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NASA considers selling seats on the spacecraft used for International Space Station
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NASA is considering selling seats on the shuttles used to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station as an additional revenue source. Russia already does something like this, selling seats on its spacecraft to wealthy individuals for millions of dollars. The agency is also considering boosting its brand in other ways by allowing its logo to be used commercially and its astronauts to appear in commercials. The White House is considering ending direct funding of the International Space Station by 2025, so selling seats could be one way of turning the station into a self-funding commercial entity. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says "NASA has the best brand in the world, and it is important for us to make sure that we're using it in a way that helps people perceive the United States of America in a different way all around the world."
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Huawei made its own Siri rival called Celia
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Huawei has launched its own voice assistant called Celia. It can understand commands in English, French, and Spanish, and it will be able to interact with some basic phone features at launch. Celia will be able to use AI to detect objects. The feature will appear on Huawei devices via an OTA update on April 7.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Headless recorder (GitHub Repo)
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Headless recorder is a Chrome extension that records browser interactions and generates a Puppeteer or Playwright script. It can record clicks and type events, copy to clipboard, show what events are being recorded, and more. Only certain events are recorded.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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DeepMind Demonstration (Tweet)
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DeepMind will be demonstrating their StarCraft playing AI and discussing StarCraft 2 as an environment for AI research at 6:00pm GMT Thursday. There is a link to their YouTube channel in this tweet, they will be livestreaming the demonstration.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Epic Games begins to show it’s “more than games,” acquires Bandcamp
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Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, an online music-streaming service. The company plans to build a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music, and more. This suggests that developers in the future may be able to search through the Unreal asset sales ecosystem to license music for their projects. Bandcamp will remain a standalone marketplace and music community and all existing products and services will continue as normal.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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What can ants, bees, and other social insects teach us about aging? (11 minute read)
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Despite being almost genetically identical, individuals from colonies of social insects can have totally different life spans depending on their jobs. They can change roles, resulting in a change in their youthful traits. These insects could help scientists unravel the secrets of aging. Aging is a progressive loss of function and performance with time. It is likely an outcome of natural selection. Genes that affect the individual after reproducing are not selected against and accumulate.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Computer Vision (GitHub Repo)
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This repository contains examples and best practice guidelines for building computer vision systems. It uses existing state-of-the-art libraries to teach students about computer vision algorithms, neural architectures, and operationalizing these systems. Examples are provided as Jupyter notebooks and common utility functions, using PyTorch as the underlying deep learning library.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Iran's Answer to the Coronavirus Outbreak: Cut the Internet
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The Iranian government blocked access to the Persian desktop version of Wikipedia for 24 hours after a top advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader died from the coronavirus. The mobile version remained available. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites remain restricted as the government seeks to control the spread of information. All Friday prayers in provincial capitals have been canceled in the country as it faces the deadliest outbreak of the disease outside of China. Iran now has 2,922 confirmed cases and 92 deaths. 23 of the country's lawmakers have been infected with the virus. There are rumors that Iran's official figures are false and that many more people have died. The Iranian police have arrested 24 people and warned a further 118 internet users for spreading rumors about the coronavirus online. Iran is deploying hundreds and thousands of health workers across the country to stop the outbreak. 54,000 prisoners have also been temporarily released from jail on bail in order to halt the spread of the virus.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails
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According to people familiar with the matter, Russian hackers have been monitoring internal emails at the US Treasury and Commerce departments. The incident led to a National Security Council meeting at the White House on Saturday. US officials have not released many details beyond confirming that there was a breach at one of its agencies. The Russian foreign ministry has denied the allegations. SolarWinds, an IT company that serves several US government departments, released a statement late Sunday saying that its software may have been subverted by a supply chain attack by a nation-state earlier this year. The diversity of SolarWinds’ customer base may mean other government agencies may be at risk.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Bosch Gets Smartglasses Right With Tiny Eyeball Lasers
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A few weeks before CES, Bosch released a concept video of its new Smartglasses prototype. The three-minute video is linked in the article. In the video, people are shown wearing glasses with a completely transparent display. It shows people viewing notifications and messages and also interacting with the display by tapping on the arms of the glasses. The Smartglasses require custom fitting as they work by firing colored lasers directly on the retina to create images. It only takes a few minutes to fit the glasses, and they can be repositioned slightly without the image disappearing. As the image is projected directly onto the retina, it is always in focus, although it will disappear if the user looks to the side. This can feel weird to the user as there is no depth to the image. Observers will not be able to tell when the display is active as only the user can see the projected display.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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This dad took his son to Mongolia just to get him off his phone
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Adventurer Jamie Clarke felt that he was starting to lose touch with his son Khobe due to technology. Both of them had become attached to using their mobile devices and it was beginning to make them more distant. He didn't realize how big the problem had become until they spent a weekend away to a place without an internet connection. After realizing the impact that technology had on their relationship, Clarke and Khobe started planning a year-long trip through Mongolia, a trip where they would live without being constantly connected to the world. They found the trip to be an interesting experience and will try to apply some of the lessons they learned to their everyday lives.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Alphabet’s latest X project is a crop-sniffing plant buggy
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Mineral is a computational agriculture project from Alphabet's X lab. It is focused on sustainable food production and farming at large scales using the latest breakthroughs in technology. Over the last few years, Mineral has developed computational agriculture tools that collect and analyze information from plants. One of these tools is a four-wheel rover-like prototype that studies crops, soil, and other environmental factors using cameras, sensors, and other equipment. The data collected is combined with satellite imagery and weather data to create predictive models for how plants will grow. Using this data, Mineral hopes to help farmers optimize the yield from their crops.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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How much does it cost to build an app? (Web App)
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This is a simple step by step calculator that lets you pick a series of features and then it tells you how much it would cost to hire a freelancer/contractor/agency to build the app. Pretty nifty for non-technical people looking to launch their own app.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Scientists discover first known animal that doesn't breathe
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Scientists have discovered that H. salminicola, a parasite that infects the dense muscle tissues of fish and underwater worms, doesn't have mitochondrial DNA and it doesn't breathe. H. salminicola has evolved away tissue, nerve cells, muscles, and basically everything else to become mostly just a blob. This family of parasites thrives by reproducing as quickly and often as possible. While most evolution tends towards complexity, this organism has gone the completely opposite way, evolving to become almost unicellular. It is unknown how the parasite acquires energy, but it is likely that it consumes energy directly from its infected hosts.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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The Internet’s biggest players are all affected by critical Log4Shell 0-day
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Log4Shell is a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability that affects many of the biggest names on the internet. It was discovered running on Minecraft servers and clients. The vulnerability allows attackers to input data into username fields to create external network connections, making the server vulnerable to remote code execution attacks. Cloudflare and Minecraft have already taken steps to mitigate the vulnerability.
