On the "Virtual Route 66" This Week: On the Tech Scene

As a new week dawns, we decided to headline our "Virtual Route 66" Column here with this we've embraced as our journey of service continues.  We present a snapshot of the week that was on the tech scene in our World as Elon Musk launched a broadside against Twitter and as the march to progress continued courtesy the fab team at the Information & other leading publications:

Your Next Surgeon Could Be a Slime Robot When you think of robotic surgery, you might think of remotely controlled robotic arms whirring over a patient, or tiny endoscopic cameras that help surgeons navigate with precise instruments. You probably don't think of a magnetically controlled slime robot slithering through your gastrointestinal tract and swallowing objects, like some kind of sci-fi ooze.

Selected By Virtual Peter A new and outlandish delivery drone concept can carry 100 pounds up to 80 miles Austria-based vertical propulsion company Cyclotech partnered with Japanese delivery firm Yamato to develop a concept for an unusual delivery drone using Cyclotech's thrust vectoring propulsion system.

Selected By Virtual Peter Bank of Canada Using Quantum Computing to Simulate Crypto Adoption Scenarios The Bank of Canada has become the first G7 country to turn to quantum computing to simulate scenarios where cryptocurrency and fiat currency can coexist. This week, Multiverse Computing, the startup leading Canada’s research, hit a milestone: Its model can evaluate more than 1 octillion possible scenarios in 30 minutes. An octillion is a 10 followed by 30 zeros.

Space Axiom-1 mission is a giant leap for orbital real estate The business of space real estate became a little more real this week when Axiom Space delivered three paying passengers and their chaperone to the International Space Station for an eight-day stay. Axiom, a company founded by a former NASA official and a long-time NASA contractor in 2016, wants to build and operate a private space station, beginning by attaching its own module to the ISS in 2024. After launching the first entirely private mission to the space station, the company sits at the forefront of several efforts, including one backed by Jeff Bezos, to make the first free-flying privat... NASA Tests Spacesuits With New Cooling System To Save Astronauts From Moon Temperatures The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently revealed that it is developing spacesuit technologies for future astronauts on the Moon. In a new YouTube video, the US space agency informed that astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) are testing the new spacesuits with built-in water cooling systems in order to stay safe from Sun's unfiltered rays. NASA has outlined its upcoming technologies in the clip titled "Keeping Cool in Space".

Technology AI can now kill those annoying cookie pop-ups The EU may have brought freedoms, peace, and wealth to millions of people, but all those benefits have been nullified by one horrendous drawback: cookie pop-ups. Quite struck on this visit how ubiquitous and how pointless cookie warnings are on the web in Europe. It’s more surprising to click through and *not* see a warning than to see one.  pic.twitter.com/DkvdDiktY8 — David Singleton (@dps) December 27, 2019 Photonic quantum computer made in Germany Everyone is talking about quantum computers. With the help of high interconnection of as many qubits as possible, huge amounts of data are to be processed more easily, quickly and securely in the future.

Health Antibiotic-resistant acne could be treated by phage therapy The bacterium that causes acne is becoming resistant to antibiotics, but a study in mice suggests that adding viruses to acne treatments can restore their effectiveness It is getting harder to treat acne because the bacterium that causes it is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Adding viruses that kill this bacterium to acne treatments could restore their effectiveness, an animal study suggests, however. CAR T Cells “Loaded” with Oncolytic Viruses Boost Attack on Solid Tumors A new cancer immunotherapy approach devised by Mayo Clinic researchers combines chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with a cancer-killing virus. In animal models, the dual therapy, in the form of a virus-loaded CAR T cell, has been shown to target and treat solid cancer tumors more effectively than either the CAR T-cell therapy or the virus alone, or indeed, the CAR T-cell therapy and the virus administered sequentially.

Transportation Spain hosts mass drone flight tests to prepare for a future where unmanned aircraft rule the skies Some bad news is in store for those irritated by the unmistakable buzzing of electric drones: they’re not going away anytime soon. In fact, they are set to become only more ubiquitous. If estimates from SESAR - a European partnership tasked with overhauling European airspace and air traffic management - are to be believed, by 2050 there could be close to 7.5 million personal and commercial drones zipping through European skies. Electric rotary aircraft completes first Eglin flight The Lift Hexa, an electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, completed its first test flight here April 4. The unmanned aircraft, piloted via remote control, used 18 motors and propellers to fly for approximately 10 minutes and reach a height of about 50 feet.

