The Monthly Beat - July '24 Edition
A recap of the most interesting news from June 2024, plus some extras for the months ahead.
Good morning!
I want to start this month’s post off with a huge thank you to each of you who have subscribed to this little blog of mine in the past year. You’ve made the headlines, specifically this one:
Pittsburgh Tech Beat Reaches 100 Subscribers
The Origin Story (feel free to skip to get to the news)
Last year, I realized I had been living in Pittsburgh and working in tech locally for 7 years, but I had no idea what cool things local companies were doing outside my employer. I scoured the web, looking for a central place where I could read news from the local tech scene, and found a few reliable sources. However, the combination of annoying user interfaces, sans-serif fonts, and stories about boring corporate things left me wanting more. So I just started writing down the most interesting highlights of what I was already reading, putting it all into this cool new platform called Substack that I had just discovered from reading economics blogs. Then Substack came out with podcasts, so I started putting a voiceover on every post.
Self-promotion has always felt weird to me, so I really only mentioned the blog to my friends and coworkers when they asked what was new with me. Then, this year,
over at graciously emailed me out of nowhere and offered to suggest my blog on PyData’s Substack (Thank you, Patrick!!). Since then, it seems word of mouth has really spread, and I’ve been getting new subs every week.So thanks again for subscribing! I hope this blog continues to be a helpful resource and/or a mildly interesting read for you with your morning coffee.
Without further ado, here’s the news. All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh unless otherwise noted.
What Happened in June
The Wall Street Journal published an article publicizing how Westinghouse is helping Ukraine replace their nuclear reactors. Essentially, Westinghouse has been supplying Ukraine with fuel bundles that are compatible with all of Ukraine’s reactors and is now helping Ukraine develop the capabilities to manufacture that fuel itself. In addition, Ukraine is going to be building 9 new reactors designed by Westinghouse.
Apollo Neuroscience, a new Pittsburgh-based wearable tech startup, wants your employer to buy you a vibrator. No, not that kind of vibrator. This one goes on your wrist and makes “personalized soothing vibrations to restore sleep and energy, improving employee wellbeing and reducing burnout.” Pretty cool, but, to you employers out there, may I also suggest another solid way to avoid employee burnout: raises?
AI-powered medical transcription company Abridge made it onto TechCrunch this month. The article is a glowing review of the company and its software, which leverages an LLM to help doctors easily take notes. Two highlights I found were that “large hospitals are… buying multi-thousand seat licenses of Abridge” and “earlier this year, Abridge gained a right to be integrated inside Epic.” Epic is being used more extensively by UPMC locally, so it’s only a matter of time before your and my doctor’s notes end up in an LLM.
Technical.ly published a piece revealing that Duolingo’s taco shop made $700k last year. Have you been there? Is it good? $700k good? Let me know in the comments. I haven’t been there yet, as I have a Condado way closer to me, so I usually just hit that up when I want tacos.
Titan Robotics, a local company specializing in robots that remove paint from jet planes, has decided to relocate to an office outside the Pittsburgh airport. Honestly, I had never heard of these folks before this month, and it’s super cool to see a startup like this choosing to stay in Pittsburgh after growing.
Ekto VR, a local VR startup, patented its System and Method of Robotic Virtual Reality Footwear this month. Here’s what may be your next pair of real-life kicks for you to show off your $10,000 in-game Jordan’s with full mo-cap:
Aurora announced a partnership with Uber Freight that they’re calling “Premier Autonomy.” There’s a lot of jargon in this press release, but essentially, customers of Uber Freight will be able to order shipping on trucks that leverage Aurora’s autonomous trucking systems by the end of this year. All of this shipping will only be available in Texas at first, where (conveniently) Aurora has already been testing their self-driving technology.
NextPittsburgh published a great profile piece on Neuraville, a new artificial general intelligence (AGI) startup in Oakland that is using robotic toys to train people on how to use AGI tooling. In case you want to play with some of their stuff yourself, here’s their open-source AGI GitHub repo, and you can try out their Neurobotics Studio software here.
Everyone loves observability these days, and now you can have observability into the health of downtown Pittsburgh with IndexPGH. There are a bunch of dashboards on there, so go ahead and throw one up on that kiosk TV next to that big spike in latency on your Grafana dashboard that’s about to page someone!
Ansys announced a new SaaS product that allows engineers to simulate and design powertrains for electric vehicles. It estimates metrics like drivable range based on a number of components, including the car’s battery, motor, inverter, and transmission.
CoPilot Fitness, a Pittsburgh-based fitness app startup offering one-on-one trainers, has now rebranded to Trainwell to avoid confusion with other notable copilots. Smart move.
Researchers at Pitt helped develop light-controlled artificial maple seed robots. Yeah, they’re wild.
PyData Pittsburgh hosted a talk from Dr. Rory Brenner at CMU: Radically improving neural networks with insights from modern neuroscience. Key takeaways and speaker decks are available through Pittsburgh Startup News at the link!
Last but not least, Astrobotic revealed their simulated lunar surface for lander testing, and it looks like something out of the Hideo Kojima video game Death Stranding. Seriously, I can’t stop thinking about it. Here’s a photo of the simulated surface and a screenshot from Death Stranding for comparison.
For the Months Ahead
Code and Supply has three events this July being held at the Code & Supply Community Center:
Software job hunting in 2024 "does not meet expectations" so let's rant about it is an experimental event to share frustrations and celebrate the successes of job hunting, on Tuesday, July 9th, at 6pm.
Crafting Clarity: Enhancing AI with Conversation Design (w/ WtD PGH) invites you to join local tech writer Emily Ferris as she explores the challenges and opportunities for technical writers collaborating with teams to build and document AI systems on Tuesday, July 16th, at 7pm.
Build Night is a time to get together and build some awesome stuff with code on Monday, July 29, from 6-8:30pm.
Local frontend dev Brad Frost is throwing Frostapalooza on August 17th, a benefit concert featuring the musical performances of several other local devs. See the full lineup and get tickets here!
I’m still looking for guest writers and guest podcasters! 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.
Annnnd that’s it for this month! Hope you all have a great Independence Day. I’ll see you in a month.
—Austin
Austin, i cannot believe Nate didn't evangelize Duo's Taqueria in your presence (he talks about food a lot). We've eaten there a handful of times and taken out of town guests there for the mezcal flights. it's actually really really good!