Tesla is unveiling its new =
=E2=80=98robotaxi=E2=80=99 on August 8 (3 minute read)
Tesla is planning to unveil its next-ge=
neration self-driving robotaxi vehicle on August 8. The announcement appear=
s to be an acceleration of the robotaxi program, which aims to design a veh=
icle optimized from the ground up for driverless ridesharing. Some Tesla ow=
ners are concerned with the project as it could result in Tesla focusing on=
achieving self-driving on new hardware rather than on its existing vehicle=
fleet as promised and sold to customers for years. A picture of an early d=
esign prototype is available in the article.
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Musk outlines plans to incr=
ease Starship launch rate and performance (4 minute read)
The fourth SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy =
launch may be in the next month or so. Its goal will be to get Starship's u=
pper stage to get through the high heating regime of reentry and make a con=
trolled splat into the ocean. SpaceX aims to bring the Super Heavy booster =
back intact, having it land on a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. It co=
uld attempt to land a Starship booster on the real tower as soon as the veh=
icle's fifth flight. The company is working to accelerate production of Sta=
rship vehicles to support higher flight rates and increase payload capacity=
..
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Science & Futuristic Technology
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Scientists are deep-freezin=
g corals to repopulate the ocean (9 minute read)
Coral reefs are degrading at an unprece=
dented rate due to pollution, overfishing, and destructive forestry and min=
ing practices on land. Most corals could go extinct within a few generation=
s. The Smithsonian=E2=80=99s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institut=
e's Reef Recovery Initiative aims to help save coral reefs using cryopreser=
vation, a novel approach that involves storing and cooling coral sperm and =
larvae at very low temperatures and holding them in government biorepositor=
ies. The frozen assets can be used to help reseed the oceans and restore li=
ving reefs even 100 years from now. Cryopreserved sperm has already been us=
ed to produce new coral across the Caribbean.
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Hypersonic startup unveils =
its first aircraft (4 minute read)
Hermeus, a company that is attempting t=
o build hypersonic aircraft with jet engines that would allow them to take =
off from runways like traditional planes, has unveiled a flying prototype t=
o demonstrate high-speed takeoff and landing. The Mk 1 is an uncrewed, remo=
tely piloted plane that will allow Hermeus to conduct a comprehensive evalu=
ation of the aircraft's performance and examine the effectiveness of the co=
mpany's test procedures, safety culture, and interdisciplinary team collabo=
ration. The company's next prototype is expected to demonstrate supersonic =
flight in 2025. A video featuring the Mk 1 is available in the article.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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pgmock (GitHub Repo)
pgmock is an in-memory mock PostgreSQL =
server for unit and E2E tests. It runs entirely within WebAssembly without =
external dependencies on both Node.js and the browser. A link to a web demo=
is available at the top of the repository.
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How Stack Overflow replaced=
Experts Exchange (19 minute read)
This article tells the story of how and=
why Stack Overflow was created and discusses whether the site will have a =
place in engineering culture over the next decade. Before Stack Overflow, t=
here was Experts Exchange, one of the first question-and-answer sites on th=
e internet, coming into existence in 1996. Experts Exchange was free for ov=
er a decade, but it moved to a subscription-based model in 2004. This paywa=
ll created the perfect moment for a new site to counter-position itself, so=
the creators of Stack Overflow decided to create a more user-friendly vers=
ion of Experts Exchange. Stack Overflow launched in 2008, the same year as =
GitHub, Apple's App Store, and Airbnb. The future existence of Stack Overfl=
ow will depend entirely on how well it can adapt to AI.
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How Tech Giants Cut Corners=
to Harvest Data for A.I. (22 minute read)
OpenAI solved its data supply problem i=
n late 2021 by developing a speech recognition tool called Whisper to trans=
cribe audio from YouTube videos, yielding new text to train its AI systems.=
Its team ultimately transcribed more than one million hours of video to tr=
ain GPT-4. Google and Meta have also similarly cut corners in the race to l=
ead AI, obtaining data in legally and ethically dubious ways. This article =
discusses the various methods companies have used to obtain data - or have =
considered using to obtain data - for AI training purposes.
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Ask HN: What is the most us=
eless project you have worked on? (Hacker News Thread)
Developers are sometimes assigned tasks=
that make no sense. This Hacker News thread contains many examples of this=
phenomenon. Some of these examples include implementing fixes for a deprec=
ated tool, making an internal tool suck more so people would stop using it,=
projects that never launched for various reasons, and a company morale met=
er.
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