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NASA Jupiter probe images huge moon Ganymede like never before | This article contains pictures and a one-minute video showing views of Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. The images were captured during a close flyby of the moon by NASA's Juno Jupiter probe in late December last year. They show how the ice and area near Ganymede's north pole have been affected by the precipitation of plasma caused by particles from the sun and a lack of atmosphere. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google Fiber to pay nearly $4 million to Louisville in exit deal | Google Fiber has left Louisville, and as part of its agreement with the city, it will cover the costs of removing the fiber from the road and returning the streets to the same or better condition as it was before it started digging trenches in 2017. Louisville had been lobbying to get Google Fiber for years but unfortunately, Google ran into too many problems when installing fiber in the city. It is estimated that Google Fiber reached around 11,000 homes in Louisville. $3.84 million will be paid to the Metro government over 20 months, and Google has also agreed to donate $150,000 to the Community Foundation of Louisville. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Exclusive: This is our first look at Android 13 “Tiramisu” and some of its upcoming features | A source with access to a very early Android 13 build has shared screenshots showing several upcoming features and changes. Users will be able to set languages on a per-app basis and notifications could become an opt-in feature rather than turned on by default. A new setting has been added to settings for users to toggle the layout of the clock on the lock screen. Android 13 will lay the foundations of a feature called TARE (The Android Resource Economy) that focuses on energy-use management. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Thousands of Google’s cafeteria workers have unionized | Around 2,300 Google cafeteria workers have unionized, claiming that they are overworked and underpaid. The unionization is some of the most significant union activity that tech industry workers have accomplished. Cafeteria workers earn wages that start around $35,000 and don't receive the same benefits that are standard for full-time Google employees. On-site food workers are contracted to work via a third party, Compass Group. A local chapter of Unite Here is helping the workers organize their union. Service workers in the tech industry have seen stagnating wages that haven't kept up with the high cost of living. Some employees live in an RV camp that has formed outside Google's headquarters. Google announced in June that it would invest $1 billion in land and building homes. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Oculus founder's Ghost 4 military drones use AI for surveillance and attack | Palmer Luckey, the inventor of the Oculus Rift, has unveiled his latest technology, the Ghost 4 military drone. The two-meter aircraft can be carried in a backpack and has a 100-minute flight time. It can fly autonomously, with artificial intelligence algorithms on board that have been fine-tuned to identify and track people, missiles, and battlefield equipment. Ghost 4 drones can connect to other Ghost 4 drones to form a data-sharing swarm. While many in the tech industry are against using AI technology for military applications, Luckey says that if the US doesn't modernize its military, it will fall behind other countries that do. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to fight climate change | Jeff Bezos today announced the Bezos Earth Fund, a project that will help scientists, activists, NGOs, and any real effort to help preserve the earth from the impact of climate change. Bezos has committed $10 billion towards the fund. The Bezos Earth Fund will begin issuing grants in the summer. Worth about $130 billion, Bezos hasn't always been as vocal as others about his philanthropy, although he has polled Twitter for philanthropy ideas in the past. In 2018, Bezos announced that a network of free nonprofit schools would be built in low-income communities. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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The highest paid workers in Silicon Valley are not software engineers | According to online hiring platform Hired, who analyzed 30000+ interview requests across 1800+ Silicon Valley firms, product managers on average make $133,000, while software engineers make $123,000 and designers make $115,000. The gap between product managers and engineers has only widened over the past couple of years, and exists even after controlling for experience (product managers are paid more to start and more after 6 years of experience). Data scientists were briefly paid more than product managers in 2015, but supply began increasing faster than demand, so now product managers are back on top. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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A new energy storage system can store solar power for nearly two decades | Swedish researchers have designed an energy system that stores solar energy in liquid form for up to 18 years. The Molecular Solar Thermal system uses specially-developed molecules which turn into energy-rich isomers that can be stored in liquid form when in the sunlight. The current proof of concept device has a small output, but the system has the potential to be used to power small devices with more research. The researchers are now working on a version of the system that could be potentially used in homes. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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My Custom CSS Reset (10 minute read) | A CSS Reset is a stylesheet designed to reduce browser inconsistencies. This article discusses a CSS reset that can be used for any project, no matter the aesthetic. It contains many tips for improving user experience and the CSS authoring experience. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Tim Cook to serve as chairman at Chinese business school amid Hong Kong outcry | Tim Cook has been appointed the chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University's economics school in Beijing. Cook will assume the role for three years. Past board members include Mark Zuckerberg, major Chinese government officials, and Jim Breyer. Apple has recently faced criticism for removing an app that was used by pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. Cook had defended the decision by arguing that the app had become a dangerous tool for tracking police, which the app developers disagreed with. A bipartisan group of United States lawmakers including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz wrote to Apple urging them to reverse course and demonstrate that Apple puts values above market access. | 4Miscellaneous
