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Uber to test delivering food with robots | Uber is launching two test programs to deliver UberEats in greater Los Angeles this month. It will use a combination of four-wheeled robots and self-driving cars, depending on how far the delivery needs to go. Customers will receive instructions in the Uber app on how to retrieve their food. A safety driver will be present for car deliveries and the robots will be monitored remotely. Automated deliveries could make deliveries more affordable in the long term and create markets for more types of services. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Robots run this farm (13 minute video) | Water is used for almost everything that we do, from growing food to manufacturing every type of goods, and it is becoming more and more scarce. A team at Columbia University, New York, has developed a technique to create clean drinking water from industrial waste. It can remove more than 98% of salt from wastewater with high efficiency. While the technique was created for industrial waste, it is also effective for treating other wastewater. Another way to preserve water is through recycling water used in farming, which is what a company called Bowery is doing. Bowery builds indoor vertical farms inside cities which can grow crops all year around. It grows crops twice as fast as traditional farms while saving 95% of the water it uses. The whole farm is automated and everything is controlled with a central operating system. Ideas like these will help prevent a water crisis in the future. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Hub (GitHub Repo) | Hub is a method of storing, accessing, and managing datasets with version-control for PyTorch/TensorFlow. It stores datasets on the cloud so that data can be accessed anywhere. Hub makes any data type stored on the cloud usable as fast as if it was stored on-premise. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Detectron2 (GitHub Repo) | Detection2 is Facebook AI Research's software that implements state-of-the-art object detection algorithms. It is a complete rewrite of the previous version. It uses PyTorch, trains much faster, can be used as a library to support different projects on top of it, and it includes features such as panoptic segmentation, densepose, Cascade R-CNN, rotated bounding boxes, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Introducing Warp: Fixing Mobile Internet Performance and Security | Last year, Cloudflare launched their 1.1.1.1 service on April 1, aiming to create the fastest, most secure, and most privacy-respecting DNS server on the internet. Today, 1.1.1.1 is now about to become the second largest public DNS service on the internet, with half the latency of Google's servers, while still upholding its values of privacy and security. In November, Cloudflare launched a mobile app for 1.1.1.1 in preparation for today's launch of Warp. Warp is a new service designed for mobile internet and is essentially a VPN that will encrypt all data traffic, rather than just DNS traffic. It also has features that will help mobile users save data and battery. While Cloudflare aimed to launch Warp in its entirety today, there were some issues with the rollout. However, users can still sign up to a waiting list through the 1.1.1.1 app. | 4Miscellaneous
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Spotify launches redesigned 'Your Library' with new grid view, dynamic filters, more for iOS/Android | A new update for the Spotify app brings a redesigned Your Library tab, with a new Grid view, dynamic filters, improved sorting, and more. The changes should help users spend less time looking for content and organizing their collections. There is a 49-second video in the article that previews the new features. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Theoretical interview questions (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains a list of questions for data science interviews. Questions are labeled according to difficulty. Sections include Linear regression, Validation, Classification, Random forest, Gradient boosting, and more. The repository is still a work in progress and many questions have not yet been answered. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Scientists Are Creating Vaccines For Type 1 Diabetes | Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, causing sugar to build up in the bloodstream. There is no cure, though there are treatment options. As the disease is caused by an incorrect immune response, a diabetes vaccine would need to inhibit the immune response rather than boost it like conventional vaccines. Inverse vaccinations can affect the entire immune system, so scientists have been studying antigen-specific vaccines. Several vaccines are already in trials. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Uber, losing billions, freezes engineering hires | Uber has been losing over $1 billion per quarter, reporting losses of $5.4 billion in the second quarter. More than $4 billion was from one-time charges related to Uber's initial public offering. However, excluding these charges still leaves around $1.2 billion in operating losses. Uber recently laid off 400 marketing workers and has now stopped hiring for software engineers and product managers, except for its autonomous vehicle and freight-shipping divisions. With $13.7 billion in the bank after its IPO, Uber still has plenty of cash. However, the company faces pressure from Wall Street to stem the losses well before it becomes a problem. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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CoinSnacks (Newsletter) | CoinSnacks is basically a weekly TLDR newsletter for crypto. If you're into buying and hodling, or just want to figure out how to dip your toe into learning about the cryptocurrency space, you might want to check this out. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Dive into Deep Learning (Website) | Dive into Deep Learning is a book about deep learning using the NumPy interface. Each section of the book is an executable Jupyter notebook. It offers an interactive learning experience with maths, figures, code, text, and discussions. There is an active community for support. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Mighty is a Chromium Mac browser streamed from the cloud | Mighty is a browser for macOS that uses cloud servers so users can load hundreds of tabs without their computers slowing down. The thin client uses no more than 500MB of RAM, running the cloud browser at 4K and 60 frames per second. Users will need a 100Mbps connection. Access to the servers costs $30 a month. Mighty promises to keep user data private. | 4Miscellaneous
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Ukraine Calls on Hacker Underground to Defend Against Russia | The Ukrainian government is asking for volunteers from the country's hacker underground. Volunteers will be divided into defensive units, to help protect critical infrastructure, and offensive units, to spy on Russian troops. Requests began to appear on hacker forums after Russian forces started attacking cities across Ukraine. The posts were made on behalf of a Defense Ministry official. A new piece of destructive software was discovered circulating around Ukraine on Wednesday, but Russia has denied involvement. | 4Miscellaneous
