong, you know that it’s a struggle to hang on to the balls. [MaximeMonsieur] has designed a robot to handle picking them up so you don’t have to. The robot is specifically designed to pick up ultra-light ping pong balls. To that end, it has

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Sensors Make Industrial Robots Smarter

Smart sensors are transforming industrial robots, expanding their capabilities and intelligence. Conventional industrial robots require large amounts of programming, regularly scheduled maintenance, and significant safety measures. But smart sensors for robots can allow them to detect their own maintenance needs, sense humans and objects around them, operate autonomously with minimal programming, and much more. From predictive

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How Apple’s lean hiring may help it avoid layoffs; Apple’s workforce grew 20% from 2019 to 2022, Amazon’s grew 100%, Meta 94%, Alphabet 57%, Microsoft 53% (Aaron Tilley/Wall Street Journal)

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal: How Apple’s lean hiring may help it avoid layoffs; Apple’s workforce grew 20% from 2019 to 2022, Amazon’s grew 100%, Meta 94%, Alphabet 57%, Microsoft 53%  —  The iPhone maker’s workforce grew 20% in the past three years, a far slower pace than rivals  —  Tech Layoffs Pile Up

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Filings: Signature Bank borrowed $10B in Q4 from Federal Home Loan Banks, the system originally designed to support mortgage lending; Silvergate borrowed $3.6B (Eric Wallerstein/Wall Street Journal)

Eric Wallerstein / Wall Street Journal: Filings: Signature Bank borrowed $10B in Q4 from Federal Home Loan Banks, the system originally designed to support mortgage lending; Silvergate borrowed $3.6B  —  Signature and Silvergate turn to government-chartered lenders after customer withdrawals surge

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Irreproducible, Accumulative Hacks

Last weekend, I made an incredibly accurate CNC pen-plotter bot in just 20 minutes, for a total expenditure of $0. How did I pull this off? Hacks accumulate. In particular, the main ingredients were a CNC router, some 3D-printed mounts that I’d designed and built for it, and a sweet used linear rail that I

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Current and ex-Amazon managers and execs say focus on managing costs should have come sooner, ideas aren’t evaluated with the same rigor as before, and more (Jason Del Rey/Vox)

Jason Del Rey / Vox: Current and ex-Amazon managers and execs say focus on managing costs should have come sooner, ideas aren’t evaluated with the same rigor as before, and more  —  After the largest corporate layoffs in its history, the tech giant is at a crossroads.  —  For years, it seemed as though nothing

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AWS will spend $35B on new data centers in Virginia by 2040, creating ~1,000 jobs, in exchange for tax breaks and potential performance grants of up to $140M (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: AWS will spend $35B on new data centers in Virginia by 2040, creating ~1,000 jobs, in exchange for tax breaks and potential performance grants of up to $140M  —  Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit will spend $35 billion on new data centers in Virginia by 2040, underscoring its determination …

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Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in low traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles (New York Times)

New York Times: Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in low traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles  —  The layoffs amount to about 6 percent of the global work force at the company, the latest tech giant to make cuts after a pandemic

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