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URL Pages (GitHub Repo) | URL pages works by storing the entire contents of a webpage in the URL. This means that the page will exist as long as the URL is valid. The main page takes the encoded data from the URL and decodes it to be displayed for the user. The editor encodes the page into a URL format which can be shared. It is suggested that users use a link shortening service as links can get quite long. A bookmarklet is available that encodes existing pages into the URL pages format. URL pages is a proof of concept project, and not all pages will display correctly when converted. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Turborepo (Website) | Turborepo is a high-performance build system for JavaScript and TypeScript codebases. It features incremental builds, content-aware hashing, remote caching, parallel execution, task pipelines, and more. Turborepo allows developers to scale their monorepos without having to tweak configs, write scripts, or deal with other plumbing issues. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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How Apple learned automation can't match human skill | Apple's previous attempts at automating its production lines have always ended up with the company reverting to using skilled human beings instead. The company has spent years and millions of dollars on automating its production lines. Apple's attempts to automate its processes failed as it was difficult to fix problems when they arose. The machines were not as attentive to detail as humans or able to diagnose problems to the level required by Apple. Yearly product redesigns also meant that automated factory lines would have to be updated often. As a result of these issues, Apple continues to use human labor. Other companies, such as Tesla and Boeing, have also attempted and abandoned automation for similar reasons. | 4Miscellaneous
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Eco-Friendly 3D-Printed Reefs to Rescue Hong Kong's Corals | Marine scientists from the University of Hong Kong have created 3D-printed artificial reef tiles designed to provide a structurally complex foundation for coral attachment and prevent sedimentation. 128 reef tiles were printed and installed at three select sites within Hong Kong's Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park. Bioerosion, coral bleaching, and mass mortality events have put the ecosystem of the area at risk. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Never-before-seen "black nitrogen" plugs puzzle in periodic table | A new crystalline form of nitrogen called 'black nitrogen' has been created by researchers at the University of Bayreuth. Its name is a reference to a similar material called 'black phosphorus'. Nitrogen's position on the periodic table has long suggested that an allotrope other than dinitrogen was possible. The new form was created by heating nitrogen under extreme pressure to over 4,000 degrees Celsius. It appears to have good conductivity, similar to graphene. The material is still unstable and quickly dissolves when the heat and pressure are relaxed. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Twitch source code and creator payouts reportedly part of massive leak | An anonymous poster released a 125GB torrent on 4chan containing the entirety of Twitch's platform and client source code commit history, details regarding creator payouts, an unreleased Steam competitor from Amazon Game Studios, and other code and software related to the platform. User password and address information was not included in the leak. The leak was labeled as 'part one', indicating that there is more to come. Twitch has confirmed that it suffered a data breach. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Amazon Workers to Stage Coordinated Black Friday Protests in 15 Countries | A series of coordinated protests and strikes will be held on Friday by Amazon warehouse workers and social and environmental justice activists around the world. #MakeAmazonPay coincides with Black Friday, one of Amazon's biggest sales events of the year. Amazon has profited greatly during the pandemic, with the company becoming a trillion-dollar corporation and Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in history to amass $200 billion in personal wealth. The workers are demanding that Amazon respect workers' rights to participate in union activities, that the company pay its taxes in full where it does business, and for the company to commit to higher environmental standards. | 4Miscellaneous
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State of Javascript 2018 (Survey) | This is the annual State of Javascript survey, complete with salaries and demographics of Javascript developers, popularity of Javascript frameworks and libraries, and awards! | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Lyft launches a car rental service with no mileage limit | Lyft is launching a car rental service that will be available in its main smartphone app. Customers who use the service will receive a $20 ride credit to help them get to and from the rental vehicle. Renters must be over 22 and have a valid driver's license. There will be no mileage limit and users will be charged a local market rate for gas. Vehicles can be rented for up to two weeks. Prices start from $35 a day for a Volkswagen Passat sedan. All cars will feature Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Lyft will also be selling coverage options for the rentals. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Moloch (GitHub Repo) | Moloch is a large scale, open source, indexed packet capture and search system. It is built to be deployed across many systems and can handle tens of gigabits/sec of traffic. Moloch provides a simple web interface with multiple views of the data that it captures. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Lucasfilm hires the YouTube deepfaker who put its Luke, Leia and Tarkin cameos to shame | YouTuber Shamook gained millions of views when he released deepfake videos that 'fixed' several CGI cameos from Star Wars and other big-budget movies. Instead of removing the videos, Lucasfilm decided to hire Shamook as a Senior Facial Capture Artist. Examples of Shamook's work are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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A controversial startup that charges $8,000 to fill your veins with young blood is opening its first clinic | A startup called Ambrosia Medical that charges $8,000 to fill your veins with the blood of young people plans to launch its first clinic in New York City at the end of this year. In 2017, Ambrosia enrolled people in the first US clinical trial designed to find out what happens when the veins of adults are filled with blood from the young. While the results of that study have not yet been made public, Ambrosia CEO Jesse Karmazin told Business Insider the results were "really positive." Because blood transfusions are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Ambrosia's approach has the green-light to continue as an off-label treatment. So far, the company has already infused close to 150 patients ranging in age from 35 to 92 with the blood of young donors, aged 16 to 25. People in the trial paid $8,000 to participate. Other researchers say that there's no clinical evidence that this actually works. Theranos 2.0 anyone? | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Facebook’s AI convincingly inserts people into photos | Facebook AI Research and Tel Aviv University published a paper last week proposing a novel technique for inserting people into photos. The technique could have useful applications in the creative industries. It uses AI to figure out a coherent way to insert a picture of a new person into an image. When human volunteers were asked to tell whether an image had been manipulated by the AI, they were able to identify the modified images just 28% of the time when the images contained five people. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Tesla Full Self-Driving’s cool augmented reality view previewed by noted hacker | A noted Tesla hacker-owner has revealed that an augmented reality view exists within Tesla's Full Self-Driving beta. AR view enables Tesla owners to see what their car sees in real-time. There are references to other interesting features in the FSD beta, but Tesla hasn't revealed exactly what these features do. If the FSD beta goes well, it will likely roll out to more users before the end of the year. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Apple to release three ‘iPhone 11’ models this fall, including A13 chip, new Taptic Engine, more | Apple will release three new iPhone 11 models this fall, all featuring the Apple A13 chip. The smartphones will have a Lightning port despite the iPad Pro moving to USB-C last year. All three models will have the same screen resolution as last year's models, but the replacements for the XS and XS Max will have a new 3x OLED Retina display. A new type of Taptic Engine will be introduced, but it is unknown what new features the engine will enable. The devices will have three cameras on the back contained within a square, including a camera capable of wide-angle images. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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This Bird Went Extinct and Then Evolved Into Existence Again | The Aldabra white-throated rail is a flightless bird that lives on the Aldabra atoll in the Indian Ocean. It went extinct 136,000 years ago. A recent study has found that the bird has re-evolved itself into existence. Iterative evolution is when the same ancestral lineage produces parallel offshoot species at different points in time. The birds went extinct due to rising sea levels, but the same parent species recolonized the area once it reemerged from the sea. This is the clearest example of iterative evolution in birds. | 4Miscellaneous
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ClusterFuzz (GitHub Repo) | ClusterFuzz is a scalable fuzzing infrastructure which finds security and stability issues in software. Fuzzing involves providing random inputs into software in order to test for bugs. ClusterFuzz is highly scalable (Google runs 25,000 instances to test products like Chrome Browser) and is able to automatically file bug reports. Users are able to customize fuzzing conditions to suit their needs and monitor and manage statistics through a web interface. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Sony offers a first look at the orb-like PSVR2 headset | Sony has revealed the first photos of its upcoming PS5-compatible virtual reality headset. The PSVR2 will have similar ergonomics and balancing as the first version. It will feature a lens adjustment dial, a more rounded shape, a slimmer and lighter design, a force-feedback motor, a new cooling system, and an updated white casing for the controllers. The headset will have OLED panels with 2,000x2,040 pixel resolution per eye and a 110-degree field of view, eye-tracking, and an inside-out head-tracking system. Pictures of the headset are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Spotify confirms it paid $56 million for Parcast, taking its total podcast acquisition value to $400 million | Spotify has confirmed the $56 million cost to acquire Parcast, a story-based podcasting studio that it purchased last month. This is the third podcasting studio that Spotify has purchased in less than two months. Spotify purchased Gimlet and Anchor earlier this year for a confirmed amount of $344 million. In the Q4 shareholder letter, Spotify had notified investors that it had budgeted $500 million for similar purchases in 2019, so there may still be more acquisitions on the way. Podcasting is a major focus for Spotify and they are developing solutions to maximize ad revenue from the platform. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tweet complaining about DMCA takedown abuse gets hit with DMCA takedown | A tweet promoting a TorrentFreak article regarding leaked episodes from unreleased shows was hit with a DMCA takedown, a move which the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) complained about. The EFF tweet complaining about the takedown was also served with a DMCA takedown request. In the original article, TorrentFreak used screenshots from the leaked shows to prove that they were screener copies of the shows. The EFF claimed that this was fair use and not copyright infringement, as TorrentFreak was only reporting on the infringement. Twitter receives around 10,000 DMCA requests per month, and this is an example of how the takedown system can be abused. | 4Miscellaneous
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Japanese construction giant to build massive dam almost entirely with robots | The Obayashi Corporation is building a giant dam in the south-east corner of Japan's main island. Almost every stage of the construction involves some sort of automation technology. The robots, while automated, are directly overseen by human workers for safety reasons. Productivity on the site has increased by about 10 percent, with the company aiming to eventually cut building time by 30 percent. | 4Miscellaneous
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Jumpstart Jamstack monitoring with New Relic and Netlify (Sponsor) | Jumpstart Jamstack monitoring with New Relic and Netlify . Add observability to your Jamstack application and build process, without the manual setup, with the New Relic Netlify plugin and quickstart. | 0Sponsor
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South Korean 20-Mile Solar 'Bike Highway' Generates Electricity | South Korea has a bike highway running between two cities that stretches for 20 miles, shields cyclists from the sun, and generates power. Cyclists use subterranean tunnels to enter and exit the path and they are protected from traffic on each side by barriers. The solar panels on the bike highway produce more than enough electricity to power the lighting of the highway and the electric vehicle charging stations. A 3-minute video that shows the bike highway from the air is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Thousands of people have taken a Facebook pledge to storm Area 51 to 'see them aliens' | Over 300,000 people have signed up to a Facebook event pledging to raid Area 51. Attendees will run in a style adopted from a Japanese manga into the secure area on September 20. Area 51 has been shrouded in mystery for decades, with the government finally officially acknowledging it as a military site in 2013. Many people believe it is where the US government stores its secrets about aliens and UFOs. A few weeks ago, a group of US senators was briefed about reported encounters between the US Navy and an unidentified flying object. | 4Miscellaneous
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‘My God, I’m in a whale’s mouth’: lobster diver on brush with hungry humpback | Michael Packard, a New England lobster diver, recently survived being trapped in the mouth of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod. He was able to keep breathing through his scuba tank. After half a minute, the whale surfaced and vomited him out. Packard was taken to hospital and discharged later that day. A humpback's esophagus won't accept anything larger than a melon, so the whale likely panicked. The area that Packard was diving in is known for gatherings of juvenile humpback whales. | 4Miscellaneous
