Amazon drops MAJOR upgrades

Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

From conversational AI to palm-scanning tech, Amazon just revealed a host of shiny new toys at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

What do the big reveals mean for Amazon’s cloud and AI ambitions? Let’s break it all down…

In today’s tech rundown:

• AWS shows off new tech at re:Invent

• Autonomous digger shows future of construction

• 10 new products

• YouTube Premium subscribers access Playables

• Oxford Internet Study

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

📢 AWS shows off new tech at re:Invent

The Rundown: Amazon Web Services (AWS) just revealed major new offerings at its re: Invent conference in Las Vegas — including a new AI assistant, powerful chip upgrades, and palm-scanning tech.

The details:

• Amazon’s ‘Q’ chatbot brings a new conversational enterprise AI with a focus on privacy, trained on 17 years of AWS knowledge.

• The new Graviton4 chip is optimized for running trained AI models at scale — with AWS also experimenting with a new chip that can solve key quantum computing errors.

• AWS expands its partnership with Nvidia, becoming the first cloud provider to deploy GH200 chips.

• Amazon One Enterprise allows workplace entry authentication via palm-print biometrics, building on prior Amazon One tech.

• ‘Guardrails’ defines content boundaries for LLMs, letting companies specify off-limit topics to constrain model responses.

• Amazon Transcribe can now handle transcriptions from over 100 languages.

The relevance: As with most major tech conferences in the last year, AI was the star of the show — with AWS also remaining aggressive in cloud AI as Microsoft, Google, and startups nip at its heels.

TOGETHER WITH PASSIONATE INCOME

⚡️ Empower your mind & gain financial literacy

The Rundown: Unleash the power of your mind and improve your financial knowledge with easy-to-follow steps. Explore practical advice in a brief three-minute read.

You’ll get deep dives on:

1. Uncover stoic-inspired business wisdom on money exchange.

2. Save smart on Black Friday, beyond consumer deals.

3. Decode crypto trends from recent project successes.

Subscribe and explore practical advice in a brief three-minute read.

ROBOTICS

 🚧 Autonomous digger shows future of construction

The Rundown: Researchers in Switzerland just developed an autonomous excavator that can build walls with multi-ton boulders, with extreme precision and speed.

The details:

• The excavator uses LiDAR and computer vision to scan terrain, identify stones, and plan placement.

• The digger can grab and position stones within 1cm of accuracy based on an algorithm and automated plans.

• The precision allows the excavator to use local stones/rubble instead of new material for a more sustainable building.

Our thoughts: With a shortage of construction workers and often dangerous conditions, automating more of the process (in a faster, more sustainable way) seems like a big step forward if the tech can scale past prototype stages.

NEW PRODUCTS

🤖 Freeflo- Reusable generative AI style prompts. Copy the prompt, swap the subject and drop it into Midjourney, Clipdrop, Firefly or DALL-E (link)

💼 Venture Matching- Tinder for venture capital (link)

🎯 ob1 by Outerbase- Generate APIs, databases, and your backend with a prompt (link)

🌐 Hyper- AI-powered live data chat for every integration (link)

📝 Postli- Create LinkedIn posts from 100+ templates with AI (link)

🌈 DALL-E Party- A DALL-E 3 and GPT4-Vision feedback loop (link)

🧠 AI-suggests- Generate tons of ready-to-use content and new ideas for your business instantly (link)

🎤 Castmagic- Turn long-form audio into ready-to-use content assets, instantly (link)

🎥 Munch- Extract the most engaging and impactful clips from your long-form videos (link)

Browse the most popular tools ever featured with our tool database.

SNIPPETS

Charlie Munger, the legendary investor and longtime right-hand man to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at age 99.

YouTube Premium subscribers now have limited-time access to Playables, simple cloud-based games powered by GameSnacks.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority suggests that Adobe's $20 billion merger with Figma may harm competition and innovation in the digital design sector.

European cyber police arrested a suspected ringleader and four others in Ukraine, accused of conducting ransomware attacks extorting millions.

"Doritos Silent" is an AI-powered app that cancels out the sound of chip crunching, developed to allow people to eat Doritos during Zoom calls.

iOS 17.2 beta adds options to customize default notification sounds and haptic feedback.

A large-scale Oxford Internet Institute study found no definitive evidence linking Internet use to mental health problems.

SPONSOR US

⚡️ Get your product in front of over 75k+ tech enthusiasts

Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech professionals, investors, engineers, managers, and business owners around the world. Get in touch today.

THAT’S A WRAP

If you have anything interesting to share, please reach out to us by sending us a DM on Twitter: @rowancheung & @therundowntech

❤️ Rundown review of the day