Items of Interest

Solar Powered Website

#135
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.
Environment
Innovation
Tech

AWS Blockchain & QLDB

#135
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.
Blockchain
Tech

NASA Mars Insight

#135
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.
Space

CRISPR Babies

#135
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.
Science

Otto AI Fulfilment

#134
German ecommerce website Otto uses an AI algorithm to forcast the stock it needs to purchase. The algorithm, originally developed for particle-physics experiments at CERN, predicts with 90% accuracy the products that will be sold within the next 30 days across 200,000 products.
AI & ML

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