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DigitalOcean Managed Databases (Beta) | I'm sure a lot of you use DigitalOcean (I'm personally a big fan), it's a pretty cheap VPS provider that's now starting to build out more managed services (they have stuff like load balancers and block storage now). They've just begun an open beta for a managed Postgres service, with MySQL support coming soon. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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MuseNet | MuseNet is an AI that can generate musical compositions. The AI can generate four minute musical compositions made up of 10 different instruments. It can also combine different styles of music ranging from country to Mozart to the Beatles. There are many examples of compositions the MuseNet has produced available, and people are invited to try MuseNet now through to May 12. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google’s Little Signals concepts show what ‘ambient’ notifications could look like | Google's Little Signals project is a study in ambient computing. It consists of six devices that can display notifications in novel ways, for example, by blowing air or tapping on an object. All the plans and files for building the devices are available for free. A video overview of the Little Signals project is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Sweden: How to Live in the World's First Cashless Society | Sweden plans to be the world’s first completely cashless society by 2023. Already, many places in Sweden do not accept cash as a form of payment, including Stockholm’s public transport system. Swedish banks issue debit cards to customers ages 7 and over, and it is likely some of the current younger citizens will never see cash used in real life. Cash is currently used in under 1% of transactions in Sweden. Moving to a cashless society means that money is more secure and traceable. Sweden has seen a drop in bank robberies and also a decrease in its drug, counterfeiting, and weapons markets. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Why Instagram's founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened | When Facebook acquired Instagram, there was an understanding that Instagram would remain relatively autonomous. However, in May, Instagram's VP of Product Kevin Weil was replaced by former VP of Facebook News Feed Adam Mosseri, a member of Zuckerberg's inner circle. Adam and Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom did not get along according to sources. Systrom and Zuckerberg also had disagreements particularly about sharing on Instagram and Facebook, as Zuckerberg wanted more Instagram content to flow to Facebook. Recently, the shortcut to Instagram in the Facebook menu was removed, and Facebook alerts began appearing in the Instagram notifications tab. With Instagram's autonomy lessening and several long-time executives leaving, the time was right for Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger to make their departure. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sues NASA, escalating its fight for a Moon lander contract | Blue Origin is suing NASA, accusing the agency of wrongly evaluating its lunar lander proposal. The case could delay NASA's plans to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024. Blue Origin claims that NASA had negotiated with SpaceX before awarding them with the contract, without giving the same opportunities to other applicants. NASA had originally said that it would pick two companies for its lunar landing systems, but it ended up only choosing SpaceX because Congress had only funded roughly a quarter of what NASA had requested for the program. Blue Origin's protests have already delayed SpaceX from starting its contract for several months. | 4Miscellaneous
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Spotify will now let artists directly upload their music to the platform | Spotify has launched an invite-only beta program allowing indie artists to upload their music directly to the platform. Spotify will give 50% of Spotify's net revenue for songs uploaded this way to artists, in line with their existing deals (they give Universal Music 52-55% of revenue). Spotify has already been testing the feature for the past few months with artists like VIAA and Michael Brun. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Ask HN: How to find work while homeless? (Hacker News Thread) | Finding a job while homeless in Europe can be a tough ordeal as it is almost impossible without an address. There are charitable organizations that will provide a residence and an address as well as assist with government help. While churches used to be a place to get help, that is no longer the case in many areas. Trying to find a job when homeless is tough, and it is best to fix the main problem first. | 4Miscellaneous
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Scientists reverse age-related vision loss, eye damage from glaucoma in mice | Scientists from Harvard Medical School successfully restored vision in mice by reversing aging in retinal cells. The work shows that it may be possible to safely reprogram complex tissues to an earlier age. Reversing the cells' age resulted in reversing vision loss in animals with a condition similar to human glaucoma. It is the first successful attempt to reverse glaucoma-induced vision loss. The treatment involved using an adeno-associated virus as a vehicle to deliver three youth-restoring genes. It is based on a new theory about aging, which postulates that changes to the epigenome over time causes cells to read the wrong genes and malfunction. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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pgsync (GitHub Repo) | pgsync is a command-line tool for syncing Postgres data between databases. It is 4x faster than traditional tools on a 4-core machine, has built-in methods to prevent data from leaving the server, and can sync partial tables, groups of tables, and related records. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Amazon to introduce a new Alexa feature to mimic anyone’s voice | A new Amazon Alexa feature can mimic any human's voice using less than a minute of recorded audio. | 4Miscellaneous
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Meta’s AI Takes an Unsupervised Step Forward | Meta has published a series of papers on a type of self-supervised learning for AI systems. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple reportedly in talks to buy Intel’s 5G modem business for $1 billion | Intel announced in April that it was backing out of the 5G mobile modem business after Apple settled with Qualcomm in a deal where Apple would use Qualcomm modems in their devices again. Apple may now be buying a portion of Intel's business, which covers a portfolio of patents and staff, for $1 billion. After the deal with Qualcomm, Apple had reportedly been working on developing its own in-house modems. Purchasing Intel's modem business would make sense for Apple as Intel had previously produced modems for Apple. The merger would speed up the development process and allow Apple to operate independently of a third party. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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New energy-dense lithium-sulfur battery works at extreme temperatures | A new type of lithium battery can operate in freezing cold and scorching hot temperatures while storing double the energy of current batteries. | 4Miscellaneous
