TLDR 2021-11-19

Apple has reportedly accelerated its timeline for Project Titan, its secretive autonomous electric car project. It has completed much of the core work in creating a new processor that will power the vehicle. The project aims to create an autonomous car with a spacious interior that does not have a steering wheel. Apple has not decided whether it will sell the cars to individuals or operate a self-driving fleet to compete with other rideshare providers. The vehicle will be compatible with the combined changing system standard.

Starbucks and Amazon have opened up a pick-up cafe in midtown Manhattan that uses Amazon's cashierless technology. The cafes are designed to attract busy consumers who want to make quick purchases. Two more locations are set to open over the next year. The cafe stocks a variety of food options and items commonly found in convenience store checkout lines in addition to the Starbucks menu. It is open till 10 pm on weekdays and 9 pm on weekends.

Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) set a Guinness World Record for completing the world's first flight powered only by synthetic fuel. Synthetic fuel is made by capturing carbon dioxide from the air and converting it to fuel by adding hydrogen molecules from water. It delivers the same energy density as fossil fuels without adding to carbon emissions, and it can be used in conventional engines without modifications. The RAF plans to become a net-zero force by 2040.

A novel mRNA-based vaccine is being developed to help people resist tick bites. Animal tests showed that the vaccine helped immune systems recognize tick bites, resulting in parasites being dislodged before they could transmit any disease. Tick bites can transmit over a dozen diseases, so it makes sense to target ticks directly. It will still be years before human trials will begin, as scientists are still trying to figure out why the vaccine works in some animals and not others.

OpenAI’s API is now available to developers in supported countries. The waitlist for GPT-3 has been removed thanks to new safeguards. There is now a free content filter to help developers mitigate abuse, and OpenAI will review applications before they go live, monitor for misuse, and support developers as their product scales. OpenAI has updated its Content Guidelines to clarify what kind of content its API can generate. More use cases will be allowed over time as the system is improved.

Dask is a flexible library for parallel computing in Python. It features dynamic task scheduling optimized for computation and 'Big Data' collections that extend common interfaces to larger-than-memory or distributed environments. Dask can run on a laptop or be scaled to a cluster of hundreds of machines.

California has started mining for lithium in the Salton Sea. It is part of a plan by General Motors to eliminate gas-powered vehicles from its production line by 2035. An Australian resource producer has been contracted to extract the lithium.It will extract the lithium from liquid brine produced from geothermal power stations in the area. An estimated 20,000 tons of lithium hydroxide will be mined by 2024. The first two stages of the project will generate 480 construction jobs and 930 project jobs.

Nreal's Light mixed reality glasses will be available at 20 Verizon stores in the US on November 30. The glasses will be available online starting on December 2. Wearers will be able to access Android apps without taking the glasses off. The glasses can be used as VR glasses, but the field of view will be limited compared to a dedicated headset. Verizon will be selling the glasses for $599. They are compatible with both Android and iOS devices, but Nreal recommends using a OnePlus 8 or recent Samsung Galaxy phone.