| 4Miscellaneous
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World Builders Put Happy Face On Superintelligent AI
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The Future of Life Institute has organized a world-building competition where teams are asked to imagine a positive future with superintelligent AI. There is a prize of up to $140,000 that will be divided up among multiple winners. The contest aims to counter the common dystopian narrative of artificial intelligence. Many scientists in the field believe that it is essential to begin work on AI safety now before superintelligence is achieved. The winners of the contest will be announced on June 15. Examples of entries are available in the article.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Yale scientists restore cellular function in 32 dead pig brains
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Researchers from the Yale School of Medicine used an artificial perfusion system called BrainEx to restore cellular function in the brains of 32 dead pigs killed hours earlier. BrainEx is a system that pumps an experimental solution into the brain to mimic blood flow. Some brains were kept alive for up to 36 hours. The brains never approached neural activity anywhere near consciousness due to preventative measures. This technology raises many ethical issues. Its use could shrink the pool of eligible organ donors.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Elon Musk promises demo of a working Neuralink device on Friday
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Neuralink will demonstrate a working device on August 28. The device is likely to be a brain-machine interface. Elon Musk has also promised a demo of neurons firing in real-time at the event. Neuralink's goal is to connect to the brain in a non-invasive way to merge human brains with AI. A special robot was created to attach the company's technology to the brain. The second generation of the robot will be unveiled at the event.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Can you tell a fake video from a real one?
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Artificial intelligence is allowing us to make shockingly believable fake videos. This will make it even harder to tell what is fake news and what is real in the future. This article contains a series of videos of world leaders like Obama, Trump, and Putin, and you have to guess if they're real or fake. The first couple are pretty easy, but the last few are shockingly hard.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career? (Hacker News Thread)
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This Hacker News thread discusses certifications that legitimately helped in people's careers. The top suggestions include Offensive Security's OSCP course, Microsoft's MCSE, and Amazon AWS certifications. One post is a warning about how too many certifications can have an adverse effect as hiring managers may see them as a waste of time compared to real-world projects.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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mml-book.github.io (GitHub Repo)
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This repository contains the companion webpage to the book "Mathematics For Machine Learning". The book focuses on the mathematical concepts used in machine learning and is not intended to cover advanced machine learning techniques. It contains two parts, mathematical foundations, and example machine learning algorithms that use these mathematical foundations. Exercises are provided.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Hub (GitHub Repo)
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Hub is a method of storing, accessing, and managing datasets with version-control for PyTorch/TensorFlow. It stores datasets on the cloud so that data can be accessed anywhere. Hub makes any data type stored on the cloud usable as fast as if it was stored on-premise.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Bulletproof React (GitHub Repo)
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Bulletproof React is a collection of good practices for building production-ready React applications. The repository contains a guide on how to do things in React with a project structure that scales well. It uses real-world problems in a practical way to help developers write better applications.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The Rust CUDA Project (GitHub Repo)
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The Rust CUDA Project is an ecosystem of libraries and tools for writing and executing GPU code in Rust. It aims to make Rust a tier-1 language for extremely fast GPU computing using the CUDA toolkit. This repository contains libraries and tools to make CUDA usable with Rust, with crates for all corners of the CUDA ecosystem.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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PRQL (GitHub Repo)
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PRQL is a readable, explicit, and declarative language for transforming data. It can form a logical pipeline of transformations and support abstractions. PRQL can be used with any database that uses SQL.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Things I Learned to Become a Senior Software Engineer (40 minute read)
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Career development doesn't stop once you become a Senior Software Engineer. It is useful to assess your growth and find ways to continue growing. This article discusses growth from a Senior Software Engineer's perspective and covers both the mental aspects as well as some practical aspects of continual career development.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Bacteria live despite burial in seafloor mud for 100 million years
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Researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology dug up some 100 million-year-old mud from the seafloor, and after adding some food to it, they discovered ancient bacteria still living in the mud. The sample was taken from deep sediments in the middle of the South Pacific where extremely little organic matter is available for life to grow on. The mud still contained oxygen, nitrates, and phosphates due to the lack of food. Researchers believe that the bacterial communities had slowed their metabolism and have been present in the mud for over 100 million years.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Christmas Is Win for Meta: Oculus VR App Is Most Downloaded on Apple Store
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Meta's Oculus virtual reality app was the most downloaded application on Apple’s App Store charts over Christmas. While Meta doesn't provide official data on how many Oculus VR headsets it has sold, the app charts provide an insight into the popularity of the device. Meta has declared an investment of at least $10 billion to create a metaverse, but VR technology is still in a very early stage of adoption. The increased sales will help Meta gain data and insight into what their audience wants with a VR experience.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Amazon Fresh grocery store in Los Angeles opens to the public
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Amazon Fresh at Woodland Hills, Los Angeles is now open to the public from 7 AM to 10 PM PT daily. It features Amazon's new Dash Cart, which calculates shopping totals, displays shopping lists, and does other tasks to make the shopping experience more automated. Customers can skip a visit to the cashier if the Dash Cart detects less than two bags of groceries in the cart. When a customer leaves the store, the amount owing is automatically deducted from the credit card they have associated with their Amazon account. Echo Show stations are placed throughout the store to help point customers towards specific products. Customers can pick up same-day Amazon Prime deliveries from the store.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Amazon Copycat is Stealing My Product, Images, Branding & More