SHORT STORY LONG CULTURE The Week We All Got BeReal: A Brief History of a Social Media Platform’s Out-of-Nowhere Explosion By Annie Goldsmith If you know what BeReal is, you’re either a French teen or a U.S. college student, or you found out about it 10 minutes ago. The social media site—now the 28th most downloaded free app in the App Store—was founded by two French entrepreneurs in 2020, leaped to popularity in Europe last summer and has been catching fire on college campuses since the fall. But after a critical mass of campus newspapers began reporting on the social app du jour this spring, all of a sudden, in a Wordle-like combustion, BeReal blew up. The premise of the app is as simple as the description on its TikTok page: “No filters, No followers, No ads, No bullshit.” Once a day the entire BeReal network (estimated at 2.5 million daily active users, according to Apptopia) simultaneously receives a push notification, telling them it’s “Time to BeReal.” Users are then prompted to take a photo within the next two minutes and share it with their circle. The post includes two images from the phone’s front- and back-facing cameras. It doesn’t allow any editing or fancy filters. If you miss the two-minute window, you can still post later, but your shots are marked with a stamp—a modern-day scarlet letter—indicating their tardiness. Critically, users can only see their friends’ photos if they themselves post. The intended result is unfiltered social media, a strike against highly curated Instagram feeds and effortful, effect-filled TikTok videos. Whether BeReal will maintain its momentum is to be determined. It could become the next Snapchat or it could fizzle out, like Poparazzi, Dispo and Yik Yak before it. To understand its rapid rise, we’ve assembled a timeline: 18 months in the life of an out-of-nowhere social media phenomenon.    READ THE FULL STORY     THE BIG READ CRYPTO Can Peace Last Between Crypto’s Visionary Rivals? By Margaux MacColl Last October, an image appeared on Twitter of a crypto Mount Rushmore: a drawing of four men etched in stone, looking out onto a valley of trees. There was Dorian Nakamoto, rumored to be the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. There was the distinct, angular jawline of Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, the world’s second most valuable blockchain behind Bitcoin, with a market cap of over $370 billion. And there were two other forefathers, whose faces were less immediately identifiable on the cartoon mountain. They are Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, who were catapulted to crypto fame last year when their blockchain, Solana, became a stunning success, reaching a market cap of $33 billion and winning over investors like Andresseen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. However, whether they truly belong on crypto’s Mount Rushmore is up for debate. Twitter stans have dubbed Solana an “ethereum killer”—a title CEO Yakovenko has actively refuted, saying his product wasn’t built to destroy or even directly compete with Ethereum. Rather, he engineered Solana out of a desire for record transaction speed and scalability, something Buterin’s brainchild didn’t target. Solana uses a novel method of validation Yakovenko thought up: proof of history, a way to time-stamp its superfast transactions. This method, when coupled with the widely used mechanism called proof of stake, has proven to be much faster and less energy intensive than Ethereum’s current architecture, proof of work, a security mechanism that requires the system’s servers to expend a significant amount of energy to confirm transactions. It’s also much cheaper, costing users a fraction of a penny to use—a sharp contrast to Ethereum, which can cost anywhere from a few dollars to $100 per transaction. Though Ethereum will switch to proof of stake within the year, Buterin himself admits that the blockchain will likely never get much faster or cheaper than it is now—which is why Solana and other blockchains are emerging as cheaper, faster alternatives.    READ THE FULL STORY     Elon Musk said he would "need to reconsider" his position as a Twitter shareholder if the company rejects his proposed $43B takeover offer. Musk has offered to buy Twitter outright for $54.20 per share, according to an SEC filing made public Thursday. In the past year, the stock has traded anywhere from $31.30 to $73.34. More: Musk, who recently bought a 9.2% stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder, is expected to sell all his shares if the offer is declined. After acquiring the stake, Musk accepted a seat on Twitter's board of directors but later turned down the position. The move fueled speculation that Musk could offer to buy the entire company. In the SEC filing made public on Thursday, Musk wrote that he invested in Twitter because he believes "in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe," adding that "free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy." The filing cites a letter in which Musk told Twitter's chairman: "My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder." Twitter shares rose 9% to $49.90 in premarket trading Thursday. On Tuesday, a Twitter shareholder sued Musk in a federal securities class action lawsuit, saying he failed to disclose he had a stake greater than 5% within the appropriate time period, as required by the SEC.  