Welcome to the Resistance

The origins of life sound a lot like a business model

J.J. Grandeville, Un autre monde, 1844

• Space Startups: the man responsible for $60 billion of the Air Force’s budget is calling for New Space startups. He sees space as the next hostile battleground and opportunity for commercial gain. TechCrunch
• AES Encryption: an engineering conversation about block ciphers. Hacker News
• Homeland Security: The U.S. government just published a new Data Security Business Advisory. It states, “Businesses expose themselves and their customers to heightened risk when they share sensitive data with firms located in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], or use equipment and software developed by firms with an ownership nexus in the PRC, as well as with firms that have PRC citizens in key leadership and security-focused roles”. Department of Homeland Security
• Open-Source Financial Group Chat: a novel concept for building chat atop financial services while also open-sourcing the development to a global community of engineers. The goal? Grow from 10 million to 1 billion users. Expensify
• Quantum Operating System: a consortium of companies have been granted nearly $10 million to build an operating system for quantum computers. The consensus seems to be, it’s risky and early, but somebody’s gotta do it. Riverlane
• Audio Localization: voice assistants like Google Home, Alexa, and the Homepod have such precise microphones that they can localize and detect the words being typed on a smartphone keyboard, even in noisy environments. arXiv
• Earth Shield: in a positive development, human radio wave activity has created a barrier around the earth that protects us from space radiation. Popular Mechanics
• JSON vs HTML: our friends at Basecamp built their Hey email service using a new service they developed that sends HTML, instead of JSON, over the wire. Hotwire
• Cannabis Capital: Snoop Dog’s venture capital group, Case Verde Capital, is the preeminent investor in the Cannabis space that everyone knows about and likely, wants to work with. They just raised $94.7 million. SEC

How a chemoton works: a theoretical model for the simplest form of life requires three interlocking mechanisms: a metabolic cycle, for turning food into energy; template replication, for reproduction; and a membrane, to delineate the organism.

— Sean