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Helpful git commands for beginners | Working with git can be daunting at first, but it is a super powerful tool and essential to everyday work as a developer. This page provides a list of basic git terminal commands and explanations for what they do. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Building the Mathematical Library of the Future (13 minute read) | Lean is a proof assistant that helps mathematicians prove theorems by checking the working and automating some of the steps in a proof. Mathematicians are translating mathematics into a form that Lean can understand in order to digitize mathematics, eventually allowing computers to solve open problems. The people working on the project hope that it will be able to understand some questions in senior-level exams in a few years. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Disney+ surpasses 10 million sign-ups since launch | Disney+ has already received more than 10 million subscriptions since its launch on Tuesday. There were some technical issues at launch, but that did not deter customers. Disney stock went up by 7.35 percent by Wednesday's close. There is a seven-day free trial, so not all the sign-ups represent paying customers. Verizon is also offering customers a free year of Disney+. Disney has made a significant move against its rivals only a day after its US launch. It will slowly roll out to the rest of the globe, with Australia and New Zealand receiving the service starting on November 19. Disney+ is $6.99 per month, or $69.99 per year in the US, which is significantly cheaper than competitors such as Netflix. | 4Miscellaneous
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Revery (GitHub Repo) | Revery is a framework to build native, cross-platform desktop apps. It's meant to be a competitor to Electron for building desktop apps, but with better performance by not requiring an entire browser to be bundled into each app. It comes bundled with React-like/Redux-like libraries so the developer experience looks like it will be pretty great. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Jony Ive’s first major design since leaving Apple isn’t what you’d expect | LoveFrom, Jony Ive's design collective, has designed a seal for Terra Carta, an environmental initiative spearheaded by Prince Charles. The seal is different from Ive's designs at Apple, covered in birds, bees, butterflies, and vines. It features a custom typeface that Ive considers to be LoveFrom's first public release. The LoveFrom serif was developed over years and is based on Baskerville. Pictures of the Terra Carta seal are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Tesla’s next factory is going to be in Austin, Texas and it’s going to happen quickly | Tesla has chosen Austin, Texas as the location for its next factory. The vehicle manufacturer will start building its new Terafactory as soon as possible and aims to be producing vehicles by the end of the year. By late next year, the factory will be producing Tesla's new Cybertruck. Tesla already has an office in Austin for its Autopilot hardware engineers. This announcement is not directly related to Elon Musk's recent statements about the company moving its operations out of California. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Samsung’s Watch Active 4 leaks in new renders | Renders of Samsung's Galaxy Watch Active 4 have leaked online. It has an edge-to-edge display and two buttons on the right-hand side. The watch is expected to be officially announced during an event on June 28. This will be the first smartwatch from Samsung that uses the new Wear OS. Wear is based on Google Wear and it should mean better battery life and load times. It should also make the watch more accessible for developers. The renders are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Toyota announces new capabilities for domestic robots | The Toyota Research Institute has developed new capabilities for its line of domestic robots, including the ability to recognize and manipulate transparent objects and to wipe down counters and tables. Japanese robot manufacturers have made it clear that they plan to create robots that will serve as domestic helpers. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world. Robots will be able to perform tasks that people find more challenging as they get older. A video from Toyota showing off the new capabilities of its robots is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Stackprinter (GitHub Repo) | Stackprinter provides more talkative crash logs for Python. It is able to provide similar output to an interactive debugger but through a log file. While it is not a fully-grown error monitoring system, it is able to give an output that is more helpful than Python’s built-in crash messages. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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NASA head warns: Expect a major asteroid impact in your lifetime | At the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine opened his keynote with a warning about the likely scenario that we will have to deal with an asteroid impact within our lifetimes. In 2013, a 20 meter meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging thousands of buildings and sending more than 1,500 people to the hospital. There were three of these events in the 20th century, with one in 1908 causing damage to more than 2,000 square kilometers. NASA is currently attempting to track 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters and larger. It has enlisted the help of SpaceX to develop a rocket that will hopefully be able to steer asteroids off their course if they are aimed at Earth. NASA currently knows of no asteroid or comet that is on a collision course with Earth. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Hands on with Apple's first public beta of macOS 10.15 Catalina (52 minute read) | Apple has released its first public beta of Catalina. This update starts to merge iOS features with Mac OS, combining many of the functionalities of the mobile platform into the desktop environment. Apple has been developing custom hardware for its devices, and the end result of cross-platform compatibility is now being realized. iOS apps are now able to run on Mac OS through Catalyst. Catalina also introduces new augmented reality tools, machine learning abilities, a suite of apps to replace iTunes, and more. Most of the visual elements remain unchanged from Mojave. Older Macs that don’t support Metal (introduced in some models in 2012) will not be able to run Catalina. Users should keep in mind that Catalina is still in its testing phase, so there may still be issues with running the new operating system. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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5 Things I’ve Learned in 20 Years of Programming (13 minute read) | The demand for programmers has grown dramatically in the last few decades. A programmer with five years of experience has more industry tenure than half of the entire industry. Copying and pasting code is bad practice as it introduces bugs and potentially increases the work required in the future. Less code is better than more code, as each line of code can introduce potential problems. A developer should always try to verify knowledge on their own rather than always relying on senior developers. Test-driven development, while seemingly cumbersome and unnatural, can result in much cleaner and high-quality code. A programmer should always be collecting evidence in order to be able to make technical and business cases for courses of action, as this ensures a good career. