Items of Interest

Car Free Cities

WIRED published an interesting article looking at the advantages of car-free cities for people's health and the environment. The piece touches on how the interwoven nature of identity and car ownerships puts people off car-free cities, until they are experienced.

Environment

Life

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GPT3 Explains Code

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Simon Willison demonstrates how GPT-3 can be used to explain code, at multiple levels of complexity, and can even compare two (SQL) queries for efficiency.

AI & ML

Web Dev

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Bloom Language Generator

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Bloom is a new machine learning language model built with 176 billion parameters, which can generate text from an initial prompt for 46 natural languages and 13 programming languages.

AI & ML

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James Webb Telescope First Images

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NASA released the first set of images captured by the new James Webb telescope, and they are incredible!

Photo

Space

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Podcast Of The Week: Francis Huagen on RCP

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The Rhodes Centre Podcast (RCP) published a fascinating interview between Francis Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, and economist Mark Blyth. The interview goes beneath the surface of the practices highlighted by Francis Haugen's testimony to congress, and discusses the long term impact that the lack of oversight on social media content delivery algorithms can have on democracy.

Business

Life

Podcast

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What Every Programmer Should Know

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Github user mtdvio has collected a list of great resources that cover a range of topics every programmer should know.

Web Dev

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Sand Battery

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Researchers in Finland have commercialised sand battery technology that can store heat energy from excess generation. The excess electricity is used to heat air, and energy is then transferred from the air to the sand using a heat exchanger. The sand battery has been deployed in the town of Kankaanpää in western Finland and is used to power the central heating system for the district.

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Freeze Dried Cell Clones

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Researchers at the University of Yamanashi have demonstrated the ability to clone a mouse from a freeze-dried skin cell. The process could replace the need to store cell samples for cloning in expensive and sometimes unstable liquid nitrogen.

Innovation

Science

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Artificial Photosynthesis

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Researchers in the University of California have developed a method of artificial synthesis that is 400% more efficient at growing plant mass, in the dark. Using a two-step electrocatalytic process, carbon dioxide, electricity and water are used to created acetate. Plants can then feed on the carbon in the acetate to grow without the need of sunlight.