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Uber to purchase Postmates for $2.65 billion . Uber will purchase Postmates for $2.65 billion. Postmates will be combined with Uber Eats. The deal is expected to be announced as soon as today. The combined companies will have a 37% share of food delivery sales in the US. DoorDash will still remain the largest competitor with a 45% market share. GrubHub, which has a 17% share of the food delivery market in the US, was recently sold to Just Eats for $7.3 billion. 🚀 Science & |
We should be teleporting, not transporting: Mark Zuckerberg; Hints Facebook Labs working on it in Clubhouse chat show . Mark Zuckerberg detailed Facebook's progress in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in a Clubhouse meeting recently. A combination of AR and VR will unlock the ability for anyone to live anywhere they want, opening up a lot of economic opportunities. People will be able to 'teleport' into their workplace, reducing commutes, which will have a positive impact on the environment and other benefits. A 25-minute recording of the Clubhouse stream is available in the article. |
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. |
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. |
Cancer cells hibernate like "bears in winter" to survive chemotherapy . A new study suggests that all cancer cells can enter into states of dormancy as a survival mechanism. The mechanism is similar to embryonic diapause, a process used by hibernating animals. Some mammals can undergo embryonic diapause when environmental conditions are unfavorable, essentially pausing an embryo's development until conditions become more favorable. Disabling this process makes chemotherapy much more effective. The study sheds light on why some people have been resistant to chemotherapy. |
Suture (GitHub Repo). Suture is a refactoring tool for Ruby that helps in refactoring legacy code by making it safe to change code that is not confidently understood. It can be used in local development, staging environments, and even in production. A 45-minute introductory video is available. |
Airbnb will start designing houses in 2019 . Airbnb has launched an initiative called Backyard, that will "design and prototype new ways of building and sharing homes". The project will concentrate on using sophisticated manufacturing techniques, smart-home technologies, and insight from the Airbnb community to design the homes of the future. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia says "Backyard isn't a house, it's an initiative to rethink the home". |
So Long TNT, There's a New Explosive in Town . Bis-oxadiazole is a new explosive chemical that is less toxic to produce and more explosive than TNT. TNT has been used for more than 100 years as it can be liquified and poured into molds and shells to produce bombs. However, manufacturing it produces a lot of waste that can harm the environment and the workers that produce it. It is commonly combined with other chemicals to increase its explosiveness. Bis-oxadiazole has a melting point around that of TNT, with residue from manufacturing that will decompose much more easily in the environment. |
PyTorch-BigGraph (GitHub Repo). PyTorch-BigGraph (PBG) is a is a distributed system for learning graph embeddings for large graphs. It trains on an input graph by identifying the source and target entities in the list of edges of the graph and outputs a feature vector for each entity, attempting to place entities with a similar distribution nearby to each other. PBG is able to train a number of models from the knowledge graph embedding literature, including TransE, RESCAL, DistMult, and ComplEx. |
The 'Iron Man' body armour many of us may soon be wearing . Exoskeleton technology is increasingly being worn in real life around the world. These external devices support and protect their users, giving greater levels of strength and endurance. Exoskeletons are now being developed for a variety of daily activities. They are being tested in factory environments to reduce the risk of injury. Global exoskeleton revenues are expected to rise to $6.8 billion in 2030. This article contains an overview of several exoskeleton tech projects. |
isomorphic-git (GitHub Repo). isomorphic-git is a pure JavaScript implementation of git that can read and write to git repositories and fetch from and push to git remotes without any native C++ module dependencies. It is designed to be a complete solution and it features type definitions for static type-checking and intelligent code completion. |
Why we should fear a cashless world . Health food chain Tossed has just opened the UK's first cashless cafe, another step towards the death of cash, an alarming trend. A cashless society would make every payment traceable, allowing for unprecedented control by financial institutions and governments over the lives of citizens. In addition, it is primarily the poor who have been locked out of our financial system, how can those too poor to open a bank account or get a credit card even operate in a cashless society? Going cashless has the potential to further trap the poor in an endless cycle of poverty. Cash means total financial inclusion, something the well off too often take for granted. |