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BeltBro is a product that uses two belt loops to hold up pants and shorts. It took two years to develop the branding and marketing for the product and the website for it was launched in February, during one of the toughest times to start a small business. Over 50,000 customers purchased products through the website. BeltBro started selling its product on Amazon FBA, and a Chinese company cloned the entire listing. The scammers even bought fake reviews to boost their listing and lowered their prices well below the price for the original product. Despite being in Amazon's special 'Brand Registry' program, BeltBro received no support from the company.
| 4Miscellaneous
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A bug lurking for 12 years gives attackers root on every major Linux distro
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Polkit, previously known as PolicyKit, is a Linux tool that provides a mechanism for non-privileged processes to safely interact with privileged processes. The tool has had a memory-corruption vulnerability that can be exploited to escalate privileges to root since 2009. The vulnerability has been reported multiple times, but it was not patched until recently. It is likely that an exploit will become public soon and be used by attackers. Any unpatched multi-user system that allows shell access to users is vulnerable.
| 4Miscellaneous
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History in the Making: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox
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Microsoft Edge has finally surpassed Mozilla Firefox to become the world's second most-used desktop browser. Chrome continues to be number one with 68.5% market share. Microsoft Edge recently switched to using Chromium, making it a fully-featured alternative to Google Chrome. Internet Explorer continues to be available in Windows 10 for compatibility purposes.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Windows 11 leak reveals new UI, Start menu, and more
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An early version of Windows 11 has leaked online ahead of its unveiling on June 24. It features a new user interface, Start menu, and more. The OS reuses many parts of Windows 10X, an operating system for dual-screen devices that was canceled. Microsoft is overhauling its Windows app store to allow developers to submit any Windows application and it is considering allowing third-party commerce platforms in apps. It is also improving the Xbox experience by integrating the Xbox app to offer quick access to Xbox Game Pass games, the social parts of the Xbox network, and the Xbox store. Screenshots from the leak are available in the article.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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China is Home to World's First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor
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China Huaneng Group Co.’s 200-megawatt small modular reactor at Shidao Bay is now operational. The nuclear plant will go into full commercial operations next year after connecting a second reactor. Its reactors are designed to shut down passively if anything goes wrong. China is expected to invest up to $440 billion into nuclear power over the next decade and a half. Small module reactors are less costly to build and operate, faster to implement, and have shorter shutdown times compared to traditional nuclear plants, making them an exciting technology for nuclear experts.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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‘Jumping gene’ may have erased tails in humans and other apes—and boosted our risk of birth defects
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A graduate student from New York University has found a gene that may be the reason humans and other great apes are missing tails. The gene is a short DNA insertion called an Alu element. Alu sequences can move around the genome and are sometimes called jumping genes or transposable elements. They can have complex effects on how proteins are expressed, making them a huge driver of evolutionary variation. Mice that had been genetically modified to have the gene had a mix of tail lengths, from none to nearly normal, suggesting that other genes must be working together to eliminate all tail development in apes.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Samsung’s working on a rollable smartwatch with a camera
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Samsung filed a patent in June for a Galaxy Watch with a rollable screen. The watch looks like an average round-faced watch except that it can extend into a pill-shaped oval that's 40 percent larger. One of the drawings in the patent suggests that the larger screen could be used to watch videos. There will be a front-facing camera in the middle of the watch. While tech companies seem to be toying with the idea of watching videos and taking photos from the wrist, these applications may not be practical in real life.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Zero-gravity space fridge could keep astronaut food fresh for years
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Refrigerators aren't able to work in space as they rely on gravity to distribute oil through the compressor system that regulates temperature. Purdue University researchers and Air Squared are creating an oil-free version of the traditional fridge that can work independent of gravity. The project was funded by NASA and it tested its first flight-ready prototype last month. The prototype worked in simulated microgravity on a parabolic plane flight. While the test was limited, it was able to help work out an issue with the device. The next test could be a longer-term installation aboard the ISS.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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“They’re more attractive than real boyfriends.” Inside the weird world of Chinese romance video games
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While TV shows, movies, and books commonly feature romance as an integral part of their stories, romantic games are still relatively uncommon. Previous attempts have generally been unsuccessful, as the more emotional nuances to relationships are difficult to translate into game controls, usually resulting in transactional-relationship type interactions in games. A mobile game produced in China, Love and Producer, has become a hit, attracting millions of female users looking for love. Users play a TV producer with four love interests, and they can interact with these characters through phone calls and social media updates. Players can purchase special voice episodes where they can ‘talk’ to their virtual sweethearts on the phone. Producers say the success of the game is due to their focus and understanding of the emotional needs of their audience.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Facebook launches CatchUp, an audio-only calling app that shows who’s ready to chat now