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Figma for Developers | While designers are expected to have a pretty thorough understanding of the front-end web, developers are rarely expected to have an understanding of design basics. Teams work better and create better products when they have a high-level understanding of each other's tools and priorities. Figma kits have become popular for teams as they let designers create interactive prototypes that developers can easily explore and understand. This article gives a developer's overview of Figma, showing key features and explaining why the features are relevant to developers. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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YoHa (GitHub Repo) | YoHa is a general purpose hand tracking engine. It can detect specific hand poses so that developers can build applications with meaningful interactions. YoHa is currently in beta and only available for the web. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Tesla appears to defy Bay Area shutdown, plans to operate Fremont factory | A 'shelter in place' order has been issued in the Bay area to force people to stay at home and work from home unless they provide an essential service. Tesla seems to be defying the order at its Fremont factory, with the company issuing a statement to employees telling them that it plans to remain in operation. Employees are being told they can take paid time off if they are ill, but are otherwise expected to work. Tesla had to temporarily shut down its Gigafactory in Shanghai last month in order to slow the growth of the virus, but it managed to start operations again quickly after taking measures to limit the chance of transmission. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google AI Social Impact Challenge (Announcement) | Google is looking for people who want to use AI to change the world. They have a total of $25 million dollars they'll give out to applicants, as well as cloud computing credits, coaching from Google's AI experts, and consulting from Google Cloud. The applications will be judged on impact, feasibility, use of AI, scalability, and responsible use of AI. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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2 Months After Failed Moon Landing, India Acknowledges Its Craft Crashed | India sent a landing vehicle to the moon back in September in an attempt to make history, but the project ended inconclusively and there was no explanation of what happened at the time. Public updates only stated that the lander had been located and that no communication had been established with it yet. The Indian government has now released a statement that revealed that the Vikram lander had malfunctioned, causing it to crash. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft continues to be successful in collecting information during its orbit around the moon. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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An asteroid mining startup will soon launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission | Astroforge is a Y Combinator startup that is aiming to mine its first asteroid by the end of the decade. The founders claim to have developed a novel method for refining materials in space that requires a high-rated vacuum and zero gravity. Astroforge will target smaller asteroids that likely won't have a gravitational field. It has an agreement with SpaceX for a spot on an upcoming rideshare mission to demonstrate its technology. The space mining market is predicted to grow to $4.2 billion by the end of the decade. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Virgin Atlantic Flies World's First Waste-Based Biofuel Commercial Flight | Lanzatech is a company that came up with a gas fermentation process to recycle waste from steel mills into jet fuel. Virgin Atlantic just completed the first flight using this fuel. They are planning to create three UK based plants by 2025 that will create 125 million gallons of jet fuel per year and would save 1 million tons in carbon emissions per year. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Leaked Documents Show How Amazon's Astro Robot Tracks Everything You Do | Amazon's new Astro home robot is designed to track behavior to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties. According to leaked documents, its person recognition system is heavily flawed. People who had worked on the project have criticized the robot's navigational abilities and build quality and cited privacy concerns. Astro is supposed to learn over time, so it has to track the humans around it and learn about its environment. It is designed to handle a lot of the data processing on device. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Yahoo Answers will be shut down forever on May 4th | Yahoo Answers will shut down on May 4. After that day, the website will start redirecting to the Yahoo homepage and all of the platform's archives will cease to exist. New submissions will no longer be accepted on the site after April 20. Users will have until June 30 to request their data before it becomes inaccessible. The service has become less popular over the years, so the company has decided to shift its resources away to focus on other products. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Starbucks and Amazon are opening cashierless coffee shop in Manhattan. Take a look inside | Starbucks and Amazon have opened up a pick-up cafe in midtown Manhattan that uses Amazon's cashierless technology. The cafes are designed to attract busy consumers who want to make quick purchases. Two more locations are set to open over the next year. The cafe stocks a variety of food options and items commonly found in convenience store checkout lines in addition to the Starbucks menu. It is open till 10 pm on weekdays and 9 pm on weekends. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Orchest (GitHub Repo) | Orchest is a browser-based IDE for Data Science. Users can visually construct pipelines, run any subset of a pipeline directly or on a schedule, set parameters to try out different modeling ideas, and define custom runtime environments. A GIF preview showing how to create pipelines in Orchest is available in the repository. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Adobe Fresco brings the joy of painting to the iPad | Adobe has released a beta version of Fresco, a drawing and painting app for the iPad. Previously known as Project Gemini, Fresco uses Live Brushes to produce realistic watercolor and oil paint strokes. Live Brushes is powered by Adobe Sensei's AI platform. Users can also import and use their own custom brushes. The user interface is similar to the one in the Photoshop for iPad beta, except that there are some sub-tools that are missing, such as clipping masks and magic wand. Fresco will launch by the end of the year as a free app on the App Store and will work with iPad Pros, the 2019 iPad mini, and the iPad Air. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google is scaling back its weekly all-hands meetings after leaks, Sundar Pichai tells staff | Google will stop holding its weekly town halls, moving its TGIF meetings to just once a month. Low attendance and the lack of focus on product launches and business strategies were two reasons stated for the change. Employees were sharing the conversations held inside TGIF meetings outside of the company, which was affecting the ability of the company to hold candid conversations on important topics. TGIF meetings were previously a place where employees could bring concerns to management and discuss important workplace issues. Google will continue to hold regular Social TGIFs in offices around the world, and other forums and platforms have been provided for employees to communicate with the company. Employees can use these forums to voice their opinions on company decisions. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Do Octopuses Have Dreams? They Might, and Undergo Frenzied Shifts in Color | Scientists from Brazil who study how octopuses sleep say that an octopus' changes in color, behavior, and movement during sleep serve as evidence of a sleep cycle. The findings suggest that octopuses shift between active and quiet sleep. It takes about six minutes for octopuses to enter the active sleep state, which lasts from a few seconds to a minute. While it is not possible to confirm whether octopuses dream, the active sleep stage is a state analogous to REM sleep in humans. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Facebook Dating launch blocked in Europe after it fails to show privacy workings | Facebook will not be launching its dating service in Europe as planned as it failed to demonstrate it had performed a legally required assessment of privacy risk and give the Irish Data Protection Commission enough advanced warning. The delay may mean that Facebook will have to make some changes to how the dating product functions in Europe if regulators are not satisfied with its compliance with EU laws. Facebook first notified the DPC about the rollout of the dating feature in the EU on February 3. It has been testing and slowly rolling out the service to different countries since mid-2019. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Mars plays shepherd to our moon's long-lost twin, scientists find | A team of scientists have found an asteroid trailing behind Mars with a composition very similar to the moon's. It could be part of the debris resulting from the impacts that formed the moon and other rocky planets in our solar system. Trojans are a class of asteroids that follow planets. It is easier to spot Mars Trojans than Earth Trojans as Earth Trojans are angled towards the sun, making them hard to see. There are several theories about the origin of the asteroid. The research from the Mars Trojan will help scientists identify Trojans associated with our own planet. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Portland quietly launches mobile location data project with Alphabet’s controversial Sidewalk Labs | Portland's citizens will unknowingly be part of a trial run of Sidewalk Lab's Replica Software. The software will collect location data from smartphones, anonymize the data, and then provide reports to the city on traffic patterns, the impact of ride-sharing on traffic, and other location-reliant information. It is expected that the project will cost at least $457,000, but the information provided will hopefully be able to help the city improve its infrastructure and policy. | 4Miscellaneous
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Square to buy Afterpay, which offers a ‘buy now, pay later’ service, for $29 billion in stock | Square plans to buy Australian company Afterpay for $29 billion in stock. Afterpay offers 'buy now, pay later' services, which have become increasingly prevalent across the web. The company serves more than 16 million customers and nearly 100,000 merchants. Square and Afterpay expect the sale to finalize in early 2022. Apple is reportedly working on a similar service called Apple Pay Later. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Vaex (Github Repo) | Vaex is a Python library that lazily handles out-of-core data frames, so you can visualize and explore large tabular datasets that won't fit in memory. It can calculate statistics on more than a billion rows per second. This seems like a more memory-efficient alternative to Pandas. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Netflix is recreating iconic Stranger Things sets in LA, and you can drive your car through them | Netflix will transform a series of buildings in downtown Los Angeles into a unique Stranger Things immersive theatre production. Guests will be able to drive through the entire experience. It will feature iconic locations from the show. The audience will stop to watch actors perform scenes, similar to a standard haunted house or walk through theme park experience. Tickets will go on sale starting Wednesday, August 26th, with prices starting at $59 per car. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Apple Watch Series 6 and watchOS 7 to include ‘Infograph Pro’ with tachymeter, Schooltime and kids mode, sleep tracking, more | The Apple Watch will gain new features with the upcoming Apple Watch Series 6 and watchOS 7. Users will be able to start sharing their watch faces and create personalized digital watch faces using images from the Photos app. A tachymeter will be built into the watch, allowing it to measure speed of movement. The new watch will also gain the ability to detect blood oxygen saturation, as well as sleep tracking. Parental controls will allow what apps and communications can be used. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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filters.css (GitHub Repo) | filters.css is a library for applying color filters using only CSS. Filters include blur, grayscale, sepia, invert, and more. Examples of all the filters at all levels are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Tesla Car Hacked Remotely From Drone via Zero-Click Exploit | A remote attack discovered last year allowed hackers to take over a Tesla's infotainment system by exploiting two vulnerabilities in the internet connection manager. The attack allowed hackers to perform any task that a regular user could from the system. It could be mounted on a drone, allowing hackers to unlock vehicles from up to 100 meters away without any user interaction. Tesla patched the issue with an update pushed out in October. | 4Miscellaneous
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Gameboy.Live (GitHub Repo) | Gameboy.Live is a Gameboy emulator written in Go that can be run on desktop or telnet. Users can configure Gameboy.Live as a cloud gaming server so that games can be run from anywhere through telnet. There is a GIF demonstrating the telnet version, as well as screenshots for the desktop version. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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World-first "impossible" rotating detonation engine fires up | A team in Florida working with the US Air Force has built an experimental model of a rotating detonation rocket engine. It uses spinning explosions inside a ring channel to create a super-efficient thrust. Most engines use combustion, which is a relatively slow and controlled process compared to detonation. Detonation releases significantly more energy than combustion with significantly less fuel, but detonation engines have proven to be incredibly difficult to build and sustain. A 20-second slow-motion video of the rocket firing is available. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Everything we think we know about Google’s mystery gaming announcement | Google is set to make an announcement at the Game Developers Conference tomorrow, and there are some theories about what Google’s vision for the future of gaming could be. It is most likely that the big announcement is related to cloud gaming, especially since Project Cloud had just successfully finished prior their tweet about the event. Google has had several strategic hires related to cloud gaming in the past 18 months, including people who had previously been working on game streaming services. A hardware component, similar to the Chromecast, may also be announced along with a game controller that looks like a cross between the PlayStation controller and the Ouya Gamepad. Ubisoft, ID Software, and Crystal Dynamics will have representatives at the Google event, which suggests that some big single-player titles will be available at launch. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Asahi Linux Is The First Linux Distro To Support Apple Silicon | Asahi Linux for Apple Silicon is the first Linux distribution to offer native support for Apple M1 chips. It is now available in an alpha release targeted at developers and power users. Running the operating system will not require a jailbroken device and it won't affect the security level of any macOS installs on the machine. There are still a number of hardware features that don't work. A video showing a MacBook Air booting up Asahi Linux is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Robots and magnetic soap: scientists rethink oil spill clean-ups | Oil spills can devastate the environment and threaten communities who rely on the sea for their livelihoods. They can take months or years to clean up, and they will continue to occur as long as fossil fuels are being used. Several technologies have been developed to combat oil spills. Researchers have developed a sponge with a coating of magnetic nanostructures and a carbon-based surface that attracts and binds to oil, allowing the sponge to absorb more than 30 times its weight in oil. Magnetic soap, composed of dissolvable iron-rich salts, are also another solution. These soaps respond to magnetic fields and could one day be used for industrial cleaning operations and environmental clean-up procedures. Self-navigating robots can be used to collect oil as clean-up operations can be dangerous. | 4Miscellaneous
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Archaeologists find evidence of neurons in glassy brain of Vesuvius victim | Vitrification is when organic matter fuses into glass. It occurs at extremely high temperatures, which many of the victims from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius would have experienced. Scientists found evidence of vitrified brain matter inside the skull of a victim buried in volcanic ash. It was estimated temperatures around the victim could have been as high as 520 degrees Celsius, but it may require more than just heat for vitrification to occur. Scientists are still trying to find out why the tissues didn't just vaporize when heated to extreme temperatures. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Researchers Successfully Store ‘Data’ Inside DNA of Living Bacteria | Researchers from Columbia University have successfully stored DNA inside of living bacteria by using CRISPR. The team recently encoded 72 bits of data into a population of bacteria cells, establishing a direct digital-to-biological data storage framework. DNA-encoded data lasts longer in living organisms and the information can even be passed onto the following generations. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Whole Foods cuts workers' hours after Amazon introduces minimum wage | A $15 an hour minimum wage for Whole Foods employees was enacted by Amazon on November 1. Team members who were being paid less than the $15 an hour saw a raise to at least that figure, while other employees received a $1 an hour raise and team leaders received a $2 an hour raise. Since the wage increase, many employees have seen their hours cut significantly, with part-time employees seeing their hours cut from around 30 hours a week to 20 hours a week, and full-time employees seeing a 3-4 hour a week decrease in their rosters. Amazon has also cut stock vesting plans and bonuses. These cuts have drawn complaints from employees, who say that there are not enough staff on the floor to properly serve customers and that some employees have had to take up second jobs to make ends meet. Many team members are now claiming their current compensation is lower than before the wage increase. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Inside Uber before its self-driving car killed a pedestrian: sources describe infighting, "perverse" incentives, and questionable decisions (15 minute read) | Earlier this year, one of Uber's self-driving Volvo SUVs struck and killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. Now internal documents show that Uber's self-driving car team had disabled the car's emergency brakes and reduced the car's ability to swerve, because it wanted to show their new CEO progress in the form of a smoother rider experience. At the time of the accident, engineers knew the software was immature, and it was having trouble recognizing and predicting paths of pedestrians and wasn't always detecting objects within a couple of meters of it. One engineer says "This could have killed a toddler in a parking lot." Engineers describe a "toxic" culture, where the bonus structure incentivizes quickly hitting milestones with or without careful testing. A former engineer says "At ATG, the attitude is I will do whatever it takes and I will get this huge bonus. I swear that everything that drives bad behaviors was the bonus structure." Uber stopped testing their self-driving cars on public roads after the incident, but plans on starting up again in 2019. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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FilesRemote (GitHub Repo) | FilesRemote is an SSH file manager. It can edit files as if they were local, as root via sudo. FilesRemote uses SSH auth agent when available and password based authentication otherwise. Screenshots and demos are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Netflix makes more than 30 episodes of its shows free on YouTube | Netflix has released more than 30 episodes of its factual entertainment shoes onto YouTube in order to support educators. Altogether, there is over 20 hours of content. The shows include Our Planet, Explained, and 13th. A link to the playlist is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Intel’s Stacked Nanosheet Transistors Could Be the Next Step in Moore’s Law | Almost every digital device relies on a pairing of two types of transistors, NMOS and PMOS. To make smaller circuits, the space between these transistors needs to get smaller. Intel has devised a new way to close the gap, stacking the pairs so that one is atop the other. This effectively cut the footprint of a circuit in half, potentially doubling transistor density in future integrated circuits. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Walmart is working on an Amazon Prime competitor, called Walmart+ | Walmart is developing a rival subscription service to Amazon Prime called Walmart+. It plans to start publicly testing Walmart+ as soon as March. Amazon Prime is currently $119 a year and includes perks such as unlimited one-day shipping and access to entertainment content. Walmart currently offers a $98 annual subscription for unlimited same-day delivery of groceries. The details regarding Walmart+ are scarce, but it is rumored that Walmart+ aims to include perks that Amazon cannot match. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Apple concedes to let apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle link to the web to sign up | Apple has changed its App Store rules to allow developers of reader apps to share a single link to their website to help users set up and manage their accounts. Reader apps are apps that allow users to access previously purchased content, but do not offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase. Apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle will now be allowed to directly link customers to their own sign-up website. The change was made to close an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission into a suspected violation of the Antimonopoly Act. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Quickly generate customizable workflows for your Actions deployments (Sponsor) | Quickly generate customizable workflows for your Actions deployments . Want to use GitHub Actions as part of your build and continuous integration process? If you are tired of writing GitHub YAML from scratch, save time with our GitHub Actions workflow generator free tool powered by Octopus Deploy. Learn more. | 0Sponsor
