TLDR 2022-11-15

Tesla is planning to hold an event on December 1 for the first Tesla Semi deliveries. The automaker may release more details about the production version of the electric truck at the event. Tesla hasn't officially announced the event, but it has been confirmed by the company's head of investor relations. There will be a random drawing for retail shareholders during the event.

Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees, one of the largest cuts in the company's history. The layoffs would primarily impact Amazon's devices organization, retail division, and human resources. They represent less than 1% of Amazon's global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees. Amazon had about 1.6 million full- and part-time employees at the beginning of this year.

The CAPSTONE spacecraft has successfully entered into lunar orbit. It will continue to refine its orbit over the next few days and become the first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon. The cubesat passes within 3,000 km of the lunar surface at its closest point during its roughly week-long orbit. It is 70,000 km away at other points. NASA plans to build a small space station in this orbit later this decade.

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility have created burning plasma, an energized state of matter that is mostly sustained by alpha particles created by fusion reactions. They have also produced self-sustaining fusion reactions, a major breakthrough. Particles inside burning plasma have unexpectedly high energies that could reveal new physics important for achieving robust and reproducible ignition. It will likely still be decades before a fusion reactor is developed, assuming it is possible.

xq is a command-line XML and HTML beautifier and content extractor. It features syntax highlighting, automatic indentation and formatting, automatic pagination, and node content extraction.

Openblocks is an open-source Retool alternative. It is an all-in-one IDE for creating internal or customer-facing apps. Openblocks features a visual UI builder with over 50 components, a module and query library for reusable components, native connections to a range of databases, JavaScript support everywhere, and more.

A very small number of people in the US have experienced myocarditis after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology. Most have fully recovered. There is no evidence of an increased risk of cardiac-related death from the condition. Myocarditis has long been linked to a number of viral infections. The first research tracking adverse health effects following a diagnosis of vaccine-associated heart problems is underway.

Waymo has been quietly investing in weather research since its early days. The company uses its technology to create a meteorological metric that its autonomous 'Waymo Driver' uses for decision-making. Its robotaxis have gradually become mobile weather stations. Traditional weather stations are mostly located at airports to support aviation safety. Waymo's system is able to show more localized and relevant weather information.

Twitter employees may receive stock and options as part of an ongoing compensation plan similar to the one in place at SpaceX.

This post explores both directions of integration between Rust and C++.

There is a non-obvious interaction between performance optimizations and LRU/time-limited caching.

Scientists from Northeastern University in Boston have lab manufactured a material only found in meteorites.

SpaceX has ordered one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter to promote Starlink in Spain and Australia.

Researchers from Belgium were able to execute arbitrary code on a Starlink User Terminal using a custom-built modchip through a voltage fault injection.