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CatchUp is a new app from Facebook that makes it easy for friends and family in the US to coordinate phone calls or set up group calls with up to eight people. The app is audio-only and it flags when users are available. Users won't need a Facebook account for the app to work as it works with the device's contacts list. One of the main reasons people no longer make phone calls is that they don't know when someone is free and they don't want to interrupt them. CatchUp solves this issue by allowing users to broadcast their availability to their contacts list.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Scientists created artificial skin that can feel pain
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Researchers from RMIT have created an artificial skin capable of sensing and reacting to pain. The artificial skin mimics the nerve pathways in the human body that connect the skin to the brain. It can measure changes in pressure and temperature. The skin can differentiate between different levels and types of pain and transmit signals at the same speeds as nerves in the human body. The technology could be used to improve prosthetics, robots, and skin grafts, though much more work is needed before the artificial skin can interface with the human nervous system.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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lax.js (GitHub Repo)
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lax.js allows web developers to easily create smooth and beautiful scroll animations. It is a very light-weight javascript plugin (2kb when compressed), and it comes with many preset animations. Developers can create their own custom animations if required. A linked page shows the plugin in action.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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graphql-yoga (GitHub Repo)
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GraphQL Yoga is a fully-featured GraphQL server with sensible defaults and everything required for a minimal setup. It supports GraphQL subscriptions, file uploads, JSON and GraphQL content types, ESM, and plugins. GraphQL Yoga is compatible with all GraphQL clients and can be deployed anywhere.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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eDEX-UI (Github Repo)
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Somebody actually built a working version of the Tron Legacy sci-fi movie style computer dashboard. It works on all OSes and there's a screenshot in the repo that shows how incredible this looks (I ran this on my Macbook and it works like a charm)!
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Awesome Hacker Search Engines (GitHub Repo)
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This repository contains a list of search engines that are useful for penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, red team operations, and bug bounties. It includes categories for exploits, mail addresses, threat intelligence, web history, and much more.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Researchers use humanoid robots to grow human tendon tissue
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Researchers from the University of Oxford and robotics company Devanthro engineered a robotic shoulder to function as a stretching mechanism to produce lifelike human tendon tissue. The team grew cells on the robotic joint using a strategically placed bioreactor over two weeks, bending and twisting the joint in human-like ways for 30 minutes each day. More work still needs to be done to determine if the new method was an improvement over traditional methods. The approach has been attempted before with living muscle tissue grown from rat cells.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space
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Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space. These types of radio bursts were first detected in 2007, and all have come from outside the Milky Way. One of the new bursts is repeating, the second repeating burst ever to be detected. These were discovered by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, which was only running at partial capacity at the time. Researchers hope they will detect more now that CHIME is fully operational.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Sheet.Best (Website)
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Sheet.Best converts Google SpreadSheets into APIs. Users just need to paste the 'share' link from their Sheets document into the site. The API will provide view, edit, and write functions depending on the settings on Google Sheets.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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hyperfine (GitHub Repo)
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hyperfine is a command-line benchmarking tool. It is able to show statistical analysis across multiple runs, support arbitrary shell commands, provide constant feedback about benchmark progress, detect statistical outliers, export results to various platforms, and more. It is cross-platform and be run on Linux, macOS, and Windows systems.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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attrs (GitHub Repo)
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attrs is a Python package that makes writing classes easier by removing the need to implement object protocols. It helps developers write concise and correct software without slowing down the code. attrs has been trusted by NASA for Mars missions since 2020.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple is selling the iPhone SE again, its smallest, cheapest, and arguably best phone
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Apple is selling the iPhone SE on the clearance section of its site for $249 for the 32GB version, and $299 for the 128GB version. The offer is only available to US customers. Apple had stopped selling the iPhone SE in September, it was one of the last 4-inch iPhones and one of the last models with a headphone jack. It has the inside parts of an iPhone 6S jammed into the body of a smaller iPhone 5S.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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SpaceX and Tesla are ‘working on’ ventilators, Elon Musk says
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Tesla and SpaceX employees are working on ventilators just in case they are needed. The announcement comes after a direct plea by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for Musk's companies to help hospitals in the fight against COVID-19. It is unclear what Musk's exact plans are at the moment. The project will require certified medical personnel to be involved and the resulting product must be approved by the FDA, which could delay production. Other automakers are also in talks with the White House to produce ventilators.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism (24 minute read)
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Prior to the printing press, books were handwritten by scribes and people who could not afford them probably would not have been able to read them, leaving a lot of space for powerful gatekeepers to exploit the common people. Many texts would have been altered while they were copied by scribes. After printed text started being distributed, the gatekeeping powers shifted toward those who printed texts, as they had the power to change the words and meanings of the text printed. The internet introduced the ability to view a wide range of information and platforms to distribute information. Now, anybody could write anything they wanted, whether it was true or not. Companies can moderate their platforms and control the narrative. Some platforms are moderated heavily, while others are almost completely free, allowing users to say whatever they want. Tech companies are starting to recognize the power they possess and some are beginning to push for regulations on what should be allowed on the internet.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Feast your eyes on the first image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way
