3MTB Newsletter - Voyager 1 and 1972 Munich Olympics; A 'politically corrupt' contract' and more.

“If Internet Explorer is brave enough to ask you to make it your default browser, then you are brave enough to ask your crush out.”

— a random quote from the internet

The most vilified product will soon die, after 25 years of love and hate relationship. Microsoft is going to stop support for IE 11 on 17 Aug, 2021.

Quiz Time:

Voyager 1 spacecraft had a golden disc containing 115 images representing humanity. Which Indian entity was in one of the images in that golden disc? You can post your answer in the comments section.

More on Voyager 1 and 1972 Munich Olympics below.

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Bytes

1. “..a politically corrupted contract..”

The background

Last year the Pentagon invited bids for a JEDI, $10 billion cloud computing contract. More than the money, it is the prestige of hosting Pentagon lured all the cloud computing majors into the race including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle & IBM.

The finalists & the winner

Google dropped off last year. Oracle & IBM were eliminated early this year. And while many expected Amazon to win the bid, Pentagon announced that the JEDI contract is awarded to Microsoft.

Given that Jeff Bezos does not enjoy a great relationship with President Trump, Amazon believes that the contract is politically influenced and has requested the Pentagon to review its decision.

Pentagon has reaffirmed the contract to Microsoft, and Amazon is all set to legally challenge what is believes to be a “..a politically corrupted contract award”

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2. TikTok US sale gets murkier

By this time, you might be aware that President Trump has ordered the sales of TikTok’s US operations to an American entity or shut shop. Microsoft, Walmart, Twitter and Oracle are some of the potential suitors. And the Chinese government has started playing spoilsport.

Why the sale has become murkier?

The Chinese government tweaked its export policy. TikTok’s popularity is due to its core AI based video recommendation algorithm, and the sale of the product means that the export of the algorithm has to be approved by the Chinese government.

So, what is TikTok’s value without its recommendation algorithm? It is just a video hosting site which any developer can build using cloud tools.

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3. The 1972 Munich Games its connection to the Voyager 1

5-September. For Indians, it is Teacher’s day. For the rest of the world, it is the anniversary of the darkest moments in Sporting history.

On 5-Sep-1972, Palestinian extremists stormed the players village during the 1972 Munich Olympics and held Israeli athletes as hostages. If the the aliens discover human race, what should they see first? Human horror or human skills?

The masked man in the balcony was the most striking image of the Olympics. But a couple of other images from the games achieved immortality and beyond. When NASA sent some photographs representing Earth and its humanity for its Voyager 1 Spacecraft, it chose the following 2 images from the games to represent how humans move.

None of the athletes knew they have achieved immortality when Voyager was launched. In fact one of the athlete, Motsopi Moorosi (2nd from left in the image), died without even knowing it. Here is the link to the brilliant article from CNN.

A trivia: Motsopi Moorosi was the first black athlete to represent Southern Africa 68 years after the first Olympics.

Till the next edition, Stay Home, Stay Safe and Stay Healthy.

Best

-Senthil