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Roboto … But Make It Flex | Roboto Flex is a new version of Google's popular Roboto font that was released in 2011. The update comes with a huge range of weights and widths across optical sizes, plus additional capabilities for fine-tuning. It is designed to be super-scalable, adaptable, customizable, and optimizable. Many more details about the font, along with examples, are available in the article. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Tesla says solar roof is on its third iteration, currently installing in 8 states | Elon Musk has revealed at the Tesla annual shareholder meeting that Tesla’s solar roof product is currently being installed on properties in eight states. Tesla produces tiles that are designed to look like high-quality traditional roofing tiles, with integrated solar panels that are not easily identifiable from ground level. The tiles are now on their third version, with this version being almost at cost-parity with an entry-level cheap traditional tile, after considering the cost savings of the generated electricity. Musk is optimistic about the rollout of the new tiles, but there is currently no information on when the tiles will be released or what the installation price will be. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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SpaceX moves a massive rocket with 33 engines to its launch pad for tests | SpaceX rolled out its Booster 7 prototype of the Super Heavy rocket to its launch site on Thursday. It was lifted using the chopsticks on the launch tower and placed on its launch mount. The booster will go through pressure testing and potentially a static fire test in the coming days or weeks. Elon Musk has been pushing for an orbital launch attempt in July. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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xg2xg (GitHub Repo) | Google has many internal tools that help its engineers, and ex-Googlers may find it hard to survive in the real world after having access to these tools. This repository contains open source and Google external tools that perform functions similar to Google's internal tools. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The app that lets you pay to control another person's life | NewNew is an app that lets its users make decisions for creators. Creators can set up accounts and then make polls for followers, who pay a fee to vote on the outcome. Followers can also pay to ask creators for extra perks. Creators are free to reject bids and refund followers. NewNew boasts some heavyweight investors such as Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Will Smith. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google will start paying some publishers for news articles | Google has announced a new licensing program that will be a part of its upcoming News and Discover service launching later this year. The program will start with publishers from Germany, Australia, and Brazil, with Google planning to add more regions soon. Multiple countries have recently pushed for Google to compensate publishers for the news content it links to. Facebook has recently launched a news tab in the US, paying some participating publishers for their work. The scheme by Facebook was criticized for being too exclusive and not paying publishers enough. | 4Miscellaneous
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Firecracker (Github Repo) | Firecracker is a virtualization technology designed for serverless deployments that's been open sourced by AWS. The purpose is to create super lightweight virtual machines (microVMs), to decrease memory footprint and startup times, it's currently being used in AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate. Not sure why AWS open sourced this since it seems like it'd be a pretty big competitive advantage but I'm glad they did! | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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A New CRISPR Tool Flips Genes On and Off Like a Light Switch | CRISPRoff is a new tool that can turn genes off for hundreds of generations of cells. These genes can be reactivated at any time using a complementary tool, CRISPRon. The tools are designed to exploit a natural epigenetic process for switching genes off. Having a reliable tool for epigenetics that lasts generations could change gene editing forever. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Unprofessional Landing Pages: How To Make Your Pages Look Like a Design Team Was Behind It | First impressions matter for professional pages. It only takes a very short amount of time for someone to form an opinion about a website. Clarity is important because there isn't much time to get a message across, so it is important not to add clutter. This article discusses how to make more professional-looking pages with above-the-fold design patterns, some UX open secrets, and tips on how to improve the scan-ability of pages. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Neopets launching open beta for a new mobile site | Neopets is launching an open beta for its new mobile site. A link to the game is available in the article. It is still in the very early stages of development. Neopets has launched mobile games before, but the franchise has slowly been fading over the past few years. Viacom bought Neopets in 2005 and later sold it to Jumpstart, an educational games company. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Scientists develop 'artificial tongue' to detect fake whiskies | A team of scientists based in Scotland has created a device that can detect fake whiskeys and scotches. Called 'The Artificial Tongue', the technology works by measuring the wavelengths of light from special arrays which change depending on what liquids surround the arrays. Although the different drinks have similar chemical compositions, the way that the device is designed allows it to identify each drink as a separate entity. The technology could eventually be used to identify poisons, for quality control for production lines, and for the environmental monitoring of rivers. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Future Chrome update may kill ad-blocking extensions | Google has proposed a change to Chromium (the engine that runs the Chrome web browser) that would kill ad-blocking extensions like uBlock Origin and uMatrix. This change would have performance benefits, but would also greatly limit what adblockers are able to block. This is just a proposal at the moment, so it's still possible Google could change their mind. | 4Miscellaneous
