TLDR 2021-11-05

Isomorphic Laboratories is a new company from Alphabet that will use artificial intelligence for drug discovery. It will use the work done by DeepMind to build tools that can help identify new pharmaceuticals. DeepMind and Isomorphic will stay separate but collaborate occasionally. Isomorphic may not develop its own drugs but instead will only sell its models. It will focus on developing partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

Tinder will expand to include exclusive, shared, and live experiences and a virtual goods-based economy. It also has plans for a dating metaverse and avatar-based virtual experiences. The virtual economy will use Tinder Coins, which have already been tested in several markets. Tinder Coins will be available globally next year for users to make in-app purchases and later for use in a virtual goods and trading ecosystem. Users will be able to gift virtual goods or collect them for their profiles.

Two teams of flying cars from Alauda Aeronautics recently completed a drag race in Southern Australia. Sporting competition helps accelerate technological progress, and the race organizers hope that its new racing series will help drive technical development and build public acceptance for the new mode of transportation. A remote-piloted EXA racing series is set to kick off next year, and a global piloted flying car racing series will hopefully be held in 2023. A video of the aerial drag race is available in the article.

SmartFlower Solar is a Boston-based company that makes smartflower solar panels that track the sun to generate more energy. The smartflowers stand 16 feet high and generate about 5,000 kWh of power annually. They come with their own battery source that is viable across temperature extremes. Over 2,000 smartflowers have been installed worldwide. A picture of a smartflower is available in the article.

Bank Python implementations are effectively proprietary forks of the entire Python ecosystem which are in use at many of the biggest investment banks. There is not much about these systems on the public web. This article discusses a fictional Bank Python system. It explains how the system and some of its subsystems work and talks about some of the differences between the system and Global Python.

Clerk creates local-first notebooks for Clojure. Clerk notebooks use regular Clojure namespaces, so they can be stored in source control. They are always evaluated from top to bottom. Clerk runs inside your Clojure process, giving Clerk access to all code on the classpath. A screenshot is available.

Push it is an app that lets users send push notifications to their friends. It is the latest creation from Sendit, an app popular with Snapchat users who use it to play games and have conversations with their Snapchat friends. Push it allows users to send push notifications to subscribers on the app. Followers are able to respond to start private conversations. The app is now the top app in many countries, even though the service is not yet live in all markets.

New York's new mayor Eric Adams wants to transform the city into one hospitable to cryptocurrency. Adams used Miami as an example of a city doing well after trying to become a blockchain paradise, despite recent evidence that the project has run into numerous legal and practical roadblocks. While it is not clear what Adams intends to do, it may mean challenging the state's requirements for entities who want to carry out cryptocurrency-related transactions to obtain a Bitlicense.