BUSINESS INSIDER  Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said production capacity will remain tight this year and the company can't keep up with demand. The Apple supplier and the world’s largest contract chipmaker said supply chain disruptions triggered by the pandemic have put constraints on its suppliers. It still expects its second-quarter revenue to be 37% higher than the same time last year. More: On Thursday, the company reported Q1 net profit of 202.73 billion Taiwan dollars ($7B), a 45% increase from the same period last year. Its revenue grew 36% YoY to $17.5B. TSMC expects revenue in the range of $17.6B to $18.2B in Q2, a 37% jump from the same period a year before. The company forecasts continued growth, particularly in the high-performance computing (HPC) segment, which is expected to be its main revenue driver. Its chips for HPC are used in CPUs, GPUs, and self-driving vehicles. TSMC, which supplies chips to Apple, Nvidia, and AMD, among others, said the worldwide chip shortage will likely continue. The company said it's now working alongside chip equipment suppliers to address delivery constraints. It's planning to beef up production from next year. REUTERS  A MESSAGE FROM OUTSYSTEMS Do you feel the burden of technical debt yet? Learn to prevent it.  Technical debt is an unfortunate side effect many organizations experience when their list of priorities grows too long. It’s a sign of too many projects and not enough time to finish them. The results are frequently felt by customers, a topic of discussion by annoyed executives, and a cause that feeds frustrated developers.   Learn how to use low-code to develop applications faster on AWS. It can effectively eliminate technical debt, which satisfies users, and refocuses developers to rapidly create innovative solutions.  This low-code platform in AWS Marketplace can improve your development process teaching you how to…  Code faster   Deploy smarter on AWS  Reduce development costs  Satisfy more users   It’s all explained in this eBook: Develop and Innovate Applications in the Cloud  LEARN HOW Amazon will impose its first fuel and inflation surcharge on third-party sellers that use its fulfillment services. The average 5% surcharge, which is not permanent, is expected to be passed down to consumers amid soaring gas prices and inflation. More: Close to 90% of Amazon's third-party sellers use Fulfillment by Amazon to warehouse and ship their products. Starting April 28, Amazon will begin charging an average of 24 cents more for every unit it stores and ships through the service in the U.S. In a message to merchants, Amazon said it has absorbed significant cost increases, whenever possible, to lower the impact on selling partners. The company expected a return to normalcy in 2022, "but fuel and inflation have presented further challenges," it said. On Tuesday, the Labor Department said that the U.S. consumer price index, a measure of inflation, reached 8.5% in March, its highest increase since December 1981. Gasoline prices are up 48% from the prior year.  BLOOMBERG  An NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet has failed to garner high offers at an auction on OpenSea. Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought the NFT for $2.9M in 2021. He hoped to sell it for roughly $48M, but his highest offer as of Thursday was around $10,000. More: Dorsey sold the NFT, or non-fungible token, in March 2021 for 1630.5825601 ETH (Ether), worth roughly $2.9M at the time. It was one of the highest prices paid for an NFT at the time. Dorsey pledged to donate his cut, or 95% of the proceeds, to nonprofit GiveDirectly's Africa response The buyer, Estavi, announced in a tweet last week that he intended to re-sell the NFT and donate half the proceeds ($25M or more) also to GiveDirectly. He initially sought $48M, but removed that price after initial offers were only in the low hundreds of dollars. As of Thursday, the highest offer was 3.3 ETH, worth about $10,048. That offer expires on April 21. Estavi, who lives in Malaysia and is CEO of blockchain company Bridge Oracle, was recently released from prison in Iran, where he was arrested during a trip last May on charges of “disrupting the economic system.” COINDESK