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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SpaceX reveals the grand extent of its starport plans in South Texas | SpaceX's proposed plans for its spaceport have been made public as part of the federal review process. The US Army Corps of Engineers is seeking public comments on the changes. A detailed architectural drawing of the site is included in the documents. The facility is compact, with all of the buildings concentrated within a couple dozen acres. The plans provide more evidence that Elon Musk is all in on Texas for the future of SpaceX. A list of the major hardware that will be at the site is in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google will start surfacing individual podcast episodes in search results | Individual podcast results will start showing up in search results in Google, and the feature will soon be implemented into Google Assistant as well. Google has been automatically transcribing all the podcast episodes that it finds and has indexed over 2 million shows. It uses certain signals to determine which shows will be displayed first in search results, such as how many people listen to the show or whether the show comes from a publisher with a lot of authority. Podcasts have always lacked discovery tools, but this new functionality may change how people find new shows. Shows may also start changing their formats in order to become more visible to the search engine, similar to how websites compete with search engine optimization. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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State of Engineering (10 minute read) | The 2022 State of Engineering survey looks at what software engineers spend their time on and how happy engineers are with their jobs. It looks at what engineers want, what they are frustrated about, how many hours they spend working, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple wants your iPhone to replace your passport and driver's license | 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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A.I. could open new routes to psychiatric treatments by mapping psychedelic trips in the brain | Researchers used artificial intelligence to map people's subjective experiences while using psychedelics to specific regions of the brain. The study involved analyzing self-reported psychedelic drug experiences and linking the most commonly used words with receptors in the brain known to bind to each drug. It found new links and patterns that confirm existing research. The insights could lead to new ways to produce desired treatment effects for a range of psychiatric conditions. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Alphabet reportedly buying North after ‘minuscule’ Focals smart glasses sales | Alphabet is rumored to be acquiring North, a startup that sells smart glasses, after the company reported minuscule sales for its first-generation Focals devices. North released the smart glasses in 2019 and it is unlikely that more than 1,000 pairs were sold, even after the prices were cut from $999 down to $599. Buying the smart glasses required a fitting process that was only available at certain locations. North started looking for a buyer earlier this year, despite cutting monthly spending in half to $3 million and taking on additional investments and loans. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Silicon Drinkabout (Community) | Silicon Drinkabout is a global network of local startup communities. They host meetups in dozens of cities (mostly in Europe, South America, and Canada), so if you're into startups and you live in one of those places you should definitely check it out! | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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NextUI (Website) | NextUI is a React UI library that can help developers build beautiful websites regardless of their design experience. It features customizable themes, light and dark UIs, fast performance, and a fully-typed API. Interactive examples and comparisons with other languages are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook is training an AI assistant inside ‘Minecraft’ | Facebook has started training an AI inside Minecraft in an attempt to create a generalist AI. Many different AIs exist for games, but they struggle when they are taken out of their normal trained environment. It is hoped that training the AI in an environment where players can create almost anything with a small set of tools can result in an AI assistant that is capable of helping people with their day-to-day tasks. Facebook has previously experimented with M, an AI-powered personal assistant within its Messenger app, but the project failed as not enough people were using it for it to be trained properly. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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620 Free Online Programming & Computer Science Courses You Can Choose from to Kick Off 2020 (Website) | Close to 1,000 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses, known as Massive Open Online Courses. This website contains a list of over 620 free courses that can be started this month. Most courses are completely self-paced, and they are sorted by difficulty. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google, Facebook, and Twitter halt government data requests after new Hong Kong security law | A new security law that went into effect on July 1st gives China the power to limit political dissent against the Communist Party. Many terms of the new law are vague and there are concerns about the full implications of the law. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have paused the processing of data requests from the Hong Kong government while the companies review the new law. The new law has already caused several opposition parties in Hong Kong to disband. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Gitfolio (GitHub Repo) | Gitfolio makes it easy to create a portfolio website and a blog for GitHub users. Users can customize every aspect of the page to their requirements. A demonstration of the portfolio website and blog are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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DOJ announces broad antitrust review of Big Tech, pushing down shares of Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon | The US Department of Justice has launched a broad antitrust review of big tech companies, without revealing specific company names. As a result, shares for the largest companies, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Facebook dropped in value during extended trading. Big Tech is coming under more scrutiny as its market power grows and also due to the tremendous amount of consumer data that they control. The DOJ claims that digital platforms might be acting in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands, and the investigation will be looking into competition, stifled innovation, and the impact on customers. | 4Miscellaneous
