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Captures - Edition 1

Cover Image for Captures - Edition 1
Lambda IITH

Welcome to the second edition of our newsletter! As the tech world continues to evolve at a rapid pace, we're here to keep you updated with the latest releases, updates, and exciting developments. From new versions of popular frameworks to significant updates in programming languages and tools, we have a abundance of information ready to be shared with you. So grab a cup of coffee and let's dive into the world of tech!

Release of Apple Vision Pro

  • Vision Pro uses spatial computing which smoothly fuses reality and digital content to provide users a wholly immersive experience.
  • VisionOS is the Apple’s first spatial operating system which powers Vision Pro. You can use existing frameworks like SwiftUI, RealityKit, ARKit to make compatible apps for VisionOS.
  • Read more here: Link

Reddit Started charging for APIs

  • Reddit raised API prices to stop tech companies from scraping for AI training data for free.
  • From July 1, 2023, Reddit started charging developers $0.24 per 1,000 API requests and $12,000 per 50 million API requests, read more about API charges here.
  • The price changes have caused the third-party clients like Apollo and Rif to shut down.
  • Latest Release of Relay will allow users to see their average daily reddit API calls and work out their monthly subscription fee. The app will be free for now, but is expected to move to a subscription model in coming weeks.
  • Read more about Relay at: Link

Stack Overflow banning and adopting AI at the same time (ChatGPT)

What do you call a programmer who claims they don't use Stack Overflow?
A liar.

  • Stackoverflow AI is an AI that can answer questions on Stack Overflow. It is trained on 180 million questions and answers from Stack Overflow. The users are not happy with this as their ability to post answers/comments on Stack Overflow. In fact, Stack overflow has lost 35% of its traffic in the past 1.5 years.
  • Users also can’t post answers from ChatGPT or other LLMs on Stack Overflow according to the site’s management, citing "the posting of answers created by ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking questions and looking for correct answers"
  • Users are not happy as they find ChatGPT more convenient which resulted in reduced traffic on stack overflow.
  • Read why stack overflow banned GPT: here and here

JetBrains on Wayland

For IntelliJ-based IDEs, JetBrains has announced that it will be dropping X11 support in favor of Wayland. This will allow JetBrains to provide a better user experience for Linux users.

  • This update will solve the age-old fractional-scaling issue, read more about this update here

Hacktoberfest 2023

  • Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean in partnership with GitHub and other companies. Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in our global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community.
  • It will be held from October 1 to October 31, 2023. Read more about it here

X replaces the iconic bird logo

  • Musk changed the iconic twitter logo to “X” in late July after changing the company name to X in April 2023.
  • Musk has plans to turn Twitter into an “everything app” like WeChat in China.
  • Rate limits have been set on X meaning users can only view limited tweets in a day, which is 1,000 for unverified and 10,000 tweets for verified accounts.

Svelte 4 release

Svelte 4 has been released, primarily as a maintenance update, paving the way for the upcoming Svelte 5, which will involve a complete rewrite of the Svelte compiler and runtime. The changes introduced in Svelte 4 include:

  • The Svelte package size has been reduced by almost 75%, from 10.6 MB to 2.8 MB. This reduction leads to shorter waiting times during the npm install process.
  • When using cmd+click on Svelte modules, you will now be directed to the implementation instead of a .d.ts file.
  • Transitions now have a default |local behaviour, which prevents animations from obstructing page transitions.

What is Svelte?
You might have heard of Angular or React as JavaScript frameworks used to build web applications. Svelte is also a relatively new and growing in popularity JavaScript framework mostly used to build static web apps. Svelte lets developers write less code and build components using familiar HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Also, Svelte apps are truly reactive, which means less hassle as you don’t need to manipulate DOM. Svelte uses a compiler which processes the application’s code before emitting a small, fast, and optimized code bundle, so it avoids the overhead of booting or bootstrapping a framework before your code is run in the browser, making execution much faster

Use of Python in Excel!

  • Microsoft has released a public preview of Python in Excel which allows you to combine Python and Excel analytics without any setup required.
  • You can write Python directly in a cell and your results will appear in the worksheet, including plots and visualizations.
  • Know more this: Link

Python PEP 0703 is making GIL optional

  • Global interpreter lock or “GIL” was considered as an obstacle to the speed of executing the python and as a result PEP is making it removable.
  • Read more here: Link

Squarespace buys Google Domains

  • On June 15, 2023, Squarespace bought Google Domains and its associated assets.
  • After the completion of transaction, customers’ domain account will be owned and managed by Squarespace.
  • Read more about the transition here.

Google shuts down Grasshopper

  • Google announced that it will be shutting down Grasshopper on June 15, 2023.
  • It was a mobile coding application designed to help people learn to code on their mobile phones.

Visual Studio not on Mac anymore

Micorsoft announced that Visual Studio (not Visual Studio Code) will no longer be supported on Mac starting August 31st, 2024. Instead, they will be focusing on Visual Studio Code.

  • Mac users can still use the recently announced C# Dev Kit, .NET MAUI extensions on VS Code instead of Visual Studio.
  • Read more about this announcement here

PyPI makes the use of 2FA mandatory for all software publishers

  • All users who are maintaining a project must have set up two factor authentication.
  • This is implemented as a effort to increase security.
  • How to set up: Link

Δ λ (Changes in Lambda)

Cores for 2023-24 term:

Lambda is excited to announce the cores for the 2023-24 term.

Cab Sharing (beta):

Lambda is thrilled to finally announce the beta release of cab sharing.

  • The website allows you to register your cab details in case you are looking for someone to share an already booked cab with, or just go through the list of cabs to find a suitable one for yourself based on various filters available.
  • The request for any cab goes by mail to the owner of the cab, and the owner can choose to accept or reject the request.
  • You can choose to leave or unrequest a cab at any time.
  • The owner of cab can also choose to remove any passenger from their cab at any time. You can access the cab sharing website here. Feel free to use it and give us your feedback by mailing us at lambda@iith.ac.in

-> Lookout for Hacktoberfest and our next session on Git.

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