The LinkBuds are Sony’s strangest earbuds in years — and surprisingly good . Sony’s new LinkBuds are an open-style earbud with a unique and comfortable style, fantastic voice call performance, and a transparency mode to keep wearers aware of their surroundings. The battery lasts around 5.5 hours with an additional 12 hours through case recharges. They are made using recycled materials, giving them a speckled look out of the factory. The earbuds come in black or white and weigh around four grams each. This article contains a review of the earbuds and features many photos. |
New details and images emerge of SpaceX’s Starlink user antennas and planned beta testing . Images of Starlink's user terminals were found on SpaceX's Starlink website. They look like a 'UFO on a stick', just as Elon Musk had once described. Musk noted that the design had slightly changed since the images were produced. The terminals have motors to self-orient for optimal view angle and won't require an expert installer. Private beta testing for the network is expected to begin later this summer, with a public beta following soon. Beta testers will receive a Starlink kit, Wi-Fi router, power supply, and mounts for the system. They will be required to test the system between 30 minutes to an hour each day and provide feedback to SpaceX. Beta testers won't be charged for their terminals, but they will have to pay $1 to test out SpaceX's billing system. |
Mars (GitHub Repo). Mars is a tensor-based large-scale computation framework. It's sort of like an alternative to Numpy that is easy to scale out to clusters with thousands of machines. The interface is pretty similar to Numpy's, though obviously it's not as mature as Numpy is yet. |
A nuclear fusion device pushes plasma to a record-breaking 100 million degrees . UK-based Tokamak Energy has broken a world record in nuclear fusion by achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy. It achieved the milestone in only 5 years at the cost of less than £50 million. The company will now upgrade the tokamak to test other new fusion technologies. Its research will inform the design of a fusion power plant estimated to start operation in the early 2030s. |
The robot revolution has arrived (23 minute read). Robots are everywhere. They have been performing tasks for us and slowly replacing humans in the workforce even before the pandemic. Now, the need for robots to replace human workers seems like a medically wise decision. The workplace of the future will be an ecosystem where humans and robots work together to maximize efficiency. There are many examples of humans already working with robots, which are described in detail in the article. The aim of many robot developers is not to replace humans, but to fill a current need. |
Virgin Hyperloop hits an important milestone: the first human passenger test . Virgin Hyperloop conducted a test of its ultra-fast transportation system with human passengers on Sunday afternoon at the company's DevLoop test track near Las Vegas, Nevada. The hyperloop pod transported two passengers down the 500-meter track at 100 miles per hour. Virgin Hyperloop has so far conducted over 400 tests on the track, but this is the first time with human passengers. The pod used for the passenger test was a scaled-down version of what the company hopes will eventually be a pod capable of carrying up to 23 passengers. There are still many hurdles to overcome before hyperloop technology becomes viable. |
Beautiful Codes (Website). This site lets you edit the look of your code, then download it as a PNG. You can change the background color, font, theme, and more. The site displays a preview of the code. |
Drexa (GitHub Repo). Drexa is an Alexa skill that allows a parrot mini-drone to be controlled via voice commands. Users with a Bluetooth enabled drone and raspberry pi can tell their drone to take off, land, rotate, move in a certain direction, or take a predetermined flight path. A video is available of Drexa in action. |
Watch Samsung show off its robotic BB-8 lookalike Ballie, AR glasses, and exoskeleton demo . Samsung held its CES 2020 press conference on Monday. The show featured robots, exoskeletons, AI, augmented reality, smart cities, and other technologies. The highlight of the show was Ballie, a robotic sphere fused with Samsung's artificial intelligence technology. It can recognize people, stream video, and operate smart home gadgets. A five-minute video showing these technologies is available. |
Leaked audio captures Sundar Pichai discussing leaks at Google . Leaked audio from an all-hands meeting at Google recorded Google CEO Sundar Pichai responding to concerns regarding recent hires, management, and trust. Google had recently hired a former Department of Homeland Security staffer who had defended a travel ban on citizens of predominantly Muslim nations. Employees who had been part of protest walkouts have claimed that they faced retaliation for their efforts. A new Chrome extension by Google automatically reports any staffer who creates a meeting event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants. Staff claim that the extension was created to target dissenters, but managers say that it was created to reduce potential calendar spam. Pichai discussed the trouble of maintaining trust and transparency at scale, especially when internal discussions have been leaked for use against the company and some of its employees. |