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Hacker's guide to deep-learning side-channel attacks: the theory (25 minute read) | Side-channel attacks are one of the most effective ways to attack secure hardware as they target algorithm implementation rather than the algorithm itself. Implementing algorithms in a way that leaks no information is difficult and requires complex software and hardware countermeasures. This article, the first in a two-part series, goes through the core concepts and setup required to carry out a machine learning-based side-channel attack to recover the AES key used by a TinyAES implementation running on an ARM CPU. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Fiber (GitHub Repo) | Fiber implements a proof-of-concept Python decorator that rewrites a function so that it can be paused and resumed. It can be used to call functions that recurse arbitrarily deeply without stack overflowing. Fiber should not be used in production. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Vertex (Website) | This site features a collection of hand-crafted 3D icons that are free for commercial and personal use. The icons are fully customizable, with options for colors, rotation, and materials. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Evernote Design (Curated Directory) | This is a huge curated list of design tools put together by the Evernote Design team. There are categories like design inspiration, gradient tools, wireframing tools, free icons, typography and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Leaflet (GitHub Repo) | Leaflet is a JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. It works efficiently across all major desktop and mobile platforms and is accessible on older browsers. Leaflet has all the mapping features most developers ever need, and it can be extended with a huge amount of plugins. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Sony Launches Wearable Air Conditioner, Personal Heater for Roughly $130 | Sony has released a wearable, pocket-sized air conditioner. The Reon Pocket can cool the wearer's body by 13 degrees Celsius and raise body temperature by around 8 degrees Celsius. It is around the size of a card-holding wallet and is designed to be worn inside a special undershirt with a feature pocket at the base of the neck. Users control the device using an app. The device has a battery life of around 90 minutes, with a 2-hour charge time. It will sell for around $130 online on various Japanese sites. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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ZombieLoad PoC (GitHub Repo) | ZombieLoad is an attack that preys on a combination of four vulnerabilities that were discovered in Intel-based chips. It allows malicious users to read data used by processes or by a kernel, effectively allowing remote monitoring of a system. This repository contains the Proof of Concept code that demonstrates the attack is possible. There are instructions and troubleshooting information available for different systems. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Ring let employees watch customer videos, claim reports | The smart doorbell company Ring, bought by Amazon for $1 billion, let employees watch live feeds of both the inside and outside of their customer's homes. Because Ring's AI didn't work well, they had a team of humans in Ukraine watching customer videos to tag objects like cars and people so their AI could learn the difference. Ring says that their policies have changed since 2016 when this is said to have occurred. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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New prosthetic legs let amputees feel their foot and knee in real-time | Most research into giving robots and prosthesis wearers a sense of touch has been largely focused on the hands, but researchers have now started to look into restoring sensory feedback for leg amputees as well. Working with two patients with transfemoral amputations, the team modified a prosthetic leg and added seven sensors to the foot which transmit signals to a controller strapped to the user's ankle. These signals are encoded and delivered to an implant on the patient's tibial nerve at the back of the thigh. The brain can then interpret the signals as feedback from the knee and foot. Using the modified prosthetic resulted in users walking faster and consuming less oxygen, which indicated that it was less strenuous than traditional prosthesis. The tibial nerve implant was also effective in reducing phantom limb pain. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Scientists devise 'Trojan horse' approach to kill cancer cells without using drugs | A research team at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has killed cancer cells in mice using a new approach that turns a nanoparticle into a 'Trojan horse'. The researchers coated a silica nanoparticle with L-phenylalanine, an amino acid that cancer cells rely on. When cancer cells absorb the compound, they self-destruct. The technique was used in lab tests with mice to kill cancer cells effectively while remaining harmless to healthy cells. Further research will refine the design and chemistry of the nanoparticle to make it more precise in targeting specific cancer types and achieving higher therapeutic efficacy. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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YouTube no longer allows ‘instructional hacking and phishing’ videos | YouTube updated its list of ‘harmful or dangerous content’ banned from the platform, adding instructional hacking and phishing videos to the list. Other items on the list include ‘extremely dangerous challenges’, ‘violent events’, and ‘eating disorders’. A major channel that creates videos on computer security had its videos removed and was banned from uploading new content. However, the ban was quickly removed and the videos were restored after complaints from the community. An exception to the dangerous content rules exists for videos that are primarily educational, documentaries, scientific, or artistic. These rules are usually enforced by machine learning algorithms, and these algorithms have performed poorly at distinguishing between genuine content and targeted videos in the past. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Motion One (Website) | Motion One is an animation library built on the Web Animations API. It is small and responsive, using hardware-accelerated animations where possible. Motion One features keyframes, timelines, paths, and more. A quick start guide is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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First details leak on Project Iris, Google’s next AR headset | Google is developing a new augmented reality headset that it plans to ship sometime in 2024. Project Iris will be wireless and use external cameras to send an augmented image of the real world to the user. It will use cloud computing to handle graphics processing. The current prototypes resemble a pair of ski goggles. Around 300 employees are working on the project. As with all research and development projects at Google, Project Iris may not result in a mainstream product. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Physicists could do the 'impossible': Create and destroy magnetic fields from afar | Scientists were able to create and cancel magnetic fields from afar by running an electric current through a special arrangement of wires. With this technology, it is possible to create a magnetic field inside the body that magnetic nanoparticles can be attracted to. Doctors could use the technology to deliver targeted treatment to specific areas of the body. It can also be used to reduce the noise from external magnetic fields. The next step for the researchers is to build a configuration that allows for the creation of 3D magnetic fields from afar. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Spotify CEO to invest over $1 billion of his own wealth for 'moonshot' bets in Europe | Spotify CEO Daniel Ek will commit 1 billion euros of his own resources to invest in European start-ups. His focus will be on scientific innovation in health, education, machine learning, and biotechnology. Ek states that one of his motivations is his frustration with European tech companies being bought up by US rivals and having European talent leave for the US as a result. Europe is often seen as lagging behind in technology compared to the US and China. Many European tech companies are choosing the US market for their IPOs. | 4Miscellaneous
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How JPEG Compression Works | JPEG, created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992, is the most used digital image format in the world. It uses lossy compression, so information is lost in the process, while maintaining good image quality. This article breaks down how JPEGs work, explaining in detail the maths and algorithms behind the image format. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Veonim (GitHub Repo) | Veonim is a modal IDE built on Neovim and VSCode extensions. It features auto completion, fuzzy searching, hints, error management and debugging tools, references, and more. It is currently in heavy development. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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This Japanese hotel room costs $1 a night. The catch? You have to livestream your stay | A hotel in the Japanese city of Fukuoka allows guests to have the option of paying around $1 per night if they agree to have their entire stay live-streamed. The stream is video-only, so guests will have privacy in their conversations or phone calls. Guests can turn the lights off, and the bathroom area is out of camera range. There have been four guests who have taken up the offer so far, and the hotel's YouTube channel has now passed 1,000 subscribers. The channel will be monetized once it accumulates more than 4,000 view hours. When the room is vacant or not streaming, the owner will post a live stream of himself working in the office. Fukuoka is one of CNN Travel's must-visit destinations for 2019. The city is known for its incredible food. | 4Miscellaneous
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Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer? (Hacker News Thread) | Some tools can make coding much easier and help developers become more productive. Examples can include version control, flame graphs, regex, vim, and bash. This thread contains many lists of developer tools, as well as explanations for why these tools are effective productivity enhancers. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Amazon Web Services adds macOS on bare metal to EC2 | Amazon Web Services has partnered with Apple to bring macOS to the cloud. mac1.metal instances are Intel-based Mac mini systems, each with a Core i7-8700B 6c/12t CPU, 32GB RAM, and 10Gbps network interface. The instances rely on Elastic Block Storage rather than local storage. mac1.metal systems can be spun up and down almost as rapidly as virtual systems. Every instance is provisioned with an SSH keypair and the default image includes all of the normal desktop-oriented macOS components, such as VNC. Customers can build and deploy their own custom MacOS images using AMI. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Netflix bleeds subscribers in US and Canada, with no sign of recovery | Netflix lost 430,000 subscribers in the US and Canada in the second quarter. It predicted that it would add 3.5 million subscribers in the third quarter, a forecast that was weaker than expected. There are now more than 100 streaming services for consumers to choose from. Netflix is still the largest paid video streaming service, with more than twice the number of subscribers compared to Disney Plus, its closest competitor. It recently hired Mike Verdu, a veteran of the gaming industry, and plans to offer games to subscribers. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Exclusive: This is Google’s Android TV dongle, remote, and new UI | Google is preparing to launch an Android TV dongle in the summer. The device is currently code-named 'Sabrina'. It will come with a dedicated remote and will likely be sold under the 'Google Nest' branding. Google is planning to revamp the Android TV UI and may rebrand Android TV to Google TV. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced. Images of the device and a marketing video are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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System Design Interview Tutorial – The Beginner's Guide to System Design (12 minute read) | System Design is an important topic for software engineers, so it is a good idea to get a head start on learning about it. System design interviews are open-ended and the lack of structure can be intimidating. This article aims to provide a roadmap for navigating system design interviews. It covers what system design interviews are and why they are used, the main stages of a system design interview, and an example interview problem. An 18-minute video version of the article is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook’s TransCoder AI converts code from one programming language into another | Facebook researchers have developed a neural transcompiler that can convert code from one high-level programming language into another, unsupervised. Migrating a codebase takes expertise in both languages, a lot of time, and is often expensive. Transcoder can translate between C++, Java, and Python. It was trained on over 2.8 million open source repositories on GitHub. Many of the mistakes generated by the model were minor. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Spotify is testing interactive podcast ads so you never have to remember a promo code again | Spotify will be testing a new feature that allows podcasts to embed a link on their episode pages that leads directly to an advertiser's webpage. The system will load pages with promo codes automatically inserted to remove the work from users. Spotify is looking for more ways to create more of a direct funnel for brands. Streaming Ad Insertion was introduced in January for Spotify's exclusive shows. The technology targets users based on their demographics and other data points in real-time and then inserts ads into podcasts as they are being listened to. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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linux-malware (GitHub Repo) | This repository tracks interesting Linux and UNIX malware. It includes DFIR reports, information on supply chain attacks, press and academic releases, malware samples, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Why Nasa is exploring the deepest oceans on Earth (11 minute read) | Over 80% of the ocean is unexplored. Humans know more about the surface of Mars and the Moon than about the ocean floor. NASA is planning a mission to explore the deep ocean that will push the limits of science and technology in one of the most extreme environments on the planet. The oceans are surprisingly similar to conditions NASA expects to find on other worlds. Organisms are known to thrive in the oppressive environment at the bottom of the ocean. Studying the ocean floor could give scientists clues on what to look for when searching for life on other planets. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Behold, a password phishing site that can trick even savvy users | BitB, short for 'browser in the browser', is a type of phishing attack that is hard to detect even for tech-savvy users. It involves creating a fake browser window inside a real browser window to spoof an OAuth page using HTML and CSS tricks. The fake pop-up windows look genuine and show valid addresses complete with a padlock and HTTPS prefix. As they are images rendered by custom HTML and CSS, the fake pages can't be resized or dragged outside the primary window. A video that shows how the attack works is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Hiring Without Whiteboards (GitHub Repo) | Whiteboard interviews are where job interviewees are asked a series of CS trivia questions and judged on their competence on these on-the-spot answers. As many professionals in the IT industry understand, knowing how and where to find solutions and answers for their projects is a large part of their skillset. This GitHub repository has a large list of companies which hire potential employees through pairing on a real-world problem or through take-home exercises. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Xiaomi unveils a ridiculous see-through TV | Xiaomi's Mi TV Lux OLED Transparent Edition is a TV that looks like a piece of glass when it is turned off. The 55-inch TV will cost 49,999 yuan and will go on sale in China on August 16th. It is unlikely that the TV will be sold outside of Asia. Images of the device are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Scientists Successfully Turn Breast Cancer Cells Into Fat to Stop Them From Spreading | Researchers have used a combination of two drugs that are already FDA approved to turn breast cancer cells into fat cells. Cancer sometimes uses a process called epithelial to mesenchymal transition, and its opposite, mesenchymal to epithelial transition, to spread throughout the body. The process is normally used for the healing or growth of organs. Trametinib is a drug that increases the transition process of cells, and Rosiglitazone, in combination with Trametinib, helps stem cells convert into fat cells. The combination of the drugs convert human breast cancer cells permanently into fat cells in mice studies. As both drugs are already FDA approved, it should be easier to get the treatment into clinical trials for humans. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Amazon wants its live audio app to reinvent the radio show | Amazon's Project Mic is a Clubhouse clone that will let anyone record and distribute live radio shows with music. Its ultimate goal is to democratize and reinvent the radio. Clubhouse's success has resulted in many other companies trying to duplicate its features. Project Mic aims to separate itself from the rest by including native support for music through Amazon Music. Rather than competing with other social audio apps, it will be competing with traditional live radio. | 4Miscellaneous
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Better Dev Link (Newsletter) | Better Dev Link is a newsletter with weekly links to help you become a better developer. Topics are well curated, and appropriate for advanced developers. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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How The U.S. Hacked ISIS (20 minute read) | When ISIS burst onto the scene, it had done something no other terrorist organization had done so far: it had turned the internet into a weapon. The organization used encrypted apps, social media, and online media to spread its message, find recruits, and launch attacks. In response, the NSA and US Cyber Command created a secret task force that ended up becoming one of the largest and longest offensive cyber operations in US military history. This article details some of the operations that the task force participated in. | 4Miscellaneous
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How Node.js Works: A Look Behind The Scenes | Node.js provides a layer of abstraction that allows developers to write 100% pure JavaScript code and still access functions that are implemented in other libraries in the C++ language. This article explains how Node.js works, looking at its architecture and dependencies and how code is executed in the system. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Clipboard Health is Hiring Remote Engineers (Sponsor) | We’re a Series B startup in YC's Top Companies helping healthcare professionals find shifts at nearby facilities. CBH is a two-sided marketplace and we've grown 20x in the past 18 months. We need your help in serving more healthcare professionals, facilities, and patients. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The Beer Drinker’s Guide to SAML (20 minute read) | Security Assertion Markup Language is a protocol for authenticating web applications, allowing linked apps and organizations to communicate and trust one another's users. The key to SAML is browser redirects. Many single sign-on services rely on SAML to manage user logins. At first, a user is provided with an identity token, which can be used by several parties to verify their access. There are different methods of verifying an identity, and sometimes they might even need several forms of identity, but the concept is the same. Once a user obtains their identity token, they can use it to access various services, all which check for the validity of the identity token. SAML is similar to other authentication protocols like WS-Fed and OAuth, but its main use is for businesses to access services that they pay for. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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GitHub’s Engineering Team has moved to Codespaces | Codespaces are now the default development environment for GitHub.com. Over the last few months, the GitHub team has moved to Codespaces for a majority of development due to the improved development experience. Codespaces are cloud-based development environments that allow teams to code in standardized dev environments from any device. This article describes how the team migrated the GitHub repository to Codespaces. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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New SpaceX Starlink Maritime service brings internet to boats | Boat owners will now be able to access Starlink's internet service from the most remote waters across the world. | 4Miscellaneous
