TLDR 2021-05-10

SpaceX is now accepting Dogecoin. It plans to launch a satellite named DOGE-1 to the moon in the first quarter of 2022. The satellite is being sent by Geometric Energy Corporation, who will pay for it using Dogecoin. Dogecoin will be used for all lunar business between the two companies. The price of Dogecoin crashed over the weekend after Elon Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live and joked about the cryptocurrency being a hustle. A clip of the SNL segment is available in the article.

Clubhouse is releasing its Android app in beta in the US after more than a year of exclusivity on iOS. It will collect feedback from the community over the next few weeks before rolling the app out more broadly. Users outside of the US will be able to pre-register for access in the Google Play Store. Clubhouse will remain invite-only for now. The company has limited access to control its growth, but the platform has still grown faster than expected.

Forust is a new tool from Desktop Metal that uses wood to 3D print objects. The technology uses cellulose and lignin, which are both byproducts of the paper and wood industries. Desktop Metal’s list of products include architectural accents, home products, and furniture pieces. The company recently acquired new technology from Figur Machine Tools for $3.5 million. Desktop Metal announced plans to go public in 2020.

IBM has demonstrated a 2-nanometer chip making process for the first time. The new process yields around 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail and makes chips that are 75 percent more efficient or 45 percent faster than 7-nm chips. Nanosheet, or gate-all-around transistors, are the long-awaited successors to today's FinFET transistors. They feature a layered channel surrounded by the gate on all sides, providing better control of current through the channel, preventing leakage, and boosting efficiency. It will likely take some time before the chips will be available on the market.

QuickWit was founded with the aim of creating a new type of full-text search engine that would be 10 times more cost-efficient on very large data sets. This article follows the QuickWit team as they create a solution that is entirely stateless, cost-efficient, and easy to operate. The resulting engine costs less than $1,000 per month to run, with room to lower costs even further. The engine will be open-sourced in the next few months.

zx allows you to write Bash scripts using JavaScript. It provides wrappers around child_process, escapes arguments, and gives sensible defaults. zx can import from other scripts, pass environment variables, and execute remote scripts.

The US government declared a state of emergency after the Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline in the US, was hit by a ransomware attack on Friday. The pipeline was knocked offline and Colonial is still working to restore services. It carries 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Multiple sources have confirmed that the attack was caused by a cyber-criminal gang called Dark Side. The gang is threatening to leak the data onto the internet if the ransom is not paid by Friday.

Physicists from the University of Iowa have discovered a new type of aurora in a nearly two-decade-old video. Diffuse auroral erasers are a part of the background-like glow of auroras that sometimes go dark and suddenly reappear. It is unknown whether they are rare, as they have just been noticed and scientists haven't started looking for them yet. A 20-second video showing diffuse auroral erasers is available in the article.