SpaceX moon launch 🚀, organ harvesting startup 🫁, North Korean Gmail hackers 📧

Daily Update 2022-08-05

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📱

Big Tech & Startups

Watch Live as SpaceX Attempts Its First Direct Launch to the Moon (6 minute read)

SpaceX and South Korea are working together to launch a payload directly to the Moon. It is South Korea's first mission to the Moon and SpaceX's first direct launch to the Moon. The payload is the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. It will operate 60 miles above the surface of the Moon for at least one year. Many more details about the mission are available in the article.

This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting (7 minute read)

Israeli startup Renewal Bio is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs to harvest tissues for use in transplants. A team of scientists recently grew mice embryos from stem cells that developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds. The technology could be used to make cells for transplantation. Renewal has licensed the technology and it will help fund future research.

🚀

Science & Futuristic Technology

Ambitious Researchers Want to Use AI to Talk to All Animals (2 minute read)

California-based nonprofit Earth Species Project (ESP) wants to use machine learning to translate animal communication into something humans can understand. The project aims to help humans understand as many species as possible. It will include non-verbal communication. ESP has made some progress, with an algorithm that can tell which individual in a group of animals is speaking and an algorithm that can generate mimicked animal calls.

Scientists discover light as 'glue' in a loosely linked molecule (4 minute read)

Scientists have recently observed light working as the glue between weakly bound molecules. They successfully polarized several atoms in a controlled way to create a measurable attractive force between them. The force is very weak when compared to others. The discovery could help scientists explain how molecules form in space.

💻

Programming, Design & Data Science

Tabby (GitHub Repo)

Tabby is a highly configurable terminal emulator, SSH, and serial client for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It features theming and color schemes, fully configurable shortcuts, split panes, full Unicode support, and more. Screenshots are available.

sqlite-html (GitHub Repo)

sqlite-html is an SQLite extension for querying, manipulating, and creating HTML elements. It can extract HTML or text from HTML with CSS selectors, generate tables of matching elements from CSS selectors, and create HTML elements in a query. sqlite-html's API is modeled after the official JSON1 SQLite extension.

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🎁

Miscellaneous

North Korea-backed hackers have a clever way to read your Gmail (4 minute read)

SHARPEXT is a malware that installs a browser extension for Chrome and Edge browsers on Windows that lets hackers from North Korea read email from infected users' Gmail and AOL accounts. The extension can't be detected by the email services. SHARPEXT has been in use for well over a year. It gets installed on systems through a combination of spear phishing and social engineering techniques. Many more details about the malware are available in the article.

Visa suspends card payments for ad purchases on PornHub and MindGeek amid controversy (2 minute read)

Visa has suspended card payments for MindGeek and its companies, including Pornhub, after a lawsuit accused the payments giant of facilitating child pornography. A federal judge in California has denied Visa its motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Visa cards can no longer be used to purchase advertising on any sites affiliated with MindGeek. The company previously suspended sites that contained user-generated content and acceptance on those sites has not been reinstated.

⚡

Quick Links

mCaptcha (GitHub Repo)

mCaptcha is a free CAPTCHA system that uses SHA256-based Proof-of-Work to rate limit users.

This Startup Is Building Generators That Can Power Up to 500 Homes Using Only Ocean Waves (3 minute read)

Oscilla Power plans to power coastal cities using only waves.

Penumbra (GitHub Repo)

Penumbra is a mathematically balanced color scheme.

Productivity Porn (5 minute read)

Productivity porn is anything that after being consumed makes you feel you were productive when in reality you didn't actually do anything.

GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts (3 minute read)

GitLab plans to automatically delete projects that have been inactive for over a year, but only for projects owned by users on its free tier.

Sending Spammers to Password Purgatory with Microsoft Power Automate and Cloudflare Workers KV (7 minute read)

Password Purgatory was developed with the singular goal of wasting spammers' time.

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SpaceX moon launch 🚀, organ harvesting startup 🫁, North Korean Gmail hackers 📧

Daily Update 2022-08-05

Big Tech & Startups

Science & Futuristic Technology

Programming, Design & Data Science

Miscellaneous

Quick Links

What did you think of today's newsletter?

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Tesla's new solar roof ☀️, self hostable coding AI 👨‍💻, flying car FAA approved 🚗

Meta livestreaming 📹, inside Google/Meta hiring freezes 👨‍💻, YCombinator reduces cohorts by 40% 📉

Amazon mall delivery 🚚, Google says worker productivity must improve 👨‍💻, Intro to Apple Silicon 💻

Cross-browser Apple Pay 💳, China's virtual influencers 💁‍♀️, understanding quantum algorithms ⚛️

TikTok's Spotify competitor 🎵, Google's in-house Linux 👨‍💻, DeepMind finds structure of all proteins 🧬

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