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DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (23 minute read) | DNA is like byte-compiled code for a virtual machine called 'the nucleus'. Each cell in a body carries a full set of DNA code, but only a small amount of genes are expressed. The processes that govern how DNA is read, written, and expressed are complex. This article explains how DNA works using code as an analogy. It discusses biological concepts such as RNA, mutations, and Homeobox genes and compares them with computing concepts like bootstrapping, bugs, and Makefiles. | 4Miscellaneous
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Iran says 12 dead from new virus, rejects higher death toll | The Iranian government says that only 12 people have died from coronavirus in Iran, despite reports of a much higher death toll. Five neighboring countries have reported their first cases of the virus, with all cases linked to travel from Iran. The total official number of infections is 61. Iran’s death toll is significantly higher than in other countries where the virus has become widespread. The World Health Organization says that globally, the virus has only been fatal in 2% of cases. Trust in the Iranian government has been low since a Ukrainian passenger jet was shot down by Iran in early January. The virus has now infected more than 79,000 people globally and caused more than 2,600 deaths. | 4Miscellaneous
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Examining AMC’s ‘embarrassingly stupid’ investment in a literal gold mine | AMC announced this week that it is acquiring a 22% stake in a gold and silver mining company. The Hycroft mine reportedly contains around 15 million ounces of gold deposits and some 600 million ounces of silver deposits. Hycroft has been facing liquidity issues, resulting in reduced share prices. Analysts have criticized the move, as investing in an unrelated business that will not increase traffic to its main business when the company has outstanding debt could be seen as a misuse of shareholder capital. | 4Miscellaneous
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Skyhooks Might Just Make Rockets a Thing of the Past (13 minute read) | Skyhooks could make space exploration and travel a more routine affair for our species. A skyhook could sit in orbit and fling spacecraft into space using rotational momentum. Getting rockets into space takes up a lot of fuel. Most of a rocket's mass is due to the storage of this fuel. Using skyhooks would enable spaceships to travel further with less fuel while carrying more useful materials. It is unlikely that a skyhook will be made any time soon, but the benefits are great enough that companies will likely invest in such a system in the future. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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ipfs-deploy (GitHub Repo) | ipfs-deploy is designed to make it as easy as possible to deploy a static website to IPFS. It can be run without installation with npx. Users can deploy quickly to a service that doesn’t require signup using the default settings, or users can specify which services they wish to deploy to. At the moment, ipfs-deploy can be used with Infura.io, Pinata.cloud, and Cloudflare DNS. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook's smart glasses could give you hearing superpowers | Facebook Reality Labs has developed technology that allows headsets to enhance targeted sounds while dimming loud background noises. At the moment, the technology exists as an in-ear monitor that pairs with an eye-movement tracking device. The eye-movement tracking device identifies what the user is looking at and amplifies the volume for whatever the person is focusing on. This could be combined with other technologies Facebook has developed to create virtual maps of both physical objects and sounds surrounding the user. The technology can be used to immerse people in virtual environments, creating sounds that feel like they are produced in real space. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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India plans to adopt China-style facial recognition in policing, despite having no data privacy laws | India will open bids next month to build a system to centralize facial recognition data captured through surveillance cameras across India. This system will link up databases that contain information such as passport details and fingerprints in order to help India's police force identify criminals, missing people, and dead bodies. India's police force is currently the world's most understaffed, with one officer for every 724 citizens. There are no data privacy laws in India. The government has been attempting to implement a biometric database for the country which links bank accounts and income tax filings, but there have been many reports of data leaks as well as the growth of a black market for personal information. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Physicists have created “everlasting bubbles” | In 2017, French physicists created spherical shells made up of plastic microspheres that could store pressurized gas in a tiny volume. These gas marbles could roll around on a solid surface without breaking apart. A recent study tested the longevity of the gas marbles and found that bubbles made from them could last between six and 60 minutes. Adding glycerol to the solution created gas marbles that could last from five weeks to 465 days. A lot of information about bubble science is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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PyBridge-iOS (GitHub Repo) | PyBridge-iOS allows Python code to run in native iOS applications. It can send String or JSON messages to the Python interpreter without the need for any web frameworks. Developers just need to open the PyBridge-iOS project in Xcode to run. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Loaders (Website) | This site contains a collection of free loaders and spinners. The components are built with HTML, CSS, and SVG. The code for the components can be easily copied from the site. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to take on hyperloop project | Elon Musk's The Boring Company will attempt to build a high-speed hyperloop in the coming years. Musk outlined the idea of the transport system in 2013. The hyperloop involves sending passengers and cargo in pods through low-pressure tubes at speeds above 700 miles per hour. Several companies have been working on the idea for almost a decade, but there are no working examples of the system anywhere in the world. The Boring Company recently raised $675 million in a Series C funding round. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is here, and it has a good keyboard | Apple's new 16-inch MacBook Pro has launched at a starting price of $2,399. It has new processors, better speakers, and a larger screen. Apple has gone back to scissor switches for its keyboards. The new MacBook Pro is excluded from Apple's extended keyboard repair program. Apple has redesigned the thermal system in the new laptops. Users can spec their machines up to 64GB of RAM and 8TB of SSD storage. The battery is supposed to be able to handle 11 hours of wireless web. A new 6-speaker sound system uses two force canceling woofers to allow for more bass with less distortion. It uses a three-microphone array that is supposed to have sound on par with USB-powered podcasting mics. Despite the larger screen, the laptop size is almost identical to the 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro. It has only four Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Silk Road bitcoins worth $1bn change hands after seven years | Almost 70,000 bitcoins, worth around a billion dollars, were moved for the first time in seven years late on Tuesday night for less than a $12 fee. The funds can be traced back to the Silk Road marketplace using blockchain analysis. The marketplace was shut down in 2013 and the funds had lain dormant since. Its founder is serving a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole. It is unclear who moved the money, but it is unlikely the transaction was conducted from prison. | 4Miscellaneous
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TabFS (Website) | TabFS is a browser extension that mounts browser tabs as a filesystem on macOS and Linux systems. It has full support for Chrome, with lesser support for Firefox. TabFS allows you to apply all the existing tools on your computer that deal with files and use them to control and communicate with your browser. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Ultrashort laser pulses shred superbugs without harming human cells | Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have shown that ultrashort pulses of laser light can kill bacteria and viruses without harming human cells. While antibiotics have been one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, bacteria develop resistances to them, so it is important to find other methods for killing bacteria that they can't evolve resistance to. The lasers work by exciting protein structures inside viruses and bacteria, causing some of the molecular bonds to break and kill the microbe. The technology can be used to disinfect biological products in vitro, and it could be used in the future to treat bloodstream infections by putting patients on dialysis and passing the blood through a laser treatment device. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Premium eBook free for Geeks (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains ebooks for most technology stacks. There are books about Android development, JavaScript, CSS, C#, Java, Python, a range of platforms and operating systems, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience. Can Anyone Put the Genie Back in the Bottle? (15 minute read) | By finding the shortest paths for drivers to take, Waze has unleashed chaos onto the roads, turning regular streets into something that resembles a freeway, often making it very difficult for people to leave their driveways. Waze would save everyday users a few minutes here and there, but it has come at a price. Local residents are distraught by the amount of traffic that is being sent to what were once quiet streets. People have been proposing legal action against Waze and Google. Waze has interfered with the city’s traffic plans, residential neighborhoods, and public safety. Council members have commented that Waze's responses so far have been inadequate and their solutions nonexistent. If nothing is done, Waze could lead everyone on a race to the bottom, where traffic plans are ignored, and every street is gridlocked. | 4Miscellaneous
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BlurHash (GitHub Repo) | BlurHash is able to create placeholders for images so a website can still retain its look and feel as it loads. It takes an image and returns a short string that represents the placeholder for the image. When the page is loaded, the string is loaded first while the real image loads in the background. There are implementations for C, TypeScript, Python, Java, and many more languages. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Japan Is Working on a COVID-19 Vaccine That Offers Lifelong Immunity | Researchers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science are working on a COVID-19 vaccine that delivers lifelong immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The vaccine is a modified version of a smallpox vaccine with some of its protein components replaced with those from the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein. It promises to deliver potent neutralizing antibodies with a single dose, inducing strong cellular immunity for long-term protection. Tests on mice and monkeys have shown promising results. The earliest the vaccine will be available will be in 2024. | 4Miscellaneous
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MIT’s color-changing ink could let you customize your shoes | A new type of ink developed by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is able to change the color or pattern of an object when exposed to UV light. PhotoChromeleon Ink is a mix of cyan, magenta, and yellow photochromatic dyes which can be applied to any object. UV light is used to activate or deactivate different colors, and the effects last in natural light. The whole process takes about 15 to 40 minutes for an object the size of a shoe or a model car. Ford has expressed interest in the ink, hoping that it may cut down the cost and time required to create automotive parts. It may be possible in the future to customize the look of a vehicle on a whim. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google Stream is what Stadia should have been from the start | Google Stream is a backend cloud gaming technology that Google is pitching to businesses. Instead of putting effort into getting more games on Stadia, Google is getting companies to use Google Stream to release rebranded products. The service could eventually also be used for other applications like 3D modeling. Stadia's biggest problems were its limited game library and Google's lack of commitment to the platform. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Steam’s new indie festival lets you try 40 upcoming games for free | The Games Developer Conference will be canceled this year, so Steam has launched a spring edition of its Steam Game Festival starting today to spotlight small creators. The festival now features 40 indie games that can be previewed with free-to-play demos via Steam. It will run from March 18 to March 23. | 4Miscellaneous
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Coronavirus: Britons saying final goodbyes to dying relatives by videolink | Patients are unable to see relatives as they die from the coronavirus as doing so could further spread the disease. Family members are turning to videolinks as a way to say their final goodbyes. Coronavirus patients in intensive care cannot be visited by families as the risk of infection is too great. Mobile phones and chargers are high-priority for COVID-19 patients in order to keep them from being isolated from loved ones. Health workers in the UK have suggested that drafting in volunteers to provide care for relatives may lessen the load of the predicted peak in the coming weeks. | 4Miscellaneous
