Hi Everyone. This is Take Off. We're like a successfully compiled code on the first try - miraculous, satisfying, and a win in the world of tech.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Mercedes Gets Green Light 🚦🟢

• Oracle Cloud’s Silver Lining ☁️

• Asteroids ☄️

• ToolBox Tuesdays ⚒️

Mercedes Gets Green Light 🚦🟢

Mercedes just got a green signal from the Golden State regulators, making it the first company authorized to sell or lease vehicles equipped with a hands-free, eyes-off automated driving system.

Yes, you heard it right. Now, you can sit back and enjoy the ride like a royal, with Mercedes’s Drive Pilot feature.

Who needs a chauffeur with a fancy hat when you have a silicon chip doing all the work?

But before you get too many ideas, it’s important to note that this is NOT the Self-Driving car dream. Here’s a quick look at what you CAN and CAN’T do with the Drive Pilot.

CAN

• Take your hands off the wheel.

• Turn heads over to chat with other passengers or dive into your car’s infotainment system.

• Play candy-crush.

CANT

• Can’t nap!

• Can’t cover your face from the car cameras.

• Can’t sit anywhere except the driver’s seat. (Not complete self-driving, remember!)

You may be drawing similarity parallels with the likes of Tesla Autopilot or Google’s self-driving taxi - Waymo, but this is a lot different from that.

• Mercedes Drive Pilot is a Level 3 system. In this level, the car can do a lot of light-weight lifting such as overtaking and switching lanes, but a human is expected to take-over incase something starts going wrong.

• Tesla Autopilot and Waymo are Level 4 systems. The cars in this level do a lot more heavy-weight lifting where the vehicle is equipped to encounter all the situations that can happen on the road without a human.

Now, before we get too excited, remember that Level 3 systems aren't without their share of risks.

Some bigwigs in the industry, including Waymo and Cruise, think it's too dicey and are rooting for Level 4 technology instead.

Oracle Cloud’s Silver Lining ☁️

Oracle is flexing some serious cloud muscles, with shares skyrocketing to a record high.

Oracle’s cloud-computing business is firing on all cylinders, boasting a whopping 54% increase in cloud sales in the fiscal fourth quarter. Oracle’s bank account is practically choking on cloud revenue.

• Total Revenue: $13.8 Billion (+17%)

• Cloud Services: $9.4 Billion (+23%)

• Cloud License: $2.2 Billion (-8%)

• Hardware: $0.9 Billion (-1%)

• Services: $1.5 Billion (+76%)

Oracle is aiming high, taking on the big boys Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure arena.

The MVP in this scenario? Generative AI and its insatiable thirst for computing power.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's top cat, has been flaunting the company’s Gen2 Cloud as the best destination for Generative AI workloads.

With big-name clients like Mosaic ML, Adept AI, and Cohere signing up, it looks like they're up for printing some serious cash.

To sum it up, it seems Oracle is popping champagne! Their cloud is getting some serious silver lining.

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Reddit goes down just as a site-wide protest against its unpopular new API policy kicks off. Users protest new API policy crippling third-party apps by setting thousands of subreddits to private. 🕵️‍♂️💻

Meta open sources an AI-powered music generator. Meta's MusicGen, an AI-powered music generator, is making waves. While not perfect, it's a cool leap for generative music! 🎹💡

Netflix might be teeing off into sports streaming with a celebrity golf tournament this fall! This could be a game-changer, testing Netflix's ability to handle live events. 🏌️‍♂️⛳️

⚒️ ToolBox Tuesdays ⚒️

Fastgen - Visual low-code backend builder

RestoGPT AI - AI that turns menus into food delivery apps

Sqriblr - Generate Articles with Images with ChatGPT in Seconds

Usechat - ChatGPT on your website for your users

Geppeto - A friendly AI chatbot for your Slack or Discord.

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