TLDR 2021-05-31

SpaceX's ocean spaceport ๐Ÿš€, first autonomous drone kill ๐Ÿš, portal between cities ๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ

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Big Tech & Startups

Elon Musk Confirms SpaceX Ocean Spaceport Deimos Under Construction for Starship Launch Next Year (3 minute read)

SpaceX's Ocean Spaceport Deimos is under construction and its first launch will take place next year. The site is intended for Starship and its Super Heavy rocket booster. SpaceX has finally landed a Starship, so its next step is to land one with the Super Heavy. There is no set date for SpaceX's Mars mission, but it aims to launch by 2030.

Nvidia is making a 3D map of the universe with the worldโ€™s most powerful AI supercomputer (2 minute read)

Nvidia's Perlmutter supercomputer is the fastest in the world for AI workloads. Its first task will be to build a 3D map of the universe. The map will help scientists learn more about dark energy. With 6,000+ Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs on board, Perlmutter is capable of delivering almost four exaFLOPS of AI performance. Its performance will be bolstered further in phase two of its development. When it is completed, Perlmutter will be one of the top five supercomputers in the world.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

A rogue killer drone 'hunted down' a human target without being instructed to, UN report says (2 minute read)

In March last year, a KARGU-2 quadcopter targeted and killed a soldier without instructions to do so. The drone was operating in an autonomous mode, hunting down the target as they tried to retreat. It is likely the first time drones have attacked humans without being directed to. The incident raises concerns about the future of autonomous drones. Scientists and human rights groups have called for restrictions on the technology.

China's Artificial Sun Sets New World Record Getting Closer to Nuclear Fusion (2 minute read)

China's artificial sun, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), recently broke a new world record by achieving plasma temperatures of 216 million degrees Fahrenheit for 101 seconds and 288 million degrees Fahrenheit for 20 seconds. The breakthrough is a key milestone in the project's goal of keeping plasma temperatures stable for long periods. When the technology matures, it will be able to provide near unlimited clean energy at low costs. The team estimates that it will still be 30 years before EAST is functional.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

PolarDB (GitHub Repo)

PolarDB is a system that extends PostgreSQL into a share-nothing database that supports global data consistency and ACID across database nodes, distributed SQL processing, and data redundancy and high availability through Paxos-based replication. It adds new features to PostgreSQL while remaining compatible with single-node PostgreSQL.

JupyterLite (GitHub Repo)

JupyterLite is a JupyterLab distribution that runs entirely in the browser. It features a Python kernel backed by Pyodide, basic session and kernel management, code consoles, and more. It can be easily deployed without a dedicated application server. JupyterLite is still in active development.
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Miscellaneous

Drunk Post: Things I've learned as a Sr Engineer (9 minute read)

In this thread, an engineer with 10 years of experience gets drunk and posts a ton of advice. The main post contains general advice for being an engineer, and then the original poster follows up in a comment with more specific insights on programming languages, co-workers, working from home, technology, data engineering, and life in general.

Vilnius, Lithuania built a โ€˜portalโ€™ to another city to help keep people connected (2 minute read)

The city of Vilnius, Lithuania has built a portal that connects it to Lubin, Poland, a city about 600 kilometers away. Five years in the making, the portals have large screens and cameras that broadcast live images between the two cities. The portals were created to encourage people to rethink the meaning of unity. Pictures of the portals are available in the article.
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