TLDR 2019-03-04

Tesla will unveil its Model Y SUV at their LA design studio on Sunday. The SUV will share 75% of its parts with the Model 3 and will be about 10% bigger and 10% more expensive, with a slightly smaller range. Test rides will be available on the day, suggesting that there will be a few pre-production prototypes present at the event. Further details have not been released, except for a black and white silhouette image of the Model Y and a statement that it won’t have the “Falcon Wing” doors that the Model X has. Elon Musk has also announced that their new Supercharger 3 electric car charging station will be revealed later this week, with a charging rate of 350 kW or more.

Whole foods have always been an ‘upper-scale’ grocery store option with strict quality standards on the items that it carries. Amazon has decided to try to take a larger part of the grocery store market by opening a new type of grocery store. It has already signed leases in many locations and they plan to open their first store in Los Angeles. The layout of the stores is a mystery, as the properties that Amazon have leased are just a little over half the size of normal grocery stores. Amazon has a definite lead in the online marketplace and this announcement is consistent with their latest trend of breaking into the brick and mortar game.

As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide approaches 410 parts per million, researchers are still trying to find an economically feasible method to clean up our air. Temperatures have risen nearly above 1˚C since pre-industrialized levels, causing intensified droughts, wildfires, and other natural disasters, and it looks like the problem is only going to continue to grow. One of the main issues with removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the high cost. Estimates put the cost at between $600-$1000 per ton, which discourages people and companies from wanting to help clean the air. Klaus Lackner and other researchers have been working on ideas to lower the cost, aiming to reduce it to $15-$50 a ton, at which point it would be economically feasible for companies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

On March 2, SpaceX launched their Crew Dragon’s first unmanned demonstration mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The aim of the launch was to test the Crew Dragon’s ability to safely ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. A live stream from NASA is available on the site, along with a full press kit detailing the mission and schedule. The Crew Dragon is scheduled to return to Earth on March 8.

JavaScript has become a more difficult platform to begin development on as more and more tools are required. Pika aims to make the process simple again by installing npm dependencies that run directly in the browser, removing the need for Browserify, Webpack, or import maps. It does not require any bundlers, is able to handle dependency trees of any size, and the browser only downloads dependencies when they change.

Whiteboard interviews are where job interviewees are asked a series of CS trivia questions and judged on their competence on these on-the-spot answers. As many professionals in the IT industry understand, knowing how and where to find solutions and answers for their projects is a large part of their skillset. This GitHub repository has a large list of companies which hire potential employees through pairing on a real-world problem or through take-home exercises.

As people start using more engaging content such as Netflix, or play games such as Fortnite, the efficacy of advertisements through ‘attention seeking’ media is starting to decrease. Fortnite has grown significantly in the last few years, mainly by being effective at capturing users’ time and attention. By making Fortnite an environment where users can socialize, attend concerts, and have fun in an ever-changing environment, Epic Games has retained an active database which has become an attractive target to advertisers. Netflix has acknowledged Fortnite as a competitor, as users usually can’t pay attention to both mediums at the same time.

Tristan O’Tierney, co-founder of Square Inc passed away on February 23 after experiencing kidney failure and cardiac arrest, most likely related to his addictions. There is no official public diagnosis. O’Tierney, a former engineer at Yahoo and Apple, was hired to develop Square’s original mobile payment app in 2009, where he stayed until 2013. O’Tierney publicly announced in 2017 that he was struggling with addiction.