VSHN.timer #244: Tales of innovation

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.

New technological advancements and developments are constantly reshaping the way we live, work, and interact with the digital realm. And some innovations also generate exciting stories to tell on top of that! In this VSHN.timer, let’s look at five exciting technological challenges and their tales.

1. Voyager 1 team accomplishes tricky thruster swap
   NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has overcome a major issue with its thrusters, crucial for keeping the spacecraft pointed toward Earth to receive commands and send data. A 47-year-old fuel tube, clogged with silicon dioxide, reduced the efficiency of its thrusters. After careful planning, engineers successfully switched to a different set of thrusters. Despite challenges posed by the spacecraft’s age, like reduced power and cold temperatures, they safely warmed up the thrusters by reallocating power, ensuring Voyager 1 remains on its interstellar journey, gathering data from beyond the solar system:
   https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/09/10/voyager-1-team-accomplishes-tricky-thruster-swap
   
2. What’s new in Unicode 16.0
   The Unicode Consortium has just released Unicode 16.0, introducing eight new emojis including a face with bags under its eyes, a splatter, and a harp. While these emojis will roll out to devices over the next year, the update also adds over 5000 non-emoji characters, including scripts from West Africa and Nepal, and nearly 4000 new Egyptian hieroglyphs. Keep an eye out for your favorite emojis to appear across platforms in 2025!
   https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-16-0
   
3. WebP: The webpage compression format
   This blog post discusses the challenges of improving website performance through compression, specifically the hurdles of compressing content on GitHub Pages. The author starts by highlighting the limitations of GitHub Pages, which lacks support for the Brotli compression algorithm, forcing them to rely on less efficient gzip compression. The author then explores a series of compression alternatives, including using WebP, a format that offers significant size reductions over gzip for certain types of data:
   https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/webp-the-webpage-compression-format
   
4. The secret inside one million checkboxes
   In “The secret inside one million checkboxes” the creator of a simple checkbox website is stunned to discover a group of brilliant teens using binary code to craft secret messages within the platform. What began as a quirky experiment turned into a technical playground, leading to intricate drawings, animations, and even a Discord community. The creativity and ingenuity of these young developers left the creator both emotional and deeply inspired:
   http://eieio.games/essays/the-secret-in-one-million-checkboxes
   
5. Tigris
   Tigris is a globally distributed, S3-compatible object storage service designed to provide low latency and seamless data access worldwide. Launched in public beta on Fly.io, Tigris allows developers to store and retrieve data using familiar S3 libraries, ensuring efficient and reliable performance across multiple regions. With Tigris, applications can achieve global data consistency and local-read performance effortlessly:
   https://www.tigrisdata.com

How do you think space exploration advancements, like those made by Voyager 1, will influence future missions? What role do you see image compression formats, like WebP, playing in the future of web development and mobile optimization? How can small design elements, like checkboxes, impact user experience in larger, more complex digital systems? Get in touch with us, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.

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