TLDR 2022-01-04

Apple worth $3 trillion 📈, China's artificial sun ☀️, Theranos CEO found guilty ‍⚖️

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Big Tech & Startups

GAF Energy’s easy-install solar shingles aim to outshine Tesla roofs and traditional panels (3 minute read)

GAF Energy's Timberline Solar shingles can be installed by any roofer with a nail gun. They are weatherproof and can be walked on for roof maintenance. Other solar shingles require specialists to install, which increases the cost of installation, especially for rural areas where there may also be lower availability. GAF Energy is the first company to receive UL’s new building-integrated photovoltaic solar roofing certification.

Samsung’s new TV remote uses radio waves from your router to stay charged (2 minute read)

Samsung's new Eco Remote can harvest RF waves and convert them into energy. It can also be charged from both indoor and outdoor light, as well as over USB-C. A white model will be introduced this year. Samsung estimates that switching to solar-powered remotes could prevent 99 million batteries from being discarded over the course of seven years.

Apple becomes first U.S. company to reach $3 trillion market cap (2 minute read)

Apple hit a market cap of $3 trillion during intraday trading on Monday. It was the first publicly traded US company to hit a $1 trillion market cap in 2018. Apple showed annual growth across all of its product categories in its fourth-quarter earnings. Investors remain bullish, with many predicting more growth in the near future. Apple's peers aren't far behind, with Microsoft worth about $2.5 trillion, Google about $2 trillion, and Amazon around $1.75 trillion.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Dementia-preventing nasal spray moves to human trials (3 minute read)

A novel nasal spray designed to prevent the neurodegeneration associated with dementia has shown promising results in mouse studies. The spray is a combination of two pre-existing drugs. Mice with neurodegenerative diseases showed improved cognition and less accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain after the spray was intranasally administered five times a week for a month. The combination of drugs was more effective at preventing neurodegeneration than each drug by itself. Human trials will start soon in several countries, including Japan and the US.

China’s ‘artificial sun’ is five-times hotter than the real thing (2 minute read)

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor in China reached temperatures of 70 million degrees Celsius, five times hotter than the Sun, for more than 17 minutes during a recent experiment. EAST aims to deliver near-limitless clean energy by mimicking the natural reactions occurring within stars. The project has already cost China more than ÂŁ700 billion. The EAST team will provide technical support for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) currently being constructed in France. ITER will be the world's largest reactor once completed.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Dura (GitHub Repo)

Dura snapshots changes in a repository automatically so that developers can revert their code back to any time. It is a background process and will watch for changes every five seconds or so. Dura is still in the prototype phase, so there may be stability issues.

Lancet (GitHub Repo)

Lancet is a comprehensive, efficient, and reusable go util function library. It features over 140 common go util functions, including utils for type conversions, data encryption and decryption, parsing and formatting date time, and more.
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Miscellaneous

Elizabeth Holmes verdict: Former Theranos CEO is found guilty on 4 counts (3 minute read)

Elizabeth Holmes, the former chief executive of biotech startup Theranos, was found guilty on four of 11 charges of defrauding the company's investors and not guilty on four counts of committing fraud against patients. Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison. Her trial took nearly four months and involved testimonies from over 30 witnesses. Three charges are still yet to be resolved as the jury couldn't reach a decision.

New patent-free COVID vaccine developed as “gift to the world” (3 minute read)

The Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine are offering their new Covid-19 vaccine patent-free to vaccine manufacturers worldwide. Corbevax is based on a traditional protein-based technology and trials have shown it to be safe and effective. It contains coronavirus spike proteins grown from genetically engineered yeast. The vaccine can be easily manufactured anywhere in the world, giving low- and middle-income countries a better chance against the delta variant.
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