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Why It’s Great To Be A Consultant | Working as a consultant is great because you are working outside the company hierarchy, which means you can avoid all the baggage that comes with being a permanent employee. You will be continually thrown into new environments, which will force you to keep learning to remain competitive. Working with multiple organizations will expose you to more technology, organizational structures, and cultures. This will help develop a deeper perspective on your work and what's possible. Consulting will also mean you will meet lots of people, which can be beneficial in many ways. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Starlink’s new Portability feature brings internet to vanlifers | Starlink has launched a new Portability feature that will allow Starlink subscribers to take their terminals anywhere on their home continent that provides active internet coverage. Users will need 60-70W to power the terminals. The Portability service will be offered on a best effort basis, with users at registered addresses receiving priority for network resources. Portability can be added to existing Starlink subscriptions for $25 a month. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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bullet : Beautiful Python Prompts Made Simple (GitHub Repo) | Bullet allows for customized prompts in Python and has extensive support for formatting, colors, styling, and even support for emojis. There are many examples of its usage in the repository. Users can choose between bullet, check, inputs, numbers, passwords, yes/no, vertical, and slide prompts, and have full control over the style and look of the prompts. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Twilio Set To Acquire Cloud Customer Data Startup Segment For $3.2 Billion | Twilio has agreed to acquire Segment for $3.2 billion, with part of the sale based on Twilio stock. Segment was founded in 2012 and works with more than 20,000 businesses. The customer data infrastructure company's services overlap with Twilio's, which also helps clients connect with their customer base. Twilio currently trades at a market capitalization of over $45 billion. It provides a communications infrastructure that allows businesses to communicate with customers through text messages, voice, and video calls. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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ots (GitHub Repo) | ots lets you share end-to-end encrypted secrets with others via a one-time URL. It can be used to securely share API keys, signing secrets, passwords, and more with anyone. Secrets are destroyed once viewed or after a specified expiry period. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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A Conspiracy To Kill IE6 (10 minute read) | A bug in Internet Explorer 6 made it try to run code that it couldn’t run, causing the browser to either get stuck in a recursion loop or make it crash into the blue screen of death. This only happened in IE6 and it caused many problems for web developers as they had to make their sites compatible with the browser. A team of developers at YouTube decided that the best way to fix the issue was to threaten to drop support for the browser so that more users would upgrade, eventually making support for the browser unnecessary. Using special privileges, without YouTube’s official permission, they inserted a banner available only for IE6 users that stated that YouTube was going to stop supporting development for the browser and that users should upgrade. The tactic was successful, and eventually, upper management made the deprecation of the browser into real policy. | 4Miscellaneous
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GitHub: Generate new repositories with repository templates | GitHub has introduced the ability to create repository templates in order to make boilerplate code management and distribution easy on GitHub. To create a template, users only need to select the option to mark a repository as a template, after which it can be used to generate new repositories with all of the required files and folders. Template repositories will display a ‘Use this template’ button. More features and template types will be coming soon. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Jeff Bezos says he will fly into space next month | Jeff Bezos will be flying on Blue Origin's first human spaceflight next month. He has invited his brother to go along, so the two brothers will join the winner of an auction for the July 20 flight. Bidding for the third seat has already reached $2.8 million, but it is likely to go higher during a live auction on June 22. Proceeds from the auction will be donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin's foundation. Bezos has wanted to go to space for a long time, but he wanted to go on a Blue Origin vehicle. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Animals' Magnetic Navigation 'Sixth Sense' Might Come From Bacteria | Some animals, such as sea turtles, birds, fish, and lobsters, can sense the Earth's magnetic field and use this ability as an impressive navigation tool. After 50 years of research, scientists have proposed that the mechanism works through a symbiotic relationship between the animals and magnetotactic bacteria. Magnetotactic bacteria are a special type of bacteria whose movement is influenced by magnetic fields. The researchers searched for the presence of magnetotactic bacteria DNA in animal samples and found that many animals carry the bacteria. It is still unknown where these bacteria live inside the animals, but it is likely they are associated with nervous tissue. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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SEC Officially Files Suit Against Ripple, Alleges XRP Is a Security to This Day | The SEC has filed a lawsuit against San Francisco-based payments company Ripple. It alleges that XRP has always been, and continues to be, an unregistered security. Ripple sold XRP into a market without filing a registration statement with the SEC, which meant that it never provided investors with information that companies are usually required to provide. This resulted in an information vacuum that benefited Ripple and the people with the most control over it. The case names Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen individually. Ripple had received legal advice about the matter as early as 2012 but it ignored the advice and elected to distribute XRP without registration. | 4Miscellaneous
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zmurl (Website) | zmurl lets you create a webpage for your zoom event. It allows attendees to see event information, RSVP to events, and add events to their calendar. A short video is available on the page that shows how the site works for both event creators and attendees. | 4Miscellaneous