Etsy debuts shoppable virtual house . Etsy House is an interactive augmented reality experience that lets shoppers tour a virtual home decorated with items from the Etsy marketplace. The house features true-to-scale renderings and 360-degree imagery, displaying items, furniture, artwork, and other goods. Users can view product information and get links to purchase items if they like what they see. Many other retailers have started using AR and virtual reality to help customers visualize products remotely and to improve social shopping. |
The Iodide notebook (GitHub Repo). While sharing scientific results is easier than ever, sharing results, or even allowing others to look at the data and manipulate it themselves, can be a complicated problem. Iodide aims to solve this problem by providing an interactive programming environment to allow scientists to work flexibly and collaboratively with minimal friction. The browser-based platform allows you to tell the story that you want while having the live, editable code only one click away. Users can review papers and the code/data that the papers are based on inside their browsers, without having to use multiple sources and files or having to install any extra software. Many example notebooks are available, along with a detailed tutorial on how to use Iodide effectively. |
AWS launches re:Post, a new community-driven Q&A service . re:Post is a new community-driven question and answer service designed to help AWS customers remove technical roadblocks. The service replaces the original AWS Forums. Community members can earn reputation points by providing accepted answers and reviewing answers from other users. Content on re:Post can be accessed without signing in, but a profile will be required for posting and interacting with others. |
The World's Coldest Inhabited Place Is Burning Because of 'Zombie Fires' . Zombie fires are burning in Russia’s Oymyakon region, the world's coldest inhabited place. Zombie fires are fires that have stayed burning underground. They are linked to climate change. Fires burned through 18.16m hectares of forest in the region in May and the area saw its warmest-ever June this year. A video from the area showing smoke coming out from under snow and ice is available in the article. |
Roomba’s creator made an autonomous lawnmower robot . iRobot has announced today it’s first autonomous lawnmower robot. Unlike other autonomous lawnmower robots which require a wire to be laid down to define the robot’s boundaries, iRobot’s lawnmower robot uses a wireless beacon setup. There is also a mobile app where grass height can be tweaked and other information about the robot can be monitored. |
Google is making some big upgrades to directions in Google Maps . New features were recently announced for Google Maps, including tools for indoor navigation and eco-friendly driving routes. Live View augmented reality directions will soon be available at airports, transit stations, and malls in select cities. A revamped interface for picking transportation modes is rolling out globally over the next few months. Users in Australia, India, and the US will soon be able to view air quality in Maps, and a weather layer is rolling out globally. Screenshots of the new features are available in the article. |
Google Introduces TensorFlow Developer Certification . Google has launched a certification program for TensorFlow. Candidates will be tested on their ability to develop and train deep-learning models using TensorFlow. Candidates who pass can be listed in Google's world-wide Certification Directory. The exam fee is $100 and the certification is valid for three years. More technical details are included in the certification handbook, which is linked in the article. |
Venmo to launch its first credit card in 2020 . Venmo has announced its plans to launch a credit card. It will partner with Synchrony, the company behind PayPal's Extras Mastercard and Cashback Mastercard. Synchrony is behind around 100 other cards in total and has financed more than $140 billion in sales with 80.3 million active accounts. Venmo has yet to become profitable, despite its widespread adoption. The new card will be launched to US Venmo users in the second half of 2020. |
America’s First DAO Approved in Wyoming . The American CryptoFed DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) is the first legally recognized DAO in the US. It is based on the EOS protocol instead of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency most commonly associated with DAOs. Wyoming lawmakers voted in March to pass a bill, which came into effect in early July, allowing DAOs to be officially registered in the state. The law gives DAOs the same rights as a limited liability company. DAOs are governed by smart contracts and do not have the hierarchical control structures seen in traditional companies. |
React Hook Form (GitHub Repo). React Hook Form makes it super easy to integrate and create forms that are fast performing and compact. A live demo is available. There is also a form builder to create custom forms for testing. |
