TLDR 2021-05-04

Apollo Global Management will buy Verizon Media Group for $5 billion. Verizon will retain a 10% stake in the company, which will be rebranded to just 'Yahoo'. Online media brands that were owned by Yahoo and AOL like TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, and Engadget now belong to Apollo. The sale signals that Verizon is no longer interested in media. It will instead focus on its wireless networks and other internet provider businesses.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple plans to launch an 8-inch foldable iPhone by 2023. The phone will use QHD+ flexible OLEDs from Samsung Display, DDI display controllers from Samsung Foundry, and silver nanowire tech supplied by TPK. Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor are expected to launch new foldable phones in late 2021 or early 2022. Apple may drop the project if foldable phones don't become popular.

The Royal Marines are testing a jet suit for use as a way to fly and land on ships quickly and with precision. Gravity Industries developed the suit to provide rapid access and exit to and from target areas while retaining the ability to handle a weapon. An earlier version of the suit featured a helmet-controlled shoulder-mounted pellet rifle. A 3-minute video showing the jet suits in action is available in the article.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018. It is now closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft. The spacecraft will travel to just 4.3 million miles from the center of the star, seven times closer than any previous mission. As it continues to swing past the Sun, it will reach a top speed of 430,000 miles per hour. The mission should yield insights into the mechanisms behind solar wind and the high temperature of the Sun's corona.

Using private backend servers for small projects that need to use a database can become annoying. Hosting a static website is much easier. There are many free and reliable options, and it can scale without any effort. This article presents a tool that allows statically hosted websites to use real SQL databases. It is a full SQLite query engine and it can use SQLite JSON functions.

Volta is a JavaScript tool manager. It makes installing and running any JavaScript tool a quick and seamless process, ensuring that everyone in the team has the same tools without interrupting workflow. Volta works on all platforms and has support for multiple package managers.

The Digital Dollar Project was founded in 2020 to investigate and promote research into a central bank digital currency (CBDC). It recently declared that it will launch five pilot programs over the next 12 months to test the possible deployment of a CBDC in the US. The recent interest in cryptocurrencies places control of money back into the private sector, so central banks worldwide are executing CBDC projects to confront threats and improve payment systems for the next generation of financial technology. The data generated from the pilot programs will be publicly available.

Exyn Technologies, a company that develops autonomous drone technology for industry and defense, recently demonstrated level 4 autonomy in an aerial system. Its drones are now capable of free-flight exploration of complex spaces at speeds of up to two meters per second. The company will roll out its new level 4 autonomous capabilities in the next few months. A 1-minute video that shows one of Exyn's drones autonomously mapping out an area is available in the article.