🛥 How would you feel spending $650,000 on a 'pretend' yacht?
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📲 Big Tech & Start-ups
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Image source: HackRead
A new investigation from Wired has uncovered a shocking lack of concern for customer data at Amazon. It’s been discovered that customer purchase histories were available to their global customer services team. One former rep says he knew of colleagues who would search the databases for celebrity purchases, as well as people they knew - for example looking up partners or family members history.
Amazon is often ranked among the most trusted companies in the world, with Americans even trusting them more than the police or government.
In 2021, the list of the top 10 trusted brands in the world was released and included names such as Lego Group, Rolex, Ferrari, The Bosch Group, Harley-Davidson, Canon, Adidas, Walt Disney, Microsoft and Sony. Although, the methodology to collect this information could be questioned.
🔭 Science & Futuristic Tech
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Image source: Twitter
The metaverse continues to blow minds. 🤯
The Sandbox recently made NFT history following their sale of ‘The Metaflower NFT Super Mega Yacht’ which was purchased for a mega $650,000! The Sandbox is currently one of the leading metaverse games, collaborating with some huge names including Adidas, Snoop Dogg and Binance.
In other groundbreaking news, a team of scientists have built the first-ever living robots that can reproduce. The AI-designed Xenobots are said to be able to successfully build copies of themselves, again and again. The co-leader of the new research, Joshua Bongard, said: “We need to create technological solutions that grow at the same rate as the challenges we face.” Will we soon be taken over by robots? 🤖
🧑💻 Programming, Design & Data
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Image source: Design Week
VR technology is becoming increasingly popular with big brands and Dyson is the latest to unveil an “advanced virtual reality technology”. Customers will be able to test out products in a hands-on way, all from the comfort of their own homes.
The Dyson Demo VR technology represents the desire of designers and engineers to help people better understand products. The experience is to be based on the same visualisation, and simulation technologies, that the designers at Dyson use in their development process, according to the company.
⚙️ Miscellaneous
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Adele recently argued that all albums should be played in the order artists intended. Spotify since removed the shuffle from all album pages. 🎶
During the pandemic, young Nigerians were pushed into online crime. Have a read of one university students story.
Microsoft is working on redesigning emojis on the next Windows update, in line with Apple’s, Google’s and Samsung’s designs. 👏
🚀 Highlighted Opportunities
Dev
Haystack: Software Engineer - Mid 📌 Open to remote
UBIO: Software Engineer (TypeScript) - Mid 📌 Remote only
Data
Peak: Data Science Graduate Scheme - Grad, Junior 📌 Manchester
Atom bank: Data Scientist (4-day working week) - Junior, Mid 📌 Open to remote
Design
Innovation Group: UX/UI Design Manager - Senior 📌 Open to remote
Sykes Cottages: UX Designer - Lead 📌 Chester
📖 Developer Stories
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Meet Rachel 👋 Engineering Culture and Transformation Leader, Advocate, Speaker & Award Winner.
Rachel – Techy Rey, shares her journey from being a hands-on Developer to landing a DevRel role. 🔥
Why did you decide to move from being a software developer working hands-on with code, to being a community manager/lead role?
When I graduated from university, I made the decision to go into development, because although the course was an umbrella of computing aspects, that was what I understood in terms of landing jobs and I enjoyed being creative with code, so naturally gravitated to a dev role. However, being in the industry vs studying it, is VERY different! I started to realise although coding day to day was what I wanted to do after university, a passion for shaping environments for technical people, digital transformation and culture was taking my interest rapidly.
What advice would you give to someone looking to switch from a technical role into a community management or developer relations role?
Being active in the tech community is important, like learning anything new it does take time, but it’s really rewarding to help people and build your rep. Figure out what you’re good at, what are your strengths and weaknesses, this will help to figure out when things aren’t going right or where to help you move to the next step and build your personal brand!
Read more of Rachel’s story.
📝 Blog Round-up
7 Signs of a Senior Developer
If you have begun your engineering career as a fresh graduate, you probably wonder what steps you need to take to advance. Will it simply take time? Do you have to return to school or get a certification? Read more.
Why Are Soft Skills Important for Developers?
Soft skills are important to modern working practices, and it’s a skill that’s often overlooked when you work in technical roles. No matter what industry you work in, soft skills are used and undervalued. Read more.
Top 3 Coding Challenges for Expert-Level React Developers
React is one of the most popular web frameworks and more and more companies are either using the framework or switching over to it. Every React project, therefore, requires expert-level developers. Read more.