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Building for the 99% Developers (10 minute read) | Developers who work outside of hip companies and frameworks often get left out of conversations about what developers want. Speakers at the top tech conferences are usually people from high-growth or established, highly profitable companies. The other companies that develop most of the software that powers our lives are usually not built around technology, but they still move around quite a bit of money and handle a lot of personal data. This article discusses the differences between the needs of FAANG-like and other companies and suggests ways to improve the developer experience for all. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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portray (GitHub Repo) | portray creates documentation websites for Python projects using a Python3 command-line tool. It can automatically find documentation within the Python project directory and generate a website without customization. Developers can fully customize the website if required. The generated website is designed to be easily hosted on GitHub pages. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple and Stanford’s Apple Watch study identified irregular heartbeats in over 2,000 patients | The Apple Heart Study, a joint effort between Apple and the Stanford University School of Medicine, released its results today both in a press release and at the American College of Cardiology’s 68th Annual Scientific Session and Expo. Of the over 400,000 participants, 0.5% received notifications alerting them of heart irregularities over the course of the study, at an 84% accuracy rate. The study showed that the Apple Watch wasn’t prone to ‘over-notification’, which was a growing concern with wearable devices. While the Apple Watch was shown to be a useful tool in the early detection of health issues, these devices have to be much more accurate before they can be relied on for health decisions. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Python For Feature Film (16 minute read) | Python has become integral to the movie-making process over the last few years, with rarely an animated feature or visual effects film that hasn't had Python play a large part in getting it to the screen. It is used to make sure data flows between each department as well as for custom toolsets for artists. This article explains the Film Production Pipeline and how Python is used in every part of the Pipeline. It includes many behind-the-scenes videos showing how movie creators create movies. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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What’s the best lossless image format? Comparing PNG, WebP, AVIF, and JPEG XL | Lossless compression makes files smaller and allows the files to be decompressed back to the same original file. It works best for things like logos, screenshots, charts, and graphics. This article compares different lossless compression techniques on speed, file size, and quality. Most modern lossless image formats provide significant gains in efficiency compared to even the most optimized PNG. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Redditors Aim to 'Free Science' From For-Profit Publishers | Sci-Hub is a site that gives free access to a huge database of scientific papers that would otherwise be locked behind a paywall. It has been the target of multiple lawsuits. Members of the subreddit DataHoarder have come together to archive the 77TB of data that is on the site. They aim to have approximately 8,500 people torrenting the papers and to create a new uncensorable website. The subreddit community has previously completed a similar mission by archiving 33TB of data from Library Genesis. Much of the science published in these articles is publicly funded. | 4Miscellaneous
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Airbnb announces it won’t dock employees’ pay if they go remote | Airbnb will allow the vast majority of its employees to work remotely without having to take a pay cut if they move away from the company's offices. The company had its most productive period over the last two years while working remotely. Employees will be able to live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location. There will be regular team gatherings for employees to meet and connect. Airbnb plans to release two major products a year. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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MIT AI tool can predict breast cancer up to 5 years early, works equally well for white and black patients | MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab have developed a new AI tool that can detect breast cancer up to 5 years in advance in both black and white women. Other previous similar projects have been criticized as their patient populations were predominantly white. Black women are 42 percent more likely to die from cancer. One contributing factor may be due to the lack of appropriate detection techniques. The MIT tool was trained on mammograms from over 60,000 patients. Early detection is vital in the fight against cancer. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Ask HN: Tesla is making us move or quit. Would I get severance? (Hacker News Thread) | Tesla has told its employees to return to the office or leave the company. The announcement could be intended to make workers quit so that the company doesn't have to pay severance. Employees affected by the new rules should seek legal advice. They should also not quit their jobs and continue to work while documenting any interactions with management. | 4Miscellaneous
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Imagen - Pytorch (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains an implementation of Google's text-to-image neural network, Imagen. Imagen is architecturally much simpler than DALL-E 2. A Discord community is available for developers interested in replicating Imagen. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Bose is closing all of its retail stores in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia | Bose will be exiting the North American, European, Japanese, and Australian markets over the next few months, closing 119 stores and laying off hundreds of employees. It opened its first retail store in 1993, and its product line has since grown beyond noise-canceling headphones to include smart speakers, sunglasses that double as earbuds, and more. Bose's retail stores were a place where customers could try out its products, but the needs of customers have changed and Bose is adjusting its strategy accordingly. Employees that are being laid off will be offered outplacement assistance and severance. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Innovative capsule allows mRNA vaccines to be delivered orally | Scientists from MIT have demonstrated a technique that can deliver mRNA therapies directly to the digestive tract using a capsule. The technique uses capsules coated with microneedles that inject their contents directly into the wall of the gut. It was first used to deliver insulin into pigs, but new studies have demonstrated that it is also effective for mRNA delivery. More work is still needed to determine whether mRNA vaccines administered in this way can lead to systemic immune responses. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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This is the first truly great Amazon Alexa and Google Home hack | Two designers have hacked together an open source hardware design called Project Alias that you can build yourself using a Raspberry Pi. It acts as a layer between your smart speaker and your home, so that you can use a custom wake word to turn on Project Alias which will then turn on your smart speaker. If you don't use the Project Alias wake word, then Project Alias uses white noise to disrupt your smart speaker's microphone so it can't hear anything, ensuring your privacy. | 4Miscellaneous
