Lifeboat Foundation

San Francisco-based startup Astranis has purchased a dedicated launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, eschewing the less expensive “ride-share” model favored by new space companies for an exclusive mission that Astranis says will put its package of four communications satellites closer to their target orbit in a much faster amount of time.

“We’re actually using substantially less than the max capability of a Falcon 9,” Astranis CEO and founder John Gedmark explained. “This is just four small satellites that [will be] on there. So we’re actually able to use all of that extra performance to put those four satellites much closer to GEO than you would normally be able to do with with this kind of launch.”

How much faster? At least twice as fast, cutting down the time from up to six months to as little as three months. Purchasing a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 — a first amongst space companies — also means that Astranis will have much more control over when the rocket takes off and the payload insertion orbit.

What follows is one of the most fascinating and eye-opening conversations I’ve had about crypto. We cover America’s casino mindset, the echoes of the financial crisis she’s sensing right now, how to regulate crypto, and how to innovate without exploiting others. Allen offers a lacerating but level-headed criticism of the space that is well worth your time.

Charlie Warzel: Your essay is about DeFi, or decentralized finance. Like a lot of terminology in the crypto space, DeFi is pretty broad and vague but also very much accepted in the lexicon. How do you define it?

Hilary J. Allen: Like any evolving space, the terminology is hard to pin down. People inside the crypto world have different definitions for DeFi and would probably argue with mine. But the way I think of DeFi is as a way to describe any analogue of traditional financial-service transactions—loans, deposits, etc.—that are provided using technological tools like the blockchain or facilitated through smart contracts or stablecoins. The technology is what is different, but the financial transactions are very much similar to traditional finance.

The “canyon of fire” is at least 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers) deep and 10 times as long.

Filaments of plasma escaped from a fiery canyon that opened on the sun’s surface on Sunday (April 3) releasing powerful streams of magnetized solar wind that might bring more auroras to Earth later this week.

Superconductivity and the end of resistance.

Superconductors will be a technology that we will greatly benefit from in the future. Innovative projects to solve our energy problems, such as fusion reactors, rely on their unique properties.

Cybercriminals have started using Static Web Apps, an Azure service, in their phishing attacks against Microsoft 365 (opens in new tab) users.

Researchers from MalwareHunterTeam noted Static Web Apps have two features that are being abused with ease — custom branding for web apps, and web hosting for static content such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or images.

NASA is experimenting with making lenses with liquid in space, which could lead to giant space telescopes 100x the size of the James Webb.

West Virginia’s largest solar farm will sit on the site of the 5,800-acre Hobet Mine, one of the state’s largest former coal mines, which went bankrupt in 2015.

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The solar farm will be situated on 3,000 acres of the site, which straddles Boone and Lincoln counties in the southwestern part of the state, near Charleston. It will power an adjacent 2,800-acre site that will host industry, lodging, hospitality, and recreation, and the whole site will be known as SunPark. The solar farm is the first phase of the project.

Futurefood.

It may not look appetising on the River Torrens, but duckweed could be vital for space travel.

Summary: Researchers have released a whole-brain projectome consisting of over 6,000 single neurons in the mouse prefrontal cortex.

Source: Chinese Academy of Science.

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with their collaborators, reported the first release of a whole-brain projectome comprising over 6,000 single neurons in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC), making it the largest database of a whole-brain, single-neuron mouse projectome to date.