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There is a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun at the heart of our galaxy. Scientists have produced the first image of the black hole using the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT is a collection of telescopes scattered around the globe that records light in the microwave range of the electromagnetic spectrum from different locations. The images are combined and processed to create a high-resolution image picture. The image of the black hole is available in the article.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Ex SpaceX Engineers Launch Robotic Pizzeria That Can Make and Bake in 5 Minutes
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Stellar Pizza is a new pizza-making robot launched by three ex-SpaceX engineers. The pizzeria can make, bake, and top a pizza in under five minutes. It can fit on the back of a truck and be deployed anywhere. Customers can order from a menu or create their own pizzas. The foodservice industry is currently facing a global shortage of labor that is expected to worsen over the next decade. Automated solutions like Stella Pizza provide a cost-effective way to fill unwanted positions in the food industry.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Cardboard SDK (GitHub Repo)
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Cardboard SDK provides everything required to create VR experiences for Google Cardboard. It supports VR features such as motion tracking, stereoscopic rendering, and user interaction via the viewer button.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Launch your mobile app within weeks (Sponsor)
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This is your chance to bring alive that mobile app idea you always had. Follow this masterclass and go from idea to market with React Native + Node.JS.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Researchers turned fat cells into stem cells to repair injuries
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Stem cells have the potential to treat many conditions. The source of these cells has been a topic of controversy ever since they were discovered, so scientists have been trying to find new ways of producing them without using embryos. A team from Australia has created a method of turning fat cells into stem cells that can then be used to repair wounds. The research has only been conducted on mice so far. Using this method of making stem cells reduces the chance of tumors compared to other methods. Since they use cells from the patient's own body, there is far less chance of rejection. There is still a lot of research to conduct before the technique can be used in clinical settings.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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I attended a virtual conference with an AI version of Deepak Chopra. It was bizarre and transfixing
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The AI Foundation creates avatars with artificial intelligence that look and sound like the people they are meant to represent. Each avatar is trained by the person they emulate in order to learn to become digital extensions that can communicate on behalf of their real selves. If an AI doesn't know the answer to a question, it will ask its human about it at another time. Instead of replacing people, the idea is to use the digital personas to allow one person to do more work. The article describes a scenario where five of the digital personas are put together into a simulated meditation session.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Visa to acquire Plaid, the fintech powering Venmo and other banking apps, in $5.3 billion deal
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Visa is buying Plaid in a deal worth $5.3 billion. Plaid's API software is used by many companies to connect to users' bank accounts. One in four people in the United States with bank accounts has used Plaid's services. Visa was an early investor in the start-up, along with Mastercard, Citi, American Express, and Goldman Sachs. Plaid has seen a compound annual growth rate of roughly 100% since 2015. Its customer base doubled from 2017 to 2018 and has expanded to the UK and Canada. Visa has estimated that the deal could add up to 100 basis points to the company's net revenue growth by 2021.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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The transhumanists who are 'upgrading' their bodies
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A growing number of people who call themselves 'transhumanists' believe that they can improve beyond their physical and mental limitations and upgrade their bodies by incorporating technology. Modifications can include implanting RFID chips to make interaction with technologies easier, magnets to sense electromagnetic fields, and LED implants for cosmetic reasons. Not all the modifications are practical. Microchips are usually delivered by a syringe to the back of the hand and can be programmed to do various tasks. RFID chips are used for many technologies, for example, key cards, bank cards, public transport tickets, and sharing other information. Buying parts online and performing the procedures at home can be risky. Most tattoo artists and body piercers are covered to do implants.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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India’s Going to the Moon, and the Country Is Pumped
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India’s plan to send a robotic rover to the south pole of the moon was delayed due to technical issues. Chandrayaan-2 will be the first ever space mission to the moon’s south pole. While India has hundreds of millions of people stuck in poverty, its universities produce some of the best software engineers and scientists in the world, making the country suited to space exploration. In 2008, an Indian space mission discovered water molecules on the moon. Many citizens are filled with a sense of national pride regarding the mission and children are learning about space exploration in special learning programs.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google and DeepMind are using AI to predict the energy output of wind farms
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Generating and storing wind energy can be complicated due to the variable nature of wind. Google has used AI software developed by its DeepMind subsidiary to predict energy output, which has resulted in a 20% increase in the value of the energy it produces in its wind farms. In 2018, Google reached its goal of offsetting their energy usage with 100% renewable energy. The software is able to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead so that the power grid can make optimizations ahead of time.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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What a World at Home Looks Like (3 minute video)
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Public spaces around the world are now nearly deserted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This video shows many normally-crowded locations empty of people, some of them appearing to be completely deserted. In locations where there are still people, they are few and spread apart.