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Culture shock: how loss of animals’ shared knowledge threatens their survival | Many animals have been found to learn socially and create cultures. Culture is learned from other individuals, making groups behave in similar ways. Animal cultures are disappearing along with their habitats and numbers. Newer generations are having trouble surviving without the knowledge passed down from their elders. Conservation efforts are now more aware of the importance of animal cultures and are finding ways to introduce behaviors that will help animals survive across generations. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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How a Berkshire Hathaway company is quietly disrupting the construction industry | The MiTek Modular Initiative is a joint venture between MiTek, a construction software and building services company, and Danny Forster & Architecture, a firm that designs modular buildings. The initiative's goal is to develop a new approach to factory-based modular construction. It has an undisclosed amount of backing from Berkshire Hathaway. Volumetric modular building is a form of prefabrication that uses factories to build boxes that can be combined into rooms and stacked into buildings. Modular construction companies usually fail due to a lack of funding. Photos of the Initiative's modular buildings are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Elon Musk says Twitter deal ‘on hold’ after spam / fake account report | Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter has been put temporarily on hold while Musk waits for the company to show how it calculated the number of false or spam accounts on its platform. Musk is still committed to the acquisition and it will proceed after Twitter provides satisfactory information on its numbers. Twitter has miscalculated the number of daily users on its platform in past reports. The number of false or spam accounts could be higher than estimated. Cutting down on false and bot accounts is a key part of Musk's pitch for improving the business. | 4Miscellaneous
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Nearly half of game developers want to unionize | A survey of nearly 4,000 games developers found that 47% believed that they should unionize, 16% said they shouldn't, and 26% were unsure. However, only 21% thought a union would actually happen. This is in response to poor conditions where developers worked 100 hour weeks to finish Red Dead Redemption 2 and bitter layoffs at Telltale Games (producer of the Walking Dead game). One developer says "There is too much supply: too many people want into the industry. Those who unionize will be shoved out of the way as companies hire those with fewer demands." | 4Miscellaneous
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Introduction to Machine Learning Interviews (Book) | This book contains the collective wisdom of many people who have interviewed, or been interviewed, for a machine learning position. It consists of two parts. The first part is an overview of the machine-learning interview process and the role itself, and the second part consists of over 200 knowledge questions that cover important concepts and common misconceptions in machine learning. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Twitter will soon let you choose who can reply to your tweets | Twitter outlined the policy changes that it will implement over the next few months at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show. The changes will be implemented to promote healthy public conversation and to ensure the integrity of information on the platform. Twitter's conversation interface will be updated, making it easier to follow ongoing threads. Users will be able to choose who is able to reply to a given tweet. Twitter Topics will be able to algorithmically detect events happening around the world and it will have filters to ensure compliance with community guidelines. Machine learning moderation was able to effectively proactively remove half of all abusive tweets by the end of last year. Twitter will continue to develop these abilities and also extend them to remove misleading or otherwise toxic political messaging. | 4Miscellaneous
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Microsoft Edge Collections go full-on Pinterest with inspiration feed and sharing | Microsoft Edge Collections window displays a feed of recommended content based on the topics you’ve saved. | 4Miscellaneous
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Dell’s new UltraSharp 4K monitors are “IPS Black”—what does that mean? | Dell recently announced two new UltraSharp monitors that feature IPS Black, a new type of IPS panel. IPS, or in-plane switching, is a type of LED panel that is known for its exceptional color reproduction. IPS Black is a new type of IPS that provides better contrast, with a black level that is 35% deeper than existing IPS products. It allows screens to be created with a nearly borderless design. The new displays have a contrast ratio of 2,000:1, twice what most IPS monitors offer. Many more details about this new display technology are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out | A test developed by US-based company Grail can detect more than 50 types of cancer before any clinical signs or symptoms of the disease emerge. It is accurate enough to be rolled out as a screening test and will be piloted by NHS England in the autumn. The test looks for chemical changes in fragments of genetic code that leak from tumors into the bloodstream. It has an impressively high level of accuracy with a low false-positive rate. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Hyundai Acquires Boston Dynamics, Company Most Famous for Robot Police Dogs | Boston Dynamics has been purchased by Hyundai in a deal valued at $1.1 billion. Softbank will retain a 20 percent stake in Boston Dynamics. It is unclear what Hyundai wants from the acquisition, but it appears the company has ambitions beyond car manufacturing. Hyundai released a video celebrating the purchase that features robot dogs in various scenarios. A link to the 1-minute video is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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U.S. companies put record number of robots to work in 2018 | Robot automation is becoming the answer to lowering production costs as import restrictions and production costs rise. In 2018, robot shipments rose by 16% and certain sectors, such as food and semiconductors, increased their orders for machines by over 50%. Automation is moving beyond large manufacturers and warehouses, as smaller companies are embracing the use of machines to replace traditional workers. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Coinbase is launching a marketplace for NFTs | Coinbase plans to launch a marketplace that lets users mint, collect, and trade NFTs. NFTs are unique digital assets designed to represent ownership of online items. The NFT market boomed this year, topping $10 billion in transaction volume in the third quarter. Coinbase NFT will have social features and tap into the creator economy. It will allow Coinbase to build a new revenue stream to lessen the company's heavy reliance on exchange fees. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Nitric (GitHub Repo) | Nitric is a framework for cloud-native and serverless applications. It makes it easy to create smart serverless functions, APIs, or distributed apps that use events or queues. Nitric can read and write large files and securely store, retrieve, and rotate secrets. Apps built with Nitric can be deployed to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud from the same code base. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Mathematicians Find a New Class of Digitally Delicate Primes | Digitally delicate primes are prime numbers where you can change any single digit and the new number is composite. There are an infinite number of them in every number system. Widely digitally delicate numbers are prime numbers with an infinite string of leading zeros where if you changed one of those infinite zeros it would become composite. An arbitrarily long sequence of consecutive primes exists, each of which is widely digitally delicate. | 4Miscellaneous
