Weekly Technology Newsletter — Issue #22

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6 min readAug 14, 2022

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Hello, Welcome to my newsletter where I share the developments in the fields that I follow. This week’s developments are as follows:

Technology

  • With lithium prices over five times higher than they were a year ago, researchers from Skoltech and Lomonosov Moscow State University have developed a material for sodium-ion batteries that offer an alternative to the increasingly expensive lithium-ion tech.
  • University of Washington researchers have developed an innovative solution: the first-of-its kind flexible, wearable thermoelectric device that converts body heat to electricity. This device is soft and stretchable, yet sturdy and efficient — properties that can be challenging to combine.
  • Researchers from UNSW Sydney have developed a tiny, transparent and flexible material to be used as a novel dielectric (insulator) component in transistors. The new material would enable what conventional silicon semiconductor electronics cannot do — get any smaller without compromising their function.
  • Intel, SpaceX, Philip Morris and a dozen other companies appear in leaked database of Russian facial recognition company Findface.
  • The James Webb firsts keep coming, with the new space telescope having recently spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever observed. Now, it may have spotted its first supernova.
  • Europe’s two largest satellite internet companies, OneWeb and Eutelsat, decided to merge with Starlink from the USA to compete. Eutelsat will pay $3.4 billion for OneWeb shares in the partnership, which is expected to be completed in mid-2023. Thus, the new structure will be able to offer access services with 648 satellites.
  • Starlink applied to the FCC, the relevant US regulatory agency, to be able to serve on the 2GHz frequency. If the company with 2,500 satellites can obtain this license, it will be able to provide access services to mobile phone users through satellite-linked base stations it will establish.
  • ESP (Earth Species Project), a non-profit initiative, aims to learn the methods (languages) used by non-human creatures for communication with the help of artificial intelligence and share them as open source. It is aimed that this study will have effects such as better understanding animals and enabling people to communicate with them.
  • China has developed a special artificial intelligence system to manage its national electricity grid. Faults that normally take 6 to 10 hours to detect and repair can be fixed in as little as 3 seconds with the new infrastructure. The basis of the system consists of sensors (sensors), each of which works like an independent “brain” and can automatically repair itself.
  • USA / MIT University has developed a sticker that, when attached to the skin, allows ultrasound-like imaging of internal organs. The surface, which looks like EKG tapes, has the feature of converting sound waves into images.
  • XRAI Glass announces the launch of the public preview of its revolutionary technology. XRAI Glass is a pioneering software product with a mission to enrich conversation for hundreds of millions of people1 around the world who are deaf or have hearing loss. Users wearing phone-tethered augmented reality (AR) smart glasses will be able to read speech in real-time through closed captioning.
  • Engineers at Caltech have developed a switch — one of the most fundamental components of computing — using optical, rather than electronic, components. The development could aid efforts to achieve ultrafast all-optical signal processing and computing.
  • With the Galaxy Unpacked event, Samsung introduced its foldable phones Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip4, Galaxy Buds2 Pro, Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro.
  • Intel introduced its new graphics card lineup, which consists of the Arc Pro A40, A50 and laptop graphics card A30. It is stated that the highest performance in the Intel Arc Pro A40 is 3.50 teraflops, 8 ray tracing cores, 6 GB GDDR6 memory and 4 mini DisplayPorts, while the highest performance in the A50 will be 4.80 teraflops, unlike them. In the A30, it was shared that the highest performance will be 3.50 teraflops, 8 ray tracing cores, 4 GB GDDR6 memory and a maximum of 4 display outputs depending on the laptop.
  • According to a new study, with the new technology OrganEx, which was previously produced with BrainEx technology, which brought pig brains back to life hours after death, dead pig organs were brought back to life hours later this time. With the new technology tested 1 hour after the heart stopped, it was observed that organ tissue was protected, cell death slowed down, and some molecular and cellular processes in vital organs continued.
  • Scientists announced that for the first time in history, they have grown artificial mouse embryos developed from stem cells outside the womb without using the uterus, eggs and sperm. Stating that some embryos continue to develop outside the uterus for 8.5 days and complete the development of the placenta during this period, the researchers stated that their work may form the basis for the production of synthetic organs in the future.
  • The most striking developments in the field of energy, where demand progresses much faster than supply, are experienced under the heading of solar panels. A group from Japan/Tohoku University has invented a colorless and transparent panel technology with an “indium tin oxide” (ITO) alloy structure. The structure, which works a thousand times more efficiently compared to its counterparts, has a structure that transmits 79 percent of the light. When it turns into a product, it is expected to serve in generating energy from the windows of the buildings.
  • A company called Blue Frontier has developed a new generation air conditioner that saves up to 90 percent energy and emits 85 percent less gas.
  • USA / MIT University has developed a “synthetic synapse” that works a thousand times smaller and 10 thousand times faster than synapses in the human brain. Murat Önen, who conducted the study, underlined that the invention can give results a million times faster in certain processes compared to its counterparts. Synthetic synapses play a critical role in “deep learning” studies, especially in the field of artificial intelligence.
  • The artificial intelligence algorithm developed by Caleb Olson with Google’s MediaPipe infrastructure claims to make babies cry less by detecting that they are hungry from their voices and movements.

Blockchain

  • Binance has announced a pilot of a new NFT ticketing solution with soccer club S.S. Lazio for the upcoming 2022/23 season.
  • U.S. crypto firm Nomad hit by $190 million theft.
  • The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the USA, Coinbase, has started to be investigated by the regulatory agency SEC on the grounds that it trades on unregistered assets. Following this development, the company’s stock fell by 21 percent.
  • Brazilian payment app PicPay launches crypto exchange with Paxos. The integration with Paxos marks the first move for PicPay to introduce its 30 million customers to digital assets and help them understand Bitcoin.
  • Investment company BlackRock, which manages $ 8 trillion funds, announced that it will cooperate with the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase, like itself. The announcement of the agreement, which will allow BlackRock customers to make crypto money transactions, caused a 10% increase in the shares of Coinbase.
  • In the hacker attack on the Solana infrastructure, $5.2 million of SOL-type crypto money was stolen from 7,900 digital wallets. After the event, the company lost 7.3 percent of its value. The robbery is thought to have been carried out through vulnerabilities in software bridges that enable exchange communication between different blockchains and cryptoassets. So far, the amount of crypto money stolen by this method has exceeded $ 1 billion.
  • Famous jewelery brand Tiffany & Co. announced an NFT series, which also includes wearable (physical) versions. The 250-piece series, which can only be purchased by people with the CryptoPunk collection, has a price of 50 thousand dollars each.
  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram will launch NFT support in 100 countries. In the infrastructure that is currently being tested with a limited user group, all kinds of visual content in the Instagram stream will be able to be bought and sold in NFT format.

That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoy this. See you in two weeks.

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