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duf (GitHub Repo) | duf is a utility to monitor disk usage on Linux, BSD, and macOS. It features a colorful output, auto-adjusting width, sorted results, groups and filters for devices, and JSON output. A screenshot is available in the repository. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Froebel (GitHub Repo) | Froebel is a collection of TypeScript helper functions and utilities. It is like an opinionated version of lodash but with first-class types. Froebel runs in Deno, Node.js, and in browsers. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Amazon is making two-hour grocery delivery free for all Prime members | Amazon has added free two-hour grocery delivery to its Prime membership program. Amazon Prime is $119 per year in the US and includes free shipping and other benefits, such as Prime Video and Music. Grocery delivery was previously an additional $14.99 per month subscription service. There are now 100 million Prime members worldwide. The rollout of the grocery delivery benefit will begin in phases, starting with an invite-only program for customers who have previously ordered groceries using Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods. Prime members can request an invitation. There is no timeline for when free grocery delivery will be rolled out to all Prime members without an invite. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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A Surveillance Firm Reportedly Tracked NSA and CIA Spies as a Product Demo | Virginia data firm Anomaly Six (A6) demonstrated its surveillance capabilities during merger talks with another surveillance startup by tracking mobile phones used by employees of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. A6 has embedded tracking software in hundreds of mobile apps to collect data. The company claims to surveil approximately 230 million devices a day. | 4Miscellaneous
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The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack (22 minute read) | In 2016, North Korean hackers almost stole $1 billion from Bangladesh's national bank. This article tells the story of the heist, from when it started to the current state of the investigation. All but $81 million of the transfers were halted. The hackers used fake bank accounts, charities, casinos, and a wide network of accomplices to carry out the heist. Little is known about the North Korean hackers, who are known as the Lazarus Group. | 4Miscellaneous
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How to Write Better Git Commit Messages – A Step-By-Step Guide | Writing good Git commits can save you and your coworkers hours of digging around while troubleshooting. Collaboration and communication are of utmost importance within engineering teams, and the Git commit message is a prime example of this. This article teaches developers how to write better commit messages with improved grammar, content, conventional commits, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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#LockdownConf: How to Learn New Skills While Social Distancing | A recent streamed event discussed how to learn new skills when practicing social distancing. The talk discussed how to choose skills, making an action plan to learn the chosen skill/s, planning out time and avoiding procrastination, and various mentalities to adopt in order to ensure and recognize success. A link to the talk is available in the article. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Sloth (GitHub Repo) | Sloth is a MacOS application that allows users to see all open files and sockets used by all running processes on the system. It creates a graphical user interface over the command line tool, lsof, and adds functionality to the output, such as being able to filter through the results or kill specific processes. Using the tool, users can easily inspect and control what their apps are doing on their system. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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London HIV patient becomes world's second AIDS cure hope | An HIV-positive man in London is the second person in the world to be cleared of the virus after a bone-marrow transplant from an HIV-resistant donor. The operation was performed three years ago, and highly-sensitive tests conducted recently could not detect any trace of the virus in the patient. While the treatment was successful in this patient, many doctors say that this treatment is not a viable way of treating all patients. Donors with the specific HIV-resistant gene are required, and then these donors have to match with the patients, which reduces the number of viable treatments to a very low number. Scientists are now looking into gene therapies for the potential treatment of the disease. | 4Miscellaneous
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Renault Rethinks Last Mile Delivery with Fleet of Autonomous Pods | Renault unveiled an autonomous delivery vehicle called EZ-PRO. EZ-PRO is an autonomous, electric robo-pod concept that Renaults says is the "the future of agile, last-mile delivery solutions for every type of professional." The EZ-PRO leader pods have a human conductor on board, responsible for the delivery of goods and of maintaining the pod fleet. Basically it's like a train, where there's a human conductor, but any of the individual train cars (pods in this case) can break off and make their own delivery. There are pictures inside they look pretty robocoppy. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Free Discourse for Open Source (Hosting) | Discourse is an open source forum software company started by Jeff Atwood (co-founder/former CEO of Stack Overflow). Discourse started giving free hosting to a few open source projects a couple of years ago. Now, any project that has at least 15 contributors and a need for a discussion forum can apply to get a free hosted Discourse forum. If you're involved in any open source projects, this might be worth taking a look at. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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What's in a Good Error Message? | Good error messages for libraries and frameworks should convey context, what exactly failed, and what needs to be done to overcome the error. These error messages are typically seen by either software developers or ops, so a good error message can help save a lot of time and frustration. This article explores each of these requirements and provides some general best practices for writing good error messages. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Homemade Machine Learning (GitHub Repo) | This is an open source project with examples of popular machine learning algorithms implemented in Python with the math behind each explained. The purpose is to help data scientists and developers understand the mathematics behind the algorithms they use. Each algorithm has a simple explanation and a Jupyter Notebook with the implementation code. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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China to ban online gaming, chatting with foreigners outside Great Firewall | The Chinese Communist Party recently blocked Animal Crossing from being distributed in China due to custom items and scenes that players created in the game that supported the 'Free Hong Kong' movement. Players were also mocking the Chinese government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. The CCP has now noticed a vacuum in its authority on online gaming platforms and is starting to draft laws to expand the scope of online censorship to video games. These laws may even prohibit gamers from meeting and chatting with people outside of the country. Online one-player games will be subject to surveillance. The new laws also ban games that feature zombies and plagues, map editing, roleplaying, and the organization of unions. | 4Miscellaneous