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Language Interpretability Tool (GitHub Repo) | The Language Interpretability Tool (LIT) is a visual and interactive model-understanding tool for Natural Language Processing models. It features salience maps, custom metrics, the ability to compare models, rich visualization of model predictions, and more. LIT is framework-agnostic and compatible with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other frameworks. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Uber Eats users in Ontario can now buy cannabis through the app | UberEats users in Ontario can now order cannabis from Tokyo Smoke, pickup-only. Users will need to confirm their age before they can make a purchase and ID will be required at the store. Uber has not confirmed whether it will offer cannabis purchases in other areas or if it will eventually offer delivery. The move targets the underground cannabis market, which accounts for 40 percent of all non-medical cannabis sales in Canada. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple removes Pocket Casts podcast player from App Store in China at government request | Apple has removed Pocket Casts from the Chinese App Store at the request of the local government. A request was made to Apple by the Cyberspace Administration of China to remove the app after the Pocket Casts team repeatedly turned down government requests to take down podcasts. This is not the first time Apple has removed apps following a request by the Chinese government. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Perseverance Rover Captures Awesome Video of Helicopter Flying on Mars | NASA has released footage of Ingenuity in flight. Two videos were taken during the rotorcraft's 13th flight. Ingenuity flew nearly 700 feet horizontally at an altitude of 26 feet during the 16-second flight. It was recorded on Perseverance's two-camera Mastcam-Z from a distance of about 1,000 feet away. The videos are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Change My View Reddit Community Launches Its Own Website | The subreddit /r/changemyview is a large community of over 700,000 people in which anything is debatable. Users enter into debates following certain rules of engagement, such as requiring a reason for agreement/disagreement, and it is now known as an online oasis for people who enjoy discussions. The founder of ChangeMyView has launched a website where users can continue using the same format of discussion without the restrictions of Reddit. Researchers have commented on the difference in the quality of conversation that occurs on the subreddit, as it is quite different from debates that occur elsewhere on the internet. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Elevator.js (Website) | Elevator.js is a script for a 'back to the top' button that adds elevator music to create a soothing effect when being scrolled to the top of the screen. The webpage is a demo of the script in action. A link to the repository is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google applies its AI tech to reporting with 'Journalist Studio' tools | The Google News Initiative has been fighting misinformation and helping publishers make money since its creation in 2018. Google is now investing in Journalist Studio, a suite of free tools available to reporters and media organizations. The new tools will aid investigative journalism and other projects by sifting through documents, images, and audio files and by making interactive visualizations out of public records data. Using AI to analyze data could be a huge boost to understaffed newsrooms. It can also pick up a lot of information that humans might miss. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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App Ideas Collection (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains a collection of ideas for projects which are designed to improve coding skills. Each project contains a clear and descriptive objective, self-reported user experiences on completing the project, a list of bonus optional features to implement, and a list of resources to help locate the information needed to complete the project. The projects are divided into three tiers based on the knowledge and experience required to complete them. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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New Samsung Galaxy Sport renders give us a big hint at a 20 February unveiling | A new render of Samsung’s new Galaxy Sport Smartwatch (which may also be named the Galaxy Watch Active) has been leaked. The renders show the watch in 3 new colors - black, teal blue, and pink gold. The watch faces all display the same date, February 20, which is the date of Samsung’s Unpacked event. It is likely that the new smartwatch will be officially announced at the event. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites | Do you ever launch your satellite and realize that you forgot to set up a ground station to process the data stream? Well you're in luck, AWS has launched Ground Station, a Ground-Station-as-a-Service that allows you to spin up a satellite ground station as easily as you would a virtual machine. So you could get one up and running for a specific event like severe weather, a natural disaster, or a sporting event, or you could rent one long-term. As satellites get cheaper (there are really small satellites now like CubeSats, PocketQubes, and SunCubes), this service could be nifty to get data down from your satellites and into S3, Redshift, or any other AWS service. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Every Programmer Should Know (GitHub Repo) | A collection of things every software developer should know. | 4Miscellaneous
