Moderna vaccine on GitHub 🧬, PHP source code hacked 💻, Boston Dynamics' warehouse robot 🤖

TLDR

Daily Update 2021-03-30

SRE 101: Key Terms & Concepts (eBook Sponsor)

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling to figure out what an SRE or DevOps term stands for, or if you just want to bone up on SRE-related skills and concepts — this guide is for you. This eBook outlines more than a dozen common terms and acronyms, and then explains what they mean and where they fit as concepts within the SRE landscape. Download the free eBook.

If you would like to sponsor TLDR, please let me know by replying to this email or check out our sponsorship page!

📱

Big Tech & Startups

Boston Dynamics unveils Stretch: a new robot designed to move boxes in warehouses (4 minute read)

Boston Dynamics has unveiled a robot called Stretch that is designed to move boxes in warehouses. It has a square mobile base with wheels and a huge robotic arm with a suction pad array at the end that can grab and move boxes up to 50 lbs. Stretch can provide automation to environments that don't have automation infrastructure. It can move up to 800 cases an hour and can operate for 8 hours at a time between recharges. 80 percent of the world's warehouses don't have any automation equipment, so there could be a big market for the robot.

Niantic CEO shares teaser image of AR glasses device (2 minute read)

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, recently posted a cropped image on Twitter of what could be a first-party head-mounted wearable. The company has been actively investing in the Augmented Reality hardware space and has been working with Qualcomm on its XR hardware platform. Niantic also recently announced an AR title based on Pikmin and the company showed off a proof-of-concept version of Pokemon Go running on Microsoft's HoloLens 2 earlier this month.

🚀

Science & Futuristic Technology

Stanford Scientists Reverse Engineer Moderna Vaccine, Post Code on Github (4 minute read)

Scientists from Stanford have posted the mRNA sequence that powers the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine on GitHub. The scientists sequenced the mRNA using samples obtained from discarded vaccines. No vaccines were wasted in the process. While the code is available for all to see, replicating the supply chain behind this kind of medicine is complicated. However, making it available will allow scientists to study it and benefit humanity. The repository is linked in the article.

Cows on Russian Farm Get Fitted with VR Goggles to Increase Milk Production (3 minute read)

Cows at the RusMoloko dairy farm near Moscow in Russia wear VR headsets to improve their conditions and to enable them to relax into producing more milk. Data from farms around the world show that cows that live in a calm atmospheres produce better quality milk. The VR headsets are designed especially for the cows, and the cows showed a decrease in anxiety and an increase in general mood after using them. It is unclear whether the cows produced more milk due to the headsets.

💻

Programming, Design & Data Science

Coolify (Website)

Coolify is a self-hostable Heroku and Netlify alternative. It can deploy Node.js and static sites just by pushing code to git. Coolify is easy to install and upgrade, and it features one-click database deployment.

Mint: A new language designed for building single page applications (13 minute read)

Mint is a new language designed for single page app development. It offers a set of language-level features that is impossible to replicate in JavaScript without using an assortment of libraries. Mint's executable is around 34mb and it covers most use cases without external dependencies.

🎁

Miscellaneous

How does the brain interpret computer languages? (4 minute read)

Researchers studying how the brain interprets code found that the multiple demand network, a part of our brain responsible for intense mental tasks, was most active when reading code. The multiple demand network is spread across the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain. Reading Python code activated both the left and right sides of the multiple demand network. The brain does not appear to process code like language or maths, but as its own thing.

Hackers backdoor PHP source code after breaching internal git server (3 minute read)

The PHP Git server was recently compromised. A hacker added a backdoor to the source code that would allow anyone to execute whatever code they wanted on PHP-powered websites. As a result, the PHP maintainers have now made GitHub the official source for PHP repositories. All PHP source code changes will now be made directly to GitHub. The attackers likely made the changes to brag about their access to the server and were not actually trying to backdoor websites.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy TLDR I would really appreciate you spreading the word by forwarding this to your friends! 🙏

If you are just now finding out about TLDR, you can subscribe here!

Give feedback by replying here or messaging me on Twitter @tldrdan!

If you don't want to receive future editions of TLDR, please click here.

Moderna vaccine on GitHub 🧬, PHP source code hacked 💻, Boston Dynamics' warehouse robot 🤖

Older messages

Google Memory 📱, plant to insect gene transfer 🧬, how emojis work 😊

Samsung's drone delivery 🚁, octopus dreams 🐙, fish eggs survive digestion 🐟

Pfizer's Covid pill 💊, Slack intercompany DMs 💬, airlifting rhinos 🦏

Microsoft + Discord rumors 🎮, AWS' new CEO 💻, inhalable vaccines 😮‍💨

Apple's secret sensors 🔊, Sergey Brin's airship ✈️, drone in volcano 🌋

You Might Also Like

🤳🏻 We Need More High-End Small Phones — Linux Terminal Setup Tips

JSK Daily for Nov 24, 2024

OpenAI's turbulent early years - Sync #494

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1618 [Easy]

PD#602 How Netflix Built Self-Healing System to Survive Concurrency Bug

RD#602 What are React Portals?

C#533 What's new in C# 13

⚙️ Smaller but deeper: Writer’s secret weapon to better AI

Sunday Digest | Featuring 'How Often People Go to the Doctor, by Country' 📊

Android Weekly #650 🤖