The Monthly Beat

A recap of the most interesting news from December 2023, plus some extras for the months ahead.

A good evening and happy New Year to you!

I figured I’d wait till everyone had definitely recovered from their hangovers to post this December edition of the Monthly Beat. Also, I’m sending this out in the evening to switch things up a bit. We’ll see how it goes. Let’s get into it!

All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh, unless otherwise noted.

Here’s what happened in December:

• Astrobotic announced that their lander is ready for liftoff for its mission to the Moon, and it’s launching tomorrow at 2:18 a.m. EST! You can watch the livestream of the launch at the link below, if you’re a night owl. Otherwise, you can visit that link after the fact for a recording of the launch.

• Lots of military contracts are rolling into Pittsburgh firms. Westinghouse, in partnership with Astrobotic scored a contract with the US Air Force to develop a nuclear-powered satellite. And the US Army is now partnered with Neya Systems and Carnegie Robotics to build prototype autonomous military vehicles.

• More details dropped about the Iranian hack of Aliquippa’s water authority. We now know that the hackers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in programmable logic controllers made by Israeli company Unitronics. It was also announced that four other utilities and an aquarium were also breached, but deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger said, overall, these attacks didn’t have any serious impact. It’s never a bad time to revisit your firewall rules, though.

• The Pittsburgh airport is adopting new identity verification technology from a company called CLEAR to allow fliers to get through security faster. The technology verifies a person’s identity through an eye or fingerprint scan rather than using a person’s government ID and boarding pass. But, alas, even if you’re a CLEAR subscriber, you and your carry-on still have to get scanned by TSA, which nullifies the benefits of the $99/year/person cost in my opinion.

• Gecko Robotics was highlighted in Bloomberg for having raised $100 million in funding and separately in a foreign publication, Aletihad, for establishing a partnership with the United Arab Emirates to provide the country with robots for environmental catastrophe response. These are some big moves for such a small company!

• Gridwise, in partnership with Bosch, launched their new RideCare Companion product. The device combines a dash cam, SOS button, live emergency response service, and cloud storage to help keep Uber, Lyft, and other ride-share drivers safer when they’re out on the road. At $250 per device with a $10 per month subscription, though, it may be somewhat financially out of reach for most part-time drivers, who are already notoriously underpaid. Maybe buy one as a gift for the driver in your life!

• After opening their taco joint, Duolingo is hungry for more—specifically, more office space. Word on the street is that, in a world where other companies are trying to sell their office spaces, Duolingo is looking to buy in East Liberty. Personally, I find it pretty wild that any non-government or healthcare tech company is still in office five days a week, but they seem to have enough clout to make it work for now.

• The City of Pittsburgh was recognized by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance for its efforts to close the digital divide through affordable broadband, digital skills training, and low-cost tech support. This feels good after the EDA denied us a tech hub designation earlier in 2023.

• NEXTPittsburgh published a great company profile of Pittsburgh Drone Services, the city’s foremost company for flying drones. I remember seeing a couple of drones flying around Mt. Washington a while back and wondering, “How does someone even get permission to do this?” This profile sheds light on how difficult it is to get a business like this off the ground (That’s right, a drone pun to start the new year. No one asked for this, I know.)

For the months ahead:

• Early bird registration discounts for PyCon US end on the 12th of this month, so register today! The conference is here in Pittsburgh, May 15–23. There will be tons of talks, tutorials, job opportunities, and more for Python programming language users at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Register here. I’ll be there!

• ProductTank Pittsburgh is hosting an interactive product roadmapping experience at Code & Supply on Tuesday, January 23rd at 6pm. Explore different strategies and techniques for product roadmapping through this hands-on experience. Sign up here!

• I’m looking for guest writers! Do you have a local Pittsburgh tech topic you’d like to wax poetic about? Hit me up! Spoiler alert: it’s not a paid gig, but I would be more than willing to host or repost your piece if you want to publish it somewhere else as well.

Thanks so much for reading. Hope you have a great week!

—Austin