TLDR 2020-12-23

Jupe is a startup that creates sci-fi inspired portable shelters. Its team consists of designers from Tesla, SpaceX, and Airbnb. The prefab shelters are designed to go anywhere, with solar panels and batteries to supply power when off the grid. They are spacious, with enough room for a queen-sized bed, a desk, a chair, an ottoman, and 38 cubic feet of storage space in the floors. At $17,500, the shelters are available now for preorder. An image gallery showing off the different features of the shelters is available in the article.

Elon Musk attempted to sell Tesla to Apple during the Model 3 rollout in 2017. Back then, Tesla was on the verge of collapse, and CEO Tim Cook refused a meeting with Musk to discuss a deal. Tesla has since become the most valuable automaker on the planet. Apple has recently announced its interest in developing an electric, autonomous car for general consumers. It has been developing a lithium iron phosphate battery that is more compact, resulting in lighter batteries with increased potential energy density. Tesla is already using iron phosphate batteries in some of the cars it is making in China. Apple and Tesla have swapped a lot of talent over the last decade.

QuantumScape's solid-state lithium metal battery can charge to 80 percent capacity in just 15 minutes, has nearly double the energy density of top commercial lithium-ion cells, retains more than 80 percent of its capacity after 800 cycles, and doesn't set on fire. The increased energy density makes it possible to create electric vehicles with similar ranges as gasoline-powered ones. It may even be possible to use the batteries to power electric aircraft. QuantumScape has more than $1 billion in funds to take the technology through to production, with $300 million from Volkswagen, who plans to start using the batteries in its cars by 2025.

Aevum's Ravn X is an 80 foot long, 18 foot tall autonomous rocket-launching aircraft. With a 60-foot wingspan, the aircraft flies as high as 60,000 feet before its two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket payload detaches and races into orbit. While SpaceX is set to dominate the large payload market, there is still a market for smaller rockets that deliver faster, cheaper launches. Ravn X can launch as fast as every 180 minutes, fly around weather to avoid launch delays, and only requires a crew of six to operate. Aevum has yet to launch Ravn X into space, but it plans to make an attempt next year.

Hotwire is an approach to building web applications by sending HTML over the wire. This approach makes for fast first-load pages, keeps template rendering on the server, and allows for a better development experience without sacrificing responsiveness. Hotwire uses Turbo, a set of techniques for delivering efficient apps without writing any JavaScript.

ZenML is a MLOps framework for using production-ready Machine Learning pipelines. It features guaranteed reproducibility of training experiments, guaranteed comparability between experiments, built-in and extensible abstractions for all MLOps needs, and more. ZenML is centered around extensible interfaces to accommodate complex pipeline scenarios in a simple way.

The SEC has filed a lawsuit against San Francisco-based payments company Ripple. It alleges that XRP has always been, and continues to be, an unregistered security. Ripple sold XRP into a market without filing a registration statement with the SEC, which meant that it never provided investors with information that companies are usually required to provide. This resulted in an information vacuum that benefited Ripple and the people with the most control over it. The case names Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen individually. Ripple had received legal advice about the matter as early as 2012 but it ignored the advice and elected to distribute XRP without registration.

Enric Sala was a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography until he decided to try to protect the life in the few remaining patches of the ocean where it was still undamaged by overfishing, pollution, and climate change. These areas still look like the ocean as it was 500 years ago. Sala and the National Geographic Society launched the Pristine Seas project in 2008. Pristine Seas has since helped create 22 marine reserves and now it aims to see a third of the world's oceans conserved to sustain biodiversity, replenish food stocks, and store carbon. The article discusses the project, with plenty of pictures from the different marine reserves the project has helped create.