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Git is my buddy: Effective Git as a solo developer (12 minute read) | Git can be a valuable tool without even setting up a remote repository. It can help structure your work, identify gaps in your test coverage, and minimize dead code. This article introduces a workflow for using git that focuses work on particular bugfixes, features, or goals. It also introduces some advanced git tools. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Spotify files complaint with European Commission against Apple | Spotify claims that Apple’s App Store introduced rules that purposely limited choice and stifled innovation at the expense of the user experience, and has filed a complaint with the European Commission accusing the company of anti-competitive behavior. Apple is a direct competitor to Spotify through its Apple Music service, and Spotify sees several of its rules as unfair. Spotify is required to pay a 30% tax to Apple on subscriptions to its services, which increases the subscription cost so that it is more expensive than Apple Music. If they avoid this tax by using a direct subscription model, their communication with customers is contractually restricted. Upgrades to their app are also routinely blocked, and they have been locked out of using Apple services such as Siri, HomePod, and the Apple Watch. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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self-driving-desktop (GitHub Repo) | self-driving-desktop is a desktop automation framework written in Python. It uses steps (instructions) within playlists (groups of actions) to automate tasks. A list of example uses is available, and users can customize playlists to complete their desired tasks. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple reportedly plans to launch an ‘extreme sports’ Apple Watch with a larger screen and metal casing | Apple is reportedly planning to launch an extreme sports version of the Apple Watch this year along with the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch SE. The extreme sports model will measure almost two inches diagonally and have a display resolution of about 410 pixels by 502 pixels. It will use a stronger metal casing and have a more shatter-resistant screen. The watch will have a larger battery and improved tracking metrics. More details about the watch are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google Maps for CarPlay in iOS 12 is now available | Google Maps is now available for CarPlay in iOS 12, and Google owned traffic service Waze also plans on adding CarPlay support in an upcoming update. Before today, CarPlay had only supported Apple Maps, which if you haven't checked it for a while, continues to be terrible. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Prototyping an IoT Application with InfluxDB (Sponsor) | It's easy to stand up an IoT monitoring app in InfluxDB. Here's a step-by-step tutorial. The prototype is serverless, with zero infrastructure to manage and free — we built this app on the free tier of InfluxDB. Learn more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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usernames (GitHub Repo) | GitHub prohibits account name squatting. Inactive accounts can be removed or renamed without notice. This script generates a list of inactive accounts on GitHub with rare usernames so people can try to claim what they like. Pre-scraped lists are available. Not all GitHub activity is publicly available, so the usernames generated might still be technically active even if they appear to be inactive. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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‘Beeple Mania’: How Mike Winkelmann Makes Millions Selling Pixels (19 minute read) | Beeple is an artist that makes digital art that smashes together pop culture, technology, and post apocalyptic terror into commentaries on the way we live. He has 1.8 million Instagram followers, and his work has been shown at two Super Bowl halftime shows and at least one Justin Bieber concert. Beeple's art grossed $3.5 million in an auction in December. Ownership of the digital art is tracked through a blockchain developed by Nifty Gateway. The technology is based on nonfungible tokens, which allow digital assets to be collected and owned. Examples of Beeple's work are shown throughout the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Inside YouTube’s plan to win the music-streaming wars (12 minute read) | YouTube's track record with artists has been complicated at best in the past. Artists have previously complained about royalties and copyright violations on the platform. The current situation is better for artists, with new royalty deals and more ways for artists to engage their fans. Google has a track record of not sticking to projects, with many previous abandoned music projects in its library. Getting the right videos into its Music app can be difficult, as YouTube has a lot of content, not all that could be suitable for a music app. YouTube already has a large head start in the market, it just has to figure out how to help people discover new music and keep them from leaving when they do. | 4Miscellaneous
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Microsoft purchases Bethesda Softworks in industry-changing acquisition | Microsoft has announced that it is buying the corporate parents of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax Media. The acquisition cost Microsoft $7.5 billion. Elder Scrolls Online will continue to be supported exactly as it was. Bethesda is currently working on two of the PS5's biggest console exclusives for next year. All of Bethesda's gaming lineup will be a part of the Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft has purchased a string of game studios in recent years, including Double Fine, Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Obsidian Entertainment. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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PDM (Website) | PDM is a modern Python manager with PEP 582 support. It installs and manages packages without the need to create a virtualenv. PDM features a simple and fast dependency resolver, a PEP 517 backend, and PEP 621 project metadata. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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APKLeaks (GitHub Repo) | APKLeaks scans APK files for URIs, endpoints, and secrets. It is simple to install and use. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Android 13 deep dive: Every change, thoroughly documented (25 minute read) | Google has released the first developer preview of Android 13. The full OS is expected to be released in Q3 2022. There will be 2 Developer Previews and 4 Beta releases before the final release. This article takes a look at all the new features, including the new photo picker, per-app language preferences, and Hub mode. Screenshots and videos of some of the new features are available. More changes are expected in future preview versions. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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MicroPython: An Intro to Programming Hardware in Python (17 minute read) | Hardware programming is now an easy area to get into, with robots, microcontrollers, electronics, and other hardware easily accessible by anyone. Traditionally, developers had to learn low-level languages like assembler or C++ to effectively program these devices. With the introduction of languages like MicroPython, developers no longer need to sacrifice functionality to program devices. This tutorial is an introduction to MicroPython and the world of electronics hardware. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple acquires Shazam, offering more ways to discover and enjoy music | Apple has officially acquired Shazam, the popular song identification app. The $400 million deal was announced near the end of last year but was just now completed. Apple has announced that Shazam will now be ad free for all users. Shazam has over 1 billion downloads and is used by 20 million users per day. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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