The Monthly Beat - June '24 Edition

A recap of the most interesting news from April and May 2024, plus some extras for the months ahead.

Good morning!

First, I want to welcome all the new folks who subscribed to my blog through PyData Pittsburgh’s Substack recommendation. Thank you so much, and I’m happy to have you here! I’ve been doing monthly summaries here for a bit, but I’m hoping to expand to different types of content soon. Also, if you click the play button on this post, you can listen to me read the news instead, if you prefer that to reading! This audio version also exists as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, and no, it’s not an AI. It’s actually me reading the news!

Second, my apologies for missing last month’s post! I was in the thick of a job search. Now that I’ve accepted an offer, I should be able to keep up with the blog much more easily. I also had my incredible friend ZM Nishimura-Russ do a rebrand for me, so you’ll notice a few new changes to the style of these posts and the overall blog, should you choose to visit!

I figured I would just do a double feature this time around, so this post includes everything interesting that happened in the past two months. All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh, unless otherwise noted.

What Happened in April and May

• The layoffs continue. UPMC laid off 1000 employees. I spoke to an engineer who was laid off from UPMC Enterprises, the company’s R&D arm that handles a lot of its software development. They admit, “[Management] did kinda nail it. We haven’t done f***ing ANYTHING in 3 years lol.” Self-driving startup Motional also reportedly laid off several employees. (If you were also affected by these layoffs, please reach out! I would love to hear your perspective.)

• PyCon US was held in Pittsburgh, May 15–23. I had an absolute blast and learned a ton of stuff about various Python tools and internals. I would highly recommend you check it out next year, as it will once again be hosted in Pittsburgh! If you missed it or want to catch a talk you weren’t able to attend, videos will be posted here in the months to come.

• Duolingo published a blog post highlighting how they’re engineering to solve various product problems. Their solutions include tracing, reducing database writes, and (you guessed it) using AI. I also talked to two release engineers from Duolingo at PyCon about how they are still using Jenkins for builds and deploys. In my humble opinion, that’s a more important problem to solve than those described in the article, but I digress.

• This is the last Python thing, I swear! PyData Pittsburgh hosted an excellent meetup at Code & Supply on the emerging AI regulatory landscape. If you missed it, you can watch the presentation here:

• These two months were pretty big for Astrobotic. The company entered into an R&D agreement with the U.S. Airforce Research Laboratory. The agreement will “enable joint work on new rocket engine technologies, including their applications to in-space propulsion, along with their early flight demonstrations.” The company also announced two new partnerships, one with Mission Control for a joint rover demonstration on the Moon and one with a project called MOONRISE to bring 3D printing to the Moon. The actual flight to the moon is planned for 2026. Finally, Astrobotic was selected by NASA to run a couple studies to understand how their spacecraft may be used for missions to Mars. Conducted in partnership with Arizona State University and Malin Space Science Systems, these studies will be focused on delivering payloads to the planet’s surface.

• NEXTPittsburgh highlighted how the Pittsburgh Technology Council is building the area’s connections with the U.S. Air Force and Space Force. The Council is doing this through the formation of a new coalition of local defense-related companies and scheduling various industry events.

• Speaking of flying things, a new drone built for military cargo transportation had its first flight using Near Earth Autonomy’s systems. The drone will be competing in a “fly-off” in July in hopes of becoming the main resupply vehicle for the Marines.

• AI safety company Preamble launched their flagship product, Preamble ATP, and is now contracted by AFWERX (the Air Force’s innovation arm). You can use it to make sure your AI doesn’t do terrible things, such as launching nukes or telling your spouse that you’re leaving them to be with a robot.

• Speaking of AI, GPT Fever continues, with Ansys announcing AnsysGPT. It works basically like any other GPT. Ansys technology is also now certified for use by TSMC, the big Taiwanese chipmaker that has made a lot of national news lately.

• Gecko Robotics was highlighted in Fortune magazine, announced a partnership with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (which will be using their AI and robots to do predictive maintenance at gas sites), and was featured by CNBC. They just. Keep. Winning!

• Lucas Systems hit a big product milestone: 100 billion warehouse picks (where individual items are picked from a facility for order fulfillment) have now been made with their warehouse automation software.

• Uber is launching a shuttle service in Pittsburgh to shuttle folks to and from the Pittsburgh airport. Each shuttle will reportedly seat 14–55 people (which makes one think that these shuttles may look more like buses in some cases...)

• I want to pause and give a quick shoutout to Atiya Irvin-Mitchell at Technical.ly, who has been a fantastic source of local tech news for a while now. She’s no longer with the publication, but in her last month there, she posted this solid directory of coworking spaces in Pittsburgh.

• Last but not least, Aurora released a whitepaper showing how autonomous trucking can help fight climate change. The main factors here are reduced fuel consumption from limiting highway speeds, reducing overall road congestion by having trucks drive at off-peak hours, and optimizations to overall truck operations. Volvo’s first production-ready autonomous truck using Aurora’s autonomous driving systems was also unveiled, and it looks pretty sweet. These trucks will be assembled at Volvo’s plant in Virginia. No word in the article on where or when they will first hit the road.

  

For the Months Ahead

• June 11th, PyData Pittsburgh is hosting a talk from Dr. Rory Brenner at CMU: Radically improving neural networks with insights from modern neuroscience. RSVP here!

• 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 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 a wrap! Thanks for reading, and hope you have a great start to your summer.

—Austin