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Tesla Cybertruck with updated interior and windshield wiper goes on new outing | A new Tesla Cybertruck prototype has made an appearance at an official event to launch the Tesla Megapack project at Moss Landing, California. The Moss Landing site hosts several major energy storage projects. It was activated a few months ago, but the commissioning ceremony was officially held on Monday. The Cybertruck prototype had a much smaller windshield wiper than the previous prototype. Production for the Cybertruck is now planned to start in 2023. Pictures and a video of the prototype are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Getting started with Python (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains an introductory course on Python. There are 18 videos that cover the fundamentals of the programming language. Students will need to have an understanding of Git and light experience with another programming language, such as JavaScript. There are links to follow-up courses on more advanced Python topics available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The companies that help people vanish | In Japan, 'jouhatsu' are people who disappear and continue to conceal their whereabouts for years. There are companies called 'night moving' services that help people who want to disappear discreetly. In Japan, privacy is fiercely protected, making it easier to disappear. Police will only intervene if there is a crime or an accident. The only option for people to find out what happened to their missing loved ones is by hiring a private detective. | 4Miscellaneous
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Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the Earth | Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut currently residing inside the International Space Station, recently snapped a view of the Earth that shows the lights of the Earth battling it out with the light from distant stars. The image shows the orange emission of sodium atoms approximately 90 kilometers above Earth's surface, as well as a faint green band created by oxygen atoms being excited. The image and a link to Pesquet's Flickr account are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Facebook Dating launches in the United States today | Facebook Dating has launched in the US, a year after it started testing in other countries. Users 18 and over will start seeing a new tab within the Facebook mobile app where they can create a separate profile and meet people who share similar interests according to their main Facebook profiles. The app will make sure users don't match with friends unless they choose to use the 'secret crush' feature, which matches users if they both select each other. Facebook Dating is free and there are no ads or in-app purchases. There is Instagram integration and a feature where users can alert others to the location of their dates for safety. It will be launched in Europe later in the year and is currently available in 20 countries. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Upcoming SpaceX launch to be first supported by U.S. Space Force | The new US Space Force was created as the sixth branch of the military in December. SpaceX is planning to launch its third round of Starlink internet satellites early this week. The launch will be the first official launch supported by the US Space Force. It will be supporting the launch by providing tracking, security, safety, and other logistics. The Air Force was responsible for conducting a majority of the military's space-based programs, and the Space Force will expand the role as part of the Air Force. Its main command is currently at the Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Samsung Patents Phone Display That Projects Star Wars-Like Holograms | Samsung has patented a new holographic device that will project high quality 3D images into the air R2D2 style without you having to look at it from a specific angle. The light beams are reflected by a series of micro-lens arrays that supposedly cause the light to focus into a 3D image in mid-air. File this one in the I'll believe it when I see it category. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How Reddit’s New Ethereum Feature Could Be Huge for Crypto Adoption | Reddit is working with one of its communities to test a feature based on Ethereum ERC-20 tokens called Community Points. These Community Points are fully owned by users and Reddit has no control over them. The details of the project are still secret. It is possible that this move could significantly increase Ethereum's active user base. However, Ethereum may have issues with long-term scalability, and an order of magnitude spike in Ethereum transactions could bring the blockchain to a standstill. Science & | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Dragonfly (GitHub Repo) | Dragonfly is a modern, scalable in-memory data store. It is fully compatible with Redis and Memcached. Dragonfly scales vertically to handle millions of QPS and hundreds of GBs of memory on a single instance. Benchmark results are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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A look aboard Disney’s $6,000 per stay, immersive Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel (14 minute read) | Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel is an interactive hotel experience that immerses guests in a fictional world where they can participate in stories from the Star Wars universe. The hotel offers packages starting from $4,809 for a two-day trip. This article provides a first-hand experience of the hotel from a curated media preview. It includes many photos from the event showing the different parts of the hotel. | 4Miscellaneous
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Learn Go with Tests (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains a course to teach developers how to explore the Go language through writing tests, as well as get a grounding with TDD. The course teaches the fundamentals of the Go language and application building backed by tests. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook brings cloud gaming to Apple devices with a web app | Facebook is bringing its cloud gaming service to iOS through a web app. The service allows players to stream graphically intensive games from the cloud. It uses a custom payment system to accept in-game purchases. Facebook is not allowed to use its main app to direct users to a website that uses its own payments technology. Amazon and Microsoft are also using web apps to get around App Store rules. Facebook's cloud gaming service is available in the US and parts of Canada and Mexico. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google-backed Glance to launch in US within two months | Glance is planning to launch its lock screen platform in the US within two months. It is currently engaging with wireless carriers for partnerships. Glance's platform serves media content, news, and games on Android lock screens. It is installed on about 400 million smartphones in Asian markets. Glance is building a premium offering for the US. It plans to expand globally in the coming years. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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