SpaceX may spin out internet-from-space business and make it public . The president of SpaceX's Starlink business has said that the company is considering going public as it is ripe to do so. Starlink has already launched 240 satellites and plans to launch up to another 1,440 satellites this year. These satellites are designed to beam down broadband internet coverage all over the world. Elon Musk is known for hating publicly traded companies and has said in the past that SpaceX won't be going public until its Mars vehicle is complete. SpaceX has recently been valued at around $33.3 billion. The revenue from Starlink will help fund SpaceX's plans to send people to the Moon and Mars. Those in the astronomy community have criticized broadband satellite projects as the resulting constellation could obstruct their observations of the night sky. |
Google still plans to kill Chrome's existing adblock APIs . Google’s plans to remove the APIs that content blocking extensions use will continue despite pushback from the developer community. It plans to replace the APIs with a more limited API which limits the number of filter requests that are possible. The changes will come when Google upgrades its Chrome extensions platform which will still be a few months away. Firefox now has the ability to block tracking scripts natively without any extensions required. |
Tesla cars will soon talk to pedestrians . Elon Musk has tweeted a video showing a Tesla vehicle playing a recorded clip to passing pedestrians. The feature will apparently let Tesla owners communicate with people outside the car without having to open their windows. There are no further details on how the system would work. It is unknown whether drivers will be able to speak directly to people on the outside of the vehicle or if it will only support pre-recorded speech. The system could be helpful for alerting people to a driver's intentions without having to use the car horn. |
Artificial leaf produces first drugs using sunlight . Scientists have used artificial leaves to create targeted molecules. Artificial leaves are made of translucent materials that allow sunlight in, directing it to tiny microfluidic channels that contain liquids. Using energy from sunlight, a chemical reaction can be triggered in the liquid. This method can potentially make any carbon-based molecule. It is able to convert sunlight into biomass with 10 percent efficiency, which is 10 times more than the most efficient plants. The leaves have successfully produced drugs that are effective against malaria and parasitic worms. As the leaves are small, portable, and scalable, they can be used to manufacture drugs in areas where they are needed most, saving the costs and trouble of transporting medicine over long distances. |
Google reportedly set a goal of being a top-two cloud player by 2023 . Top executives at Alphabet debated whether the company should stay in the public cloud business back in 2018. They decided to aim to become a top-two player by 2023. Google's main business is web search and advertising, but it has a cloud computing department that rents out computing and storage resources to other companies, schools, and governments. Alphabet stated in July that Google Cloud generated $8 billion in annualized revenue. Its performance lags behind Amazon Web Services, Alibaba, and Microsoft Azure. |
China's Infinity-Loop Skyscraper is One of the World's Most Interesting Buildings . OPPO is building a new tower in Hangzhou, China. The O-Tower will have an infinity-loop-shaped design with an open courtyard. It aims to become an iconic landmark and gateway to the larger business district. The building's form provides the large floors with the daylight access and fresh air of a slender tower. Images of the tower design are available in the article. |
For the first time, a spacecraft has returned an aging satellite to service . A communications satellite has been restored and returned to service in geostationary orbit. Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle-1 was able to dock onto the Intelsat 901 satellite while in orbit and then navigate it to a new orbital location. The MEV-1 will provide five years of life extension services to the satellite before moving it into a graveyard orbit, after which it will still be able to provide additional mission extension services. Services such as these offer satellite providers a way to extend the lifetime of their assets, as well as to remove satellites that have lost communication with the ground. 💻 |
FORTRAN.io (Website). Fortran.io is an open-source web framework for Fortran. It is like PHP where FastCGI runs a script that outputs HTML strings. The webpage page is a demo that is served by a Fortran server. It includes a search function that queries an SQLite database. |
A new breakthrough could turn windows into active solar panels . A team of researchers has created perovskite cells with a conversion efficiency of 15.5% that allow more than 20% of visible light through. The technology will allow solar windows to reach glazing levels, making them more useful for real-world applications. The new cells display exceptional long-term stability when tested under constant illumination and heating, making them appealing candidates for scaled device manufacture. |
This Prepper Is Building a Post-Apocalyptic Internet . The Reticulum Network Stack is a 'prepper' version of the internet that is designed to exist alongside or on top of the traditional internet. It is a streamlined communications tool that can be quickly deployed in case of systemic telecom failure. The system is designed so that anyone can easily build secure and long-range networks with simple tools. It can run on almost any device and can be put together with minimal telecom and computer knowledge in about an hour. More information about the Reticulum Network Stack is available in the article. |
