TLDR 2021-07-22

Clubhouse is no longer invite-only. New users are now able to sign up. People on the waitlist will be added over time. Clubhouse also has a new logo, as well as a new app icon. The invite system allowed Clubhouse to grow in a measured way, making sure that things didn't break as the service scaled. There is increasing competition in the social audio space, so Clubhouse needs to open up its service to remain competitive.

Lyft customers in Austin, Texas will soon be able to hail a robotaxi from Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen. Argo plans to deploy 1,000 autonomous vehicles across multiple markets over the next five years. It has been testing its vehicles in several regions in the US over the last few years. Lyft sold its self-driving business to Toyota earlier this year, but it still has an interest in the AV industry. Ford, Argo, and Lyft will use the data generated from their vehicles to figure out how to grow a full-scale robotaxi business.

The United Arab Emirates often sees high temperatures and little rainfall. It has invested $15 million in nine different rain-enhancement projects. One of those projects involves using drones to jump-start rain production through cloud seeding, a process where clouds are zapped with an electric charge, charging the droplets inside. The technique makes the droplets inside the clouds big enough to fall out, creating rain. Potentially carcinogenic chemicals are sometimes used in cloud seeding.

SuperBIT (the Superpressure balloon-borne imaging telescope) is a helium balloon that floats up to 25 miles above the surface of the Earth and expands to a football-stadium size when fully inflated. It can take pictures as clear as a space telescope, but at a fraction of the cost. The design can be tweaked and improved over time. SuperBIT will circumnavigate the Earth several times starting next April. Its first mission will be to watch collisions between clusters of galaxies.

Bulletproof React is a collection of good practices for building production-ready React applications. The repository contains a guide on how to do things in React with a project structure that scales well. It uses real-world problems in a practical way to help developers write better applications.

Mobile Verification Toolkit is a collection of tools that automates the process of gathering forensic traces of potential compromises on Android and iOS devices. It was developed by the Amnesty International Security Lab and released in the context of the Pegasus project. The toolkit is designed for a technical audience and requires a basic understanding of forensic analysis and command-line tools.

Twitter is in the early stages of testing a dislike button for some users on iOS. Dislikes will not be shown publicly and they won't be visible to the author. Twitter is using the button to see what people think is valuable to a conversation. It is unknown whether Twitter will expand the feature.

SpaceX, Tesla, and Elon Musk own Bitcoin. Musk also owns Ethereum and Dogecoin. He says that he will not sell his holdings. Tesla invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin in February and sold some of it for a $101 million profit. It stopped accepting Bitcoin for payment in March due to concerns about Bitcoin's energy use. While Twitter may not accept Bitcoin as payment for services, CEO Jack Dorsey has high ambitions for Bitcoin, with hopes that it will create world peace.