| 4Miscellaneous
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My Second Year as a Solo Developer (12 minute read)
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After leaving Google as a software developer two years ago, Michael Lynch set out to build his own software business. In the second year, the business was still not profitable, but it had improved significantly. Lynch worked on several projects, with his 'Is It Keto' both bringing in the most revenue and having the highest running costs. During this time, he learned that higher prices could actually bring in more customers, ideas need to be screened and dumped when appropriate, having higher goals can result in bigger wins, and that life is much more enjoyable as a founder.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Elon Musk's Boring Company is reportedly pitching freight tunnels
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The Boring Company wants to build freight-focused tunnels for moving shipping containers underground on battery-powered freight carriers. It is unclear how many clients the idea has been pitched to. The company has envisioned freight almost from the beginning, so it is mostly just a shift in focus from its commuter plans. Its Las Vegas Convention Center Loop system did not turn out as hoped. The larger freight tunnels might be more attractive to clients.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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First “Marsquake” Detected on Red Planet
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NASA’s InSight lander detected a faint trembling on Mars’ surface earlier this month. The marsquake was relatively weak, about the strength of the moonquakes that were measured in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Apollo astronauts. If the quake had occurred on Earth it would not have been detected. Scientists are still unsure whether the marsquake originated from the planet or as a result of a meteor impact. InSight is currently located in Elysium Planitia, near Mars’ equator. Its heat probe has become stuck on what is likely a buried rock, and mission controllers are currently trying to figure out how to free the robotic lander.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Nvidia turns to liquid cooling to reduce big tech’s energy use
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Nvidia has announced a plan for reducing the energy use of data centers by using liquid-cooled graphics cards. Its liquid-cooled version of its A100 compute card consumes 30% less power than the air-cooled version. The company plans to support liquid cooling in its high-performance data center GPUs for the foreseeable future. Liquid-cooling lowers power consumption while also taking up significantly less room. Nvidia's liquid-cooled cards will be incorporated into data center servers later this year.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Meet Doggo: Stanford’s cute open-source four-legged robot
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Doggo is a four-legged robot that costs less than $3,000 to build and is completely open source. It was designed to be accessible so that labs around the world could build it and use it for their own experiments. Doggo performs better than many more expensive models available on the market while being less expensive. Legged robots are becoming more and more useful in the real world, and increasing accessibility to the technology will allow labs and universities to develop more applications for the technology.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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How we built a $1M ARR open source SaaS (20 minute read)
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Plausible Analytics is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It is completely independent and self-funded, with four staff and 7,000 paying subscribers. The startup is actively counting stats on more than 50,000 websites without ever paying to advertise. This article discusses how Plausible Analytics started and how it developed into a $1 million annual recurring revenue business.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Scientists Put A Tardigrade In A Strange Quantum State And It Survived
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Researchers from Singapore successfully placed a tardigrade in a state of quantum entanglement with a superconducting qubit. The tardigrade survived, despite the experiment and being subjected to temperatures just 0.01 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. This was the third time the scientists had attempted the experiment. The team hopes to entangle other lifeforms in the future.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets
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Twitter recently announced two new features during a presentation for analysts and investors. Super Follows will allow users to charge followers for extra content. Twitter has not yet revealed what fees will be charged for the service. Communities is similar to Facebook Groups, where people can create and join groups around specific interests and see more posts focused on those topics. Twitter did not reveal when either of these features will be launched.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Emoji under the hood
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All text inside computers is encoded with numbers, with the most popular system being Unicode. Unicode defines around 150k characters, which covers all the scripts used on Earth, along with other symbols. Emojis are included in the Unicode table, which is why they can behave like any other text. This article explores the seven different ways emojis can be encoded and shows how the techniques can be combined to construct complex messages.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Is Giving Andrew Yang $5 Million to Build the Case for a Universal Basic Income
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Jack Dorsey is giving $5 million to Humanity Forward, a group launched by Andrew Yang, to build the case for a universal basic income. Humanity Forward will distribute the contribution in the form of small cash grants to nearly 20,000 people who were affected economically by the pandemic. The group has already given away nearly $2 million in direct cash assistance. Yang campaigned for president with universal basic income as the centerpiece of his campaign. He ended his bid after disappointing finishes in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. The pandemic has created another push for a universal basic income. Dorsey sees universal basic income both as a means of helping people through the pandemic and as a safety net during a fast-changing economy. It will provide stability for people as the world changes and innovations in automation take over traditional jobs.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Samsung beats TSMC to production of 3nm chips
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Samsung has started producing 3nm chips. Its new process is 45% more power-efficient than its previous 5nm process and it produces chips with 23% higher performance and a 16% smaller surface area. TSMC's 3nm process isn't expected to go into mass production until the second half of 2022. Samsung's chips will be manufactured in South Korea for now. Its Texas plant is not scheduled to start manufacturing until 2024.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
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The US Postal Service started a two-week test transporting mail across three states using self-driving trucks. A safety driver and an engineer will ride with each vehicle to ensure that the test drives run smoothly. The test will involve five round trips that will take about 45 hours each to complete. It is unclear whether mail delivery will continue with the self-driving trucks after the test. No tax dollars were spent on the project. The US is currently facing a driver shortage as the current workforce ages and new drivers are becoming more difficult to recruit. Self-driving trucks would reduce costs while solving the driver shortage issue.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share
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Chromebooks outsold Macs in 2020. Windows still retained the majority market share. The growth means that app and game developers can no longer ignore Chrome OS, and businesses should start setting aside resources to ensure that the Chrome OS experience is comparable to Windows and macOS. Chrome OS's success was largely limited to US schools before the pandemic, but it looks like demand has expanded beyond that market.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence (10 minute read)
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A veterinary student from Tufts University, Tiffany Filler, has been accused of hacking into the school’s systems in order to manipulate her grades. The university created a case based on log files and database records supplied by the IT department which showed that Filler logged on to the systems under a pseudonym and manipulated her own and other students’, with details about the time and location of access. Filler was not given a chance to defend herself and was immediately expelled from the school. The student was able to later provide evidence that her laptop had been compromised with a Remote Access Trojan, as well as evidence that she was not at the locations that the IT department had provided at the times the alleged hacks occurred. Despite the evidence, Filler was not able to defend herself and was not allowed to continue her education at the school.