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Undermoon (GitHub Repo) | Undermoon is a self-managed Redis clustering system based on Redis Cluster Protocol. It features horizontal scalability, high availability, cluster management, automatic failover for both master and replica, and fast scaling. An explanation of the architecture behind Undermoon is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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What technologies did you learn in 2018? (Hacker News Thread) | Pretty good mix of old and new technologies in here. A lot of new hotness like Rust and Elixir like you would expect, but also a lot of people still learning PHP and Perl! If you're looking for new technologies to check out, this thread has a lot of good inspiration. | 4Miscellaneous
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Huawei’s foldable Mate X2 leaks just before launch | Huawei has unveiled the Mate X2, a new foldable device with a large screen that unfolds from the inside. The phone features a second screen on the outside for use when the device is folded. As it is a Huawei device, the Mate X2 will launch without support for Google's apps or services. The phone will be available in China starting at around $2,785 for 256GB of storage or around $2,940 for 512GB of storage. Images of the device are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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The SEC Is Suing Kik for Its 2017 ICO | The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a case against Kik for the sale of its kin token in 2017. According to the complaint, Kik opted to sell a cryptocurrency token to the public to fund its operations, after unsuccessfully trying to raise funds through investors. The kin token appears to be classified as a security, which means that Kik had violated law which required offerings to be registered. Kik had averaged losses of $30 million a year and attempts to be acquired by larger technology companies have failed. The kin token is used across a suite of mobile apps as currency, and Kik continues to develop new marketplaces for people to earn and spend the cryptocurrency. A full copy of the SEC filing is available for viewing. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google to cut marketing budgets by as much as half, directors warned of hiring freezes | Google will be reducing spending on marketing by as much as half for the second half of the year. The company has also recently announced a hiring freeze for full-time and contract employees. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has previously said that Google would be pulling back on some of its investments due to the COVID-19 crisis, but did not mention drastic budget cuts or hiring freezes at the time. Google's investments will be redirected to areas such as data centers and machines, and non business essential marketing and travel. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google spin-off that stores energy in molten salt backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates | Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have both invested in a new Google spin-off company called Malta, which raised $26 million to create "solar salt", a form of salt that can store thermal energy. The idea is to use electricity from solar panels to power a heat pump, then store this energy in the salt. An advisor in Google's X division says "A lack of affordable, reliable grid-scale energy storage is currently limiting the shift to renewable energy. Malta's technology gives us a shot at storing all the renewable energy we create cheaply and reliably." | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Walmart Grocery is now offering a $98 per year ‘Delivery Unlimited’ subscription | Walmart Grocery has launched a new ‘Delivery Unlimited’ subscription. For $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, subscribers will be able to get unlimited included grocery delivery. Target’s Shipt currently offers a $9.99 pay-per-order option, and Instacart offers a $99 per year subscription. Amazon Prime is currently the most expensive delivery subscription option at $119 per year. However, the subscription includes delivery for more than just groceries. It is unclear which areas Walmart Grocery will deliver to at this time. Walmart’s entry into the grocery business has significantly boosted its earnings, with sales in the first quarter increasing by 37 percent. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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construct-js (GitHub Repo) | construct-js is a library for creating byte level data structures. It provides an expressive API made up of standard primitives that allow developers to specify and manipulate binary data. construct-js features signed and unsigned fields up to 64 bit, nested structs, string support, different struct alignments, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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'We've bought the wrong satellites': UK tech gamble baffles experts | The UK government is planning to invest hundreds of millions of pounds into OneWeb, a company that is building a network of satellites in low Earth orbit to connect people to the internet. OneWeb lobbyists convinced the government that the satellites could be redesigned to piggyback a navigation payload on them. Every major positioning system currently in use is in medium Earth orbit, while OneWeb's satellites are in low Earth orbit, which is not suitable for military-grade GPS systems. The UK government has been accused of choosing OneWeb for nationalistic reasons, ignoring industry policies. OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in the US in March. | 4Miscellaneous
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The Stable Marriage Problem and Modern Dating (12 minute read) | Online dating has risen significantly in popularity in the last couple of decades and has resulted in a ton of data regarding dating patterns in the modern age. An analysis of online dating patterns using the Stable Marriage Problem resulted in some insights about why dating can be difficult and why certain tropes exist. Being the initiator tends to result in more success. Women tend to have higher standards for men than men have for women, which may influence how people perceive others' relationships. The analysis showed that as a community grows, it becomes exponentially harder to match with people. | 4Miscellaneous
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Subsets and Splits