In my latest roundup, I dive deep into a fascinating array of topics – from geeking out on how to design a scalable URL shortener, to the intriguing notion of silent Chinese submarines powered by lasers. I also touch on the changing tides in education, urging a reconsideration of state schools over Ivy Leagues, and explore the surprising evolution of AI with Apple’s latest venture into custom silicon for servers. Plus, don’t miss the story behind lost Johnny Cash songs soon hitting our playlists, and more insights on media consumers of the future. It’s a diverse mix that’s sure to spark curiosity!
- System Design Interview Question: Design URL Shortener: Designing a scalable and secure URL shortener service like TinyURL or Bitly from the ground up.
- Chinese Subs May Be Propelled Silently By Lasers: If sharks with lasers on their heads weren’t bad enough, now China is working on submarines with lasers on their butts. At least, that’s what this report in the South China Morning Post claims, anyway.
- WIP is waste: A manifesto on work, waste, cost and value.
- Really Good Emails: We’ve got over 15,000+ emails waiting to be collected and shared with your client or team.
- No one buys books: Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
- Apple Reportedly Developing Its Own Custom Silicon for AI Servers: Apple is said to be developing its own AI server processor using TSMC’s 3nm process, targeting mass production by the second half of 2025. …
- Go to a state school: The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem — and they deserve it.
- The Man Who Killed Google Search: This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then
- Lost Johnny Cash songs from 1993 to be released as a new album: The country star’s son co-produces Songwriter, worked up from demos with a group of former bandmates and guests including Vince Gill and Dan Auerbach backing Cash’s vocals
- CoreNet: A library for training deep neural networks: CoreNet is a deep neural network toolkit that allows researchers and engineers to train standard and novel small and large-scale models for variety of tasks, including foundation models (e.g., CLIP and LLM), object classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation.
- Understanding the news consumers of 2030: Key lessons from a new report: The fine line is to stay on the point and not sugarcoat content to make it user-friendly. The ideal approach is to be simple, not simplistic.
- Where will the leaders and readers of the future come from?: Magazine publishing is not for the fainthearted. But we must accentuate the positives to attract young people and secure the future of magazines