Happy 51st Earth Day! In honor of that, today's first story has nothing to do with Earth:
- The MOXIE experiment on NASA's Perseverance rover produced 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour on Mars, not enough to sustain human life but a major milestone in our efforts to visit the planet.
- Back on earth, the Nature Conservancy has released a report predicting significant climate changes for Illinois, including a potential 5°C temperature rise by 2100.
- Microsoft has teamed up with the UK Meteorological Office (AKA "the Met") to provide HPE Cray EX supercomputers capable of 60 petaflops and storing 4 exabytes of data.
- The Chicago Transit Authority has begun running brand-new, Chicago-built rail cars on the Blue Line, which runs from O'Hare Airport through the Loop and out to Oak Park.
- Guthries Tavern, a Chicago institution since the 1930s that closed because of the pandemic, will reopen under new ownership.
- Are you feeling blah in the late-stage pandemic? You could be languishing.
- Via Bruce Schneier, the New Yorker explains how North Korea has created an army of cyber thieves.
Finally, it looks like I'll have some really cool news to share about my own software in just a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!