| 4Miscellaneous
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A two-legged delivery robot has gone on sale—and Ford is the first customer
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Agility Robotics has made its two-legged robot, Digit, available for sale, and its first customer is Ford. Ford has been testing the robot for vehicle-to-door delivery since May 2019. Digit is able to carry items weighing up to 40 pounds and can navigate semi-autonomously. It requires some guidance to avoid obstacles. The specific price for each unit has not been released to the public, but it is in the low-mid six figures. Agility expects to be making a maximum of 30 bots in 2020.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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aleph.js (GitHub Repo)
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aleph.js is a full-stack framework in Deno. It is currently being rewritten, so many components are subject to change. Example apps written with aleph.js are available.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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AI guides single-camera drone through hallways it’s never seen before
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A team of scientists at the University of California have combined data from simulations and the real world to create a deep reinforcement learning model that enabled a drone to navigate through hallways it had never seen before. Scientists have previously used deep reinforcement learning models for land-based robots to learn hiking trails and to recover from unexpected falls, but not with drones that can fly. There is a GIF that shows the drone in action along with its camera output.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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YouTube TV raises monthly price to $50, but adds Discovery channels
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As of today, YouTube TV will now have Discovery’s lineup of networks. The cost of a subscription has also risen to $50 a month. Existing customers will not see a price increase in their subscriptions until May 13th. The extra channels will be added to every subscription automatically and there are no plans to create different subscription tiers to choose from. YouTube claims that Discovery’s channels were a frequent request by customers and that the addition of these channels, and the subsequent price increase, would be accepted by most customers.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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LiveTerm (GitHub Repo)
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LiveTerm is a highly customizable and minimal terminal-style website template powered by Next.js. It takes minutes to build a site with LiveTerm and developers only need to work with one config file. Live examples are available.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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lazygit (GitHub Repo)
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lazygit is a simple UI for git commands. While git may be a powerful tool, many of the things that make it powerful are hard to do. lazygit makes it easy to add files, resolve merge conflicts, check out recent branches, and much more. GIF examples are available.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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China’s noisy ‘dancing grannies’ silenced by device that disables speakers
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In China, gangs of middle-aged and older women regularly go to local parks and sporting grounds to dance in unison to loud music. This tradition is frequently blamed for disturbing the peace in often high-density residential areas. Many citizens are too scared to confront the women. A remote stun gun-style device that can disable speakers from 50 meters away has gone viral online this week. The device has been reportedly used to disable the speakers used by the dancers, causing the music to stop without direct confrontation. A video of people dancing in a public square in China is available in the article.
| 4Miscellaneous
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Bitcoin Comes to Whole Foods, Major Retailers in Coup for Digital Currency
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A new retail initiative will see many major retailers start to accept cryptocurrency as payment. The initiative comes from a partnership with Flexa, a payments startup, and Gemini, a Winklevoss-owned digital currency company. Existing scanners will be able to scan a QR code from a cryptocurrency wallet app for payments. The app, Spedn, supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Ethereum, and Gemini Dollar. While there is a large list of retailers who will be able to support these payments, none have given any official statements, probably as the payment system is still experimental.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Virgin Galactic debuts design of future Mach 3 high-speed aircraft, signs deal with Rolls-Royce
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Virgin Galactic has revealed initial designs for its commercial passenger airplane that is designed to fly at speeds above Mach 3. It also announced a partnership with Rolls-Royce, one of the world's leading aircraft engine makers. The plane will be able to fly above 60,000 feet, carrying between nine to 19 people per flight. Images of the design are available in the article.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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DeepMind AI Reaches 'Human-Level Performance' In Modded 'Quake Arena III'
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Alphabet’s DeepMind has created an AI that can play a modded version of Quake III Arena at human-level performance. It has previously created AI to play other games, such as Starcraft II. The version of Quake III Arena that the AI trained on was much more simplified than the original version, with only spherical models to represent players and a ‘tag’ system instead of shooting. Despite the modifications, the AI agents still had the same information a human player would usually see in a game. In a tournament against 40 human players, some DeepMind’s AI agents were able to surpass even the highly-skilled players’ win-rates.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Here are all the new Marvel, Star Wars, and other projects Disney announced at its investor day
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Disney made a long list of announcements at its 2020 Investor day that included updates on its streaming services and projects. This article contains a list of updates from the event. It includes a list of movie and TV show releases from Marvel, Lucasfilm, Disney Animation, and Pixar, as well as some other franchises. Disney Plus will increase to $7.99 per month in March, with a bundle including Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and ad-free Hulu available for $18.99. Star will be Disney's international replacement for Hulu, launching in certain European countries, Canada, and New Zealand on February 23, and Japan and South Korea later in 2021.
