👋🏻 Hello, Fellow Tech Enthusiasts!
It’s time for an update on the market and Ralabs’ journey. We have a lot to cover, including the impact of AI on the tech industry.
📊 Focus & Insights
- Q1 for Ralabs was successful. The overall company KPI execution is 92.33% compared to 91.68% in Q4 2023.
- To further elevate our delivery excellence, we brought in a team of certified external project management specialists during Q1. Their expertise is helping us refine our processes, ensuring we consistently deliver top-quality results for our clients.
- Python and React remain the most popular requests, with Data Engineering and ML also in high demand. There are few requests for DevOps as well.
- The EU’s focus on secure data sharing in healthcare aligns well with our expertise in secure applications. We’ve been developing secure solutions for years, and this emphasis on data privacy is a positive step. Read more about the EU Health Data Space here.
- As part of our ongoing client outreach efforts, we evaluated 50 upcoming EU conferences and tech events to identify those most aligned with our expertise in Health Tech and Fintech. This allows us to schedule meetings with potential clients and stay at the forefront of industry trends.
- Our Head of Engineering, Daniel Niaziiev attended the SIM (Startups & Investment Matching) conference in Porto. The conference brought together founders, investors, and other industry participants. Our participation in the SIM Conference has led to positive outcomes, and we are considering attending similar events in the future.
👩🏼💼 HR Updates
- 4 new team members joined Ralabs the previous month.
- We continue to offer Engage & Evaluate service, providing one-day access to evaluate a skilled engineer’s suitability for your project. We’ve found strong demand for UI/UX designers, so we’re increasing the number this month. Contact me for more information.
- We hosted two Tech-Talks: ‘How to Talk to Your Database Using GPT’ and ‘New Addition to the Law of Mobilization’. The first one was converted into a very insightful article. Read it here.
📈 Business Development
- We are expecting more and more requests related to compliance and AI amplifiers due to stricter regulations, the evolving nature of AI technology, growing market demand for responsible AI, and the potential risks associated with non-compliant AI systems.
- Our Head of Engineering discussed the challenges and responsibilities of the role in an interview here. The interview is in Ukrainian, but YouTube’s translation makes it accessible for all.
- 4 New success stories have been added to our website:
- Optimized Resource Allocation with PIFU & NHS Integration: For this project we developed a software system to support a new approach to patient follow-up appointments in the UK National Health Service (NHS). The system is called PIFU (Patient-Initiated Follow-Up).
- EU-Based DevOps Infrastructure for Medical Addiction Treatment App: This is the story of building a DevOps infrastructure for a medical addiction treatment app based in Sweden. The app uses a breathalyzer to monitor alcohol use and relies on EU-based engineers due to data privacy regulations (GDPR).
- Accessibility Compliance Testing for Cludo, the Next-Gen Search Platform: This case study details improving the accessibility of Cludo’s search product. Cludo wanted their search engine to be usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.
- Supporting a Leading CSP’s Scalable Tech Solution:This case study is about developing a complex in-flight entertainment (IFE) system for Inflight Dublin, a major provider of entertainment for airlines.
- Visit our ‘Cases‘ section to learn how we achieve high-quality results, explore detailed project information, our approach to handling challenges, and more.
💻 Coding Insights
- abi/secret-llama is an in-browser LLM chatbot (Mistral & Llama 3). No server required, so fully private. You’ll need Chrome or Edge, since it uses WebGPU.
- Piko: powerful reverse proxy for production use. Connects to external networks, exposes services, and works with IoT devices. Built for scale and reliability.
- pg_lakehouse lets you analyze data directly in Postgres, skipping data warehouses and separate query engines. Saves time, money, and keeps data fresh.
- superfile is a modern terminal file manager.
- Google kicked off its I/O developer conference with a two-hour presentation containing a rapid-fire stream of announcements. Here’s everything they’ve announced.
🤖 AI Developments
- ChatGPT-4o is here, and it’s shaking things up. It can handle text, voice, and images, works superfast, and even has a free tier. AI assistants just got a lot more powerful. This update also allows audio-video talks with an “emotional” AI chatbot, read more here.
- Google is redesigning its search engine — and it’s AI all the way down.
- AIs sound human now. Bland AI’s new AI phone agent is impressive with human-level speed and precision, potentially automating many phone-based tasks like sales, customer support, and outreach.
- Project IDX is an AI-centric, browser-based development environment that launched in open beta after an invite-only initial release. The IDE now integrates with Google Maps, Chrome Dev Tools, and Lighthouse, and will soon enable deploying apps to Cloud Run and integrating with Google’s Checks compliance platform.
- Meta is reportedly working on AI-powered earphones equipped with cameras.
📚 Books and Reading
- This month, I focused my reading on two books: ‘How to Estimate Range and Wind’ by Pseudonym Sniper and ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing’.
- Sniper manual for military, law enforcement, competition, and hunters. Explains range/wind estimation with exercises and quick reference guides. Great for beginners, useful for experienced shooters too.
‘How to Estimate Range and Wind’ can be found on Amazon.
- Marketing has its own “laws” like physics. Ries & Trout’s ‘22 Immutable Laws’ offer a guide to success, from brand leadership to understanding customer minds. This book never gets old.
The book can be found on Amazon.
💡 Thoughts
- AI advancements may lead to developer disillusionment. Concerns exist regarding large tech companies acquiring or replicating developer creations through AI. There is a thread on Hacker Newsletter, where developers share how they feel about the AI technology and its impact on their careers.
- AI’s democratization effect is debatable. Currently, a few major companies dominate AI resources, limiting broad accessibility.
- Hype outpaces capability in AI. While impressive, AI technology still has significant limitations.
🔍 Other Noteworthy Mentions
- Here’s everything you need about: diagrams, types of diagrams, UML, drawing techniques, notations, and other related topics.
- An interesting read about how we should ‘stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem’.
- Needle in a Needlestack tests how well LLMs focus on context. It bombards them with info (like thousands of limericks) then asks a specific question about a single one. No LLM excelled at this… until now. Read more here.
- AI Engineer Compensation Trends Q1 2024.
- Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist, is leaving the company. Jakub Pachocki, the director of research, will be OpenAI’s new chief scientist. Let’s see what changes this will bring. Read more here.
- Programmers avoid hard deletes, so “soft deletion” (flagging records, not removing) is popular. However, this often creates problems. This article explores alternatives for safekeeping old data without resorting to soft deletion.
- Lessons learned reinventing the Python notebook.
If you found this update helpful, please feel free to share it with others. My newsletter is also published as a blog on our website – Ralabs Blog. You can now read the previous updates if you want to.
Lastly, as a company with deep Ukrainian roots, we continue to seek your support for Ukraine during these challenging times. Every contribution makes a difference.
Stay safe and connected,
Best,
Andrew
