Hello, Fellow Tech Enthusiasts!
As we close out the year, here are the latest updates from Ralabs and the tech industry.
📊 Focus & Insights
- We’ve refined our approach to onboarding and enhancing the overall client journey. New materials are available to ensure better alignment with client expectations. Reach out if you’d like more details.
- Our second webinar, Mastering RAG, was a success with over 200 attendees! If you missed it, check out the key takeaways here. More interesting webinars to come in 2025!
- We’ve added a new About Us page on our website. Dive into our story, explore our mission and values, and learn about our engineers and Ralabs’ history dating back to 2016.
👩🏼💼 HR Updates
- Six new team members joined Ralabs last month.
- November’s Pet Day celebration brought the team together, sharing stories about our pets and their significance in our lives. It was an engaging and enjoyable event followed up by an interesting lecturer about our furry friends.
📈 Business Development
- Our latest case study highlights how Ralabs developed a solution for predicting employee performance and department fit using ML and NLP linguistic analysis. Read more here.
- We’ve launched a simplified version of our SQM (Software Quality Management) model for smaller projects. Check out the template here. If you’re curious about how it can benefit your team, feel free to reach out.
💻 Coding Insights
- Mantine DataTable – a versatile data table for your UI, offering features like cell styling, filtering, sorting, and pagination.
- better-auth – a robust authentication library supporting methods like OTP, JWT, and social sign-on, complete with server-side code and database schemas.
- ElectricSQL – a Postgres sync engine for efficient data synchronization.
- An unexpected discovery: Automated reasoning often makes systems more efficient and easier to maintain.
- Transformer Explainer – a tool for visualizing how transformer models power LLMs like GPT.
- Benedict Evans, a technology analyst based in London, presents a perspective that “AI eats the world.” His presentation on AI macro trends provides a detailed analysis of the evolving landscape. Take a look here and share your thoughts.
- React v19 – the library for web and native user interfaces.
- MarkItDown: A tool for converting files like PDFs and audio into Markdown for easier editing.
- colinaut/action-table – a web component that enables table sorting and filtering. Simply wrap your table inside <action-table> for easy and effective functionality.
- VineJS: A fast and user-friendly library for form validation.
🤖 AI Developments
- Hard truths about AI-assisted coding.
- Interested in hosting AI locally? Here’s a privacy-focused guide.
- Chrome DevTools now includes built-in AI functionality. Find out more here.
- Otto: An AI-enhanced tool for table operations, including data enrichment and categorization.
📚 Books and Reading
- This month, I revisited The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. While it offers useful insights, it didn’t feel as impactful as their earlier book, Extreme Ownership. This latest work explores the balance leaders must strike between opposing forces, building on concepts introduced in their first book.
The book can be found on Amazon.
💡 Thoughts
- Visiting the USA was both exciting and inspiring. Being at the heart of world politics was a surreal experience, especially as an active military man. Over two weeks, I engaged in meaningful meetings with individuals supporting Ukraine, gaining fresh ideas for Ralabs’ business development and the military.
While in New York, I visited Veselka, a Ukrainian diaspora restaurant preserving language and culture from the 1920s, and McSorley’s Old Ale House, a legendary spot where American veterans once gathered. These visits left a lasting impression.
Reconnecting with long-time partners and clients was another highlight, filled with valuable discussions and new perspectives.
And now, I have a new favorite city in the U.S.: Washington, D.C.
🔍 Other Noteworthy Mentions
- Databricks is now valued at $62 billion after securing $10 billion in funding. Read about CEO Ali Ghodsi’s strategies for growth here.
- Learn 8 Must-Know Strategies to Build Scalable Systems.
- An insightful New York Times piece on Google’s quest to build the perfect team, originally published in 2016, still resonates today.
- Discovered a very interesting game where you have to trick Gandalf into revealing information and experience the limitations of LLMs firsthand. It shows you how you can get secret information from LLMs and makes you think about protection of LLMs/AI. Check it out here.
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