| 4Miscellaneous
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A solar panel in space is collecting energy that could one day be beamed to anywhere on Earth
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The Photovoltaic Radiofrequency Antenna Module (PRAM) is a solar panel that is designed to send electricity from space back to any point on Earth. Scientists working for the Pentagon successfully launched the first PRAM in May 2020. Sunlight in space is more powerful than on Earth as it doesn't pass through the atmosphere. The latest experiments show that the 12x12-inch panel is capable of producing about 10 watts of energy for transmission. A scaled-up array of panels could revolutionize how power is generated and distributed around the globe.
| 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Laravel Learning Path (GitHub Repo)
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This repository contains a learning path for Laravel. It lists topics to learn in order and provides links to resources.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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SwiftUI (Website)
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SwiftUI is a method of building user interfaces across all Apple platforms using Swift. It uses declarative syntax, so developers can easily state what the UI requirements are. Xcode 11’s design tools work seamlessly with SwiftUI, so changes are displayed immediately in the preview as soon as code is typed. It also works in reverse, so code is updated as soon as design elements are changed in the preview.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Would you be interested in a crypto version of TLDR?
I'm seeing a ton of interesting crypto stories like the SOS airdrop and this Avalanche development tutorial but I don't want the whole newsletter to be flooded with crypto content, so if you'd be interested in a separate smaller version of TLDR that is only crypto tech and programming news, could you please fill out the above form so I can see if this is something worth creating? Thanks!
)
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I'm seeing a ton of interesting crypto stories like the SOS airdrop and this Avalanche development tutorial but I don't want the whole newsletter to be flooded with crypto content, so if you'd be interested in a separate smaller version of TLDR that is only crypto tech and programming news, could you please fill out the above form so I can see if this is something worth creating? Thanks!
| 4Miscellaneous
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New from Satellite 2020: GitHub Discussions, Codespaces, securing code in private repositories, and more
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GitHub has announced four new products this week to help software communities work together. Codespaces is a fully-featured, cloud-hosted dev environment that loads directly within GitHub. It can be configured to load code, dependencies, developer tools, extensions, and dotfiles. GitHub Discussions is a place for the community to discuss ideas, help new users, and collaborate on best practices. Code scanning is now available as a GitHub-native experience. Secret scanning is now available for private repositories. GitHub has announced GitHub Private Instances. Private Instances will provide enhanced security, compliance, and policy features for enterprise customers.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google admits partners leaked more than 1,000 private conversations with Google Assistant
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Google has admitted that a partner has leaked over 1,000 sound recordings of customer conversations to a Belgian news site, VRT. The recordings were supposed to be used to improve the quality of responses from smart devices. While the sound files were anonymized, VRT reported that the recordings contained enough private information to directly identify some of the people talking in them. Google says that this is a direct violation of its data security policies and that it is actively investigating the issue. It is possible to easily delete your Google Assistant voice history.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Apple concedes to let apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle link to the web to sign up
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Apple has changed its App Store rules to allow developers of reader apps to share a single link to their website to help users set up and manage their accounts. Reader apps are apps that allow users to access previously purchased content, but do not offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase. Apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle will now be allowed to directly link customers to their own sign-up website. The change was made to close an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission into a suspected violation of the Antimonopoly Act.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Introducing Plot Components: A new way to build HTML pages using Swift
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Plot is a domain-specific language for writing type-safe HTML, XML, and RSS in Swift. It focuses on static site generation and Swift-based web development. Plot's latest update added a new API for building HTML components in a very SwiftUI-like way. This article introduces the new API with examples of how to use it.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Text Editing Hates You Too
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Text input is difficult. Windows' text input APIs contain 128 interfaces, with several different types of locks to fix concurrency issues. Building your own text field implementations can be daunting and many unexpected issues may come up. For example, simply moving a caret vertically can become a challenge, as the positioning of the caret may change due to the system not correctly storing or identifying the correct position. Multiple lines, emojis, bidirectional text, and input methods also present their own headaches. Text editing is an example of where something that seems simple actually requires a lot of complex problem-solving. It is a miracle that we can use simple tags to create input text areas for applications nowadays.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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LinkedIn rolls out its freelance services marketplace globally after picking up 2M users in smaller US beta
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LinkedIn is opening up its Service Marketplace, a service that lets freelancers advertise to those looking to hire people for short-term engagements. Service Marketplace began as a test in February and has picked up 2 million users since. The service is now available globally, featuring 250 job categories, with a plan to expand to 500. Service Marketplace currently does not charge any fees, but there are plans to introduce fees down the line. The service is still in development and many features are yet to be implemented.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Apple wants your iPhone to replace your passport and driver's license
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Apple has filed a series of patent applications all entitled 'Proving Verified Claims of User Identity'. The patents detail methods to record, transmit, and confirm a user's identification. While the proposals don't mention iPhones at all, the systems could potentially be integrated into iPhones to make it so they can provide valid, verifiable identification. Many countries are starting to allow the use of mobile passports, and it is likely the trend to digitize ID will continue.
| 1Big Tech & Startups
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Bring speed and scale to your security environment (Sponsor)
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In Datadog's Cloud free SIEM product brief, learn how to detect and analyze security threats and deploy turnkey detection rules to protect your environment from outside attacks. Download the brief.
| 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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