TLDR 2020-10-21

Tesla's full self-driving beta 🚗, Impossible Foods milk🥛, Python in Hollywood 🐍

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Big Tech & Startups

Elon Musk Says Autopilot Self-Driving Beta Is Rolling Out Tonight (2 minute read)

Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) will be available in a small closed beta test beginning next week. The rollout of FSD will be extremely slow and cautious. FSD is an almost complete rewrite of Autopilot and it is set to be available for Tesla owners via subscription by the end of 2020. Tesla aims to have self-driving taxis in the market on the road sometime next year.

The Justice Department has filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google (6 minute read)

The Justice Department has finally issued its antitrust lawsuit against Google. It seeks to restrain Google and to seek remedies for the effects of the company's conduct so far. The suit alleges that Google has a monopoly over the search market in the United States. 11 states have signed on to the suit alongside the DoJ. It will be the first significant legal challenge that Google has faced from US regulators. Google claims that people use their services because they choose to, and not because they are forced to, as there are alternatives. More details about the case, as well as a link to the full suit, are available in the article.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

NASA's OSIRIS-REx successfully collected bits of an orbiting asteroid (4 minute read)

Tuesday afternoon marked the first time that a NASA mission has managed to intercept, interact with, and collect samples from an asteroid. The $800 million OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a small sample of regolith from the passing asteroid, 101955 Bennu. Asteroids like Bennu contain original materials from the solar nebula that collapsed to form our sun and planets. They may also give clues to how life started. Carbonite minerals were found on Bennu, suggesting that the asteroid was once part of an even larger asteroid with liquid water.

Impossible Foods Is Now Developing a Plant-Based Alternative to Cow’s Milk (2 minute read)

Current milk alternatives just aren't the same, so Impossible Foods is now working on a food replacement that looks, tastes, and behaves like cow's milk. The Impossible Investigator project aims to recruit leading scientists to contribute to the cause. Impossible Foods' milk is made with stable proteins sourced from plants. It properly mixes with other liquids and can be whipped into a foam. There is no timeline for when the milk substitute will be ready to leave Impossible Foods' labs.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

SVG Favicon Maker (Website)

This site makes it easy to create an SVG favicon from a letter or emoji. Users can customize the font, color, and background, then download the favicon as an SVG or PNG file or copy the HTML code.

Python For Feature Film (16 minute read)

Python has become integral to the movie-making process over the last few years, with rarely an animated feature or visual effects film that hasn't had Python play a large part in getting it to the screen. It is used to make sure data flows between each department as well as for custom toolsets for artists. This article explains the Film Production Pipeline and how Python is used in every part of the Pipeline. It includes many behind-the-scenes videos showing how movie creators create movies.
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Miscellaneous

A Niche American Car Becomes the Fastest Car Ever (2 minute read)

The SSC Tuatara recently achieved a speed of 316.11 mph on a seven-mile strip of road near Las Vegas. SSC is a niche brand that was formed in 1998. It currently has 24 employees. Only 100 Tuataras will be produced.

A.I. creativity is improving fast. This hilarious GPT3-generated film is proof (8 minute read)

'Solicitors' is a short film by a pair of student filmmakers from Chapman University. The script of the film was almost completely written using AI. GPT-3 can generate text from prompts, and this example shows how creative it can be. While it may produce amazing results, GPT-3 is still only a tool and it is unlikely to replace writers anytime soon. The four-minute film is embedded at the beginning of the article.
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