Tree Fight

Image: Tree Fight

#135

Friday, November 30, 2018

In This Edition:
CRISPR babies, NASA Mars Insight, AWS Blockchain, Ecobricks, solar powered website, self coaching, spaceship art and gymnastics robots!

This photo looks to me like two trees squaring up to each other for a fight. That is all :-)

CRISPR Babies

Image: Mark Scheifelbein, AP

Chinese scientist He Jiankui claims to have made the first gene-edited babies using CRISPR. In a clinical trial, create embryos through in vitro fertilisation from couples where the father was HIV-positive. The team then edited the embryos using CRISPR to deactivate the CCR5 gene, which the HIV virus uses to gain entry into human cells. News of the trial has been condemned by scientists as irresponsible.

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NASA Mars Insight

Image: Nasa Mars Insight Mission

This week NASA successfully landed the Insight probe on the surface of Mars. Minutes after the probe landing, it sent back an image of the horizon of Mars. You can rewatch the entry, descent and landing from Insight Mission Control here.

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AWS Blockchain & QLDB

Image: Techcrunch, Amazon

At AWS re:Invent this week Amazon launch a rake of new services, including a managed blockchain and quantum ledger database (QLDB) service. Their blockchain offers a managed scaleable service and the QLDB ledger offers an append only immutable ledger with a central trust authority. I think these services will be huge for companies that don't want to deploy and manage their own blockchain, or that don't necessarily need the distributed part of DLT.

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Ecobricks

Image: Ecobricks

Ecobricks are a world wide community movement that uses plastic bottles stuffed with non-biodegradable plastic waste to use as the foundation for building walls and other structures. Get involved here.

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Solar Powered Website

Image: Low-tech Magazine

Low-tech Magazine have launched a new version of their website which is a low tech, self hosted, solar powered site. The new site drastically reduces the amount of content served and the page size delivered by dithering images, using a default font and removing the logo and cookies. Using solar power, the site boasts approx. 90% uptime, and uses an overlay to show users the current charge of the battery.

Self Coaching

Image: Seth Godin

Here is an excellent, hard hitting post from Seth Godin about self-motivation. External coaching is all well and good, but at some point, the motivation gained from external coaching will need to be generated by self coaching.

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Spaceship Art

Image: Eric Geusz

Artist Eric Geusz creates intricate spaceship art inspired by everyday objects!

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Cool Thing Of The Week: Gymnastics Robots!

Image: YouTube, Hinamitetu

About Found This Week

Found This Week is a curated blog of interesting posts, articles, links and stories in the world of technology, science and life in general.
Each edition is curated by Daryl Feehely every Friday and highlights cool stuff found each week.
The first 104 editions were published on Medium before this site was created, check out the archive here.

Daryl Feehely

I’m a web consultant, contract web developer, technical project manager & photographer originally from Cork, now based in London. I offer my clients strategy, planning & technical delivery services, remotely & in person. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com

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