TLDR 2020-09-21

Lucid has beaten the Tesla Model S Plaid prototype's Laguna Seca race track record with its Air electric vehicle. The tri-motor performance version of the Air electric has over 1,200 hp. It recorded a conservative 1:33 in its timed lap. Lucid is expected to announce the details of its high-performance Air electric car soon. Tesla is rumored to be launching a new version of its flagship sedan next week. A video of the record-breaking lap is in the article.

President Donald Trump has endorsed a proposed deal for TikTok to partner with Oracle and Walmart to form a US company. The new company will likely be based in Texas and will be hiring at least 25,000 people. Part of the deal is that the company must make a $5 billion contribution to a fund dedicated to education for Americans. Oracle will be responsible for hosting TikTok's US data and securing its systems. Walmart will provide e-commerce, fulfillment, payments, and other services. WeChat is set to be blocked in the US on Sunday at 11.59 pm.

Space Hero Inc is a production company that plans to produce a reality TV show competition where the prize is a trip to the International Space Station. It is working with aerospace company Axiom Space to help broker the trip for the winner. Contestants around the world will train for space travel and then the winner will receive a 10-day trip to the space station. The trip will be televised from launch to return. Axiom hasn't selected a launch provider for the mission yet. Both SpaceX and Boeing's vehicles are possible candidates. NASA is planning to fly Tom Cruise to the space station to film a movie. It also plans to begin filming ads on the ISS in the next few months.

Geobacter, a groundwater-dwelling genus of bacteria, eats organic waste and exhales electrons, generating a tiny electric current in the process. The Geobacter breathes through conductive filaments hundreds of times their size called nanowire. Nanowire is 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair and it is capable of transporting electrons far away from the microbes' bodies. Understanding how the system works could be a crucial step in transforming Geobacter colonies into live batteries.

This page contains tutorials for getting started with Swift for Tensorflow. Swift for Tensorflow is a next-generation platform for machine learning that integrates the power for Tensorflow directly into the Swift programming language. The project is still in its early stages so it is currently targeted at advanced ML researchers, who feel restricted by current ML frameworks, and beginner ML learners, as it may be one of the most productive ways to start learning the fundamentals of machine learning.

esbuild is a JavaScript bundler and minifier. It is at least 100x faster than other JavaScript bundlers tested, with benchmarks available in the repository.

When ISIS burst onto the scene, it had done something no other terrorist organization had done so far: it had turned the internet into a weapon. The organization used encrypted apps, social media, and online media to spread its message, find recruits, and launch attacks. In response, the NSA and US Cyber Command created a secret task force that ended up becoming one of the largest and longest offensive cyber operations in US military history. This article details some of the operations that the task force participated in.

A woman has died in Duesseldorf University Hospital during a ransomware attack. It is possibly the first death directly linked to a cyberattack on a hospital. The hospital couldn't accept emergency patients due to the attack and the patient was sent to another health care facility around 20 miles away. Hospitals rely heavily on internet-connected devices but many aren't prepared for cyberattacks. Security experts have been saying for years that it is a matter of time before cyberattacks on hospital systems would result in someone's death. The cyberattack was intended for a nearby university and it was stopped once the authorities told the attackers they had actually shut down a hospital. German authorities may treat the cyberattack as a homicide.