Microsoft launches business school focused on AI strategy, culture and responsibility . There is a need for business leaders to understand AI and how it can be used, as more companies start to integrate the technology into their practices. Microsoft has launched the Microsoft AI Business School, which is a free master class series to show business leaders how to lead with confidence in the age of AI. The course is non-technical and focuses on strategy, culture, and responsibility. It uses case studies of companies which have completed the transition to using AI technology to demonstrate how to successfully implement AI in their business. |
Researchers Found a Way to Send Tiny Robots Into Mouse Brains . Researchers in China have managed to treat brain tumors in mice by using microscopic robots to deliver drugs directly into their brain tissue. The robots were coated in E. coli, which tricked the rodents' immune systems into attacking them, absorbing the robots and cancer-fighting drugs in the process. They are magnetic and can be remotely controlled by a rotating magnetic field. There is still a lot of work before the robots can be used in humans, but the design could lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of various brain diseases. |
Komodo dragon gives birth to three hatchlings without male partner . A female Komodo dragon at the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee has given birth to three hatchlings without a male mate. DNA testing of the hatchling's DNA confirmed that the Komodo dragon conceived via parthenogenesis, a phenomenon where an egg fertilizes another egg. Komodo dragons are very aggressive and live in isolation, so they evolved to sometimes reproduce via parthenogenesis. Only male hatchlings result from this process, which has only been observed in 0.1% of vertebrates. |
Alphabet and SoftBank’s solar-powered drone provides first LTE connection . Alphabet and SoftBank recently announced that they successfully ran a stable LTE connection from a solar-powered drone 62,000 feet high. The connection was used to make an international video call between Japan and the US. Alphabet's Loon provided the communications payload while SoftBank's HAPSMobile built the aircraft. The Sunglider is an enormous solar-powered drone designed to fly for months at a time. It looks like a single massive wing powered by 10 propellers. A short video showing the test flight is available in the article. |
Designer Camera (Mac Desktop App). This is a Mac desktop app that lets you easily make a rotatable 3D mockup of your iOS app in just a few seconds. It's a free download with no email required. |
Wireit (GitHub Repo). Wireit makes npm scripts smarter and more efficient. It automatically runs dependencies between npm scripts in parallel, watches and re-runs scripts on changes, caches output locally and remotely on GitHub actions for free, and it works with single packages, npm workspaces, and other monorepos. Wireit is still in alpha. |
New Anthony Bourdain documentary deepfakes his voice . Roadrunner is a new documentary about the life and death of Anthony Bourdain. The filmmaker used AI technology to digitally recreate Bourdain's voice for three audio quotes. There is a growing industry for AI voice replication. A sample of the AI-generated audio from the documentary is available in the article. |
South Korea is building a $40 billion city designed to eliminate the need for cars . Construction on Songdo City started in 2002, and will finish in 2020, spanning 100 million square feet (about the size of Boston) in northwest South Korea. The goal was to put everything closer to housing so people could walk or use public transportation instead of driving everywhere. There will be no trash trucks, just a system of tubes that sucks the trash from chutes into a central sorting facility. 40% of water will be recycled. There are already 70,000 people working there and the government hopes there will be 300,000 people eventually living in the futuristic city. |
Artificial intelligence robots boost Chinese food factories, paving way for mass use . More than 10 traditional Chinese food manufacturers took part in a trial where artificial intelligence was used for taste testing their products to ensure the quality of their food. It is estimated that the taste testing robots boosted manufacturers' profits by over $44.5 million since 2015. The robots automatically adjusted the production line conditions so that all products had the same color, smell, and taste. The job was previously done with humans and the process was slower and more limited. Chinese food is complex and varied, and standardizing recipes has been met with some opposition, so while there are regulations that describe how some food is to be cooked and presented, these are not enforced. |
Dagger (GitHub Repo). Dagger is a portable devkit for continuous integration/continuous delivery pipelines. It allows software teams to develop powerful CICD pipelines with minimal effort. Dagger pipelines can run on any Docker-compatible runtime, making them compatible with most modern CI runners out of the box. |
Cloudflare, Apple, and others back a new way to make the Internet more private . Whenever you access a website, your browser gets the website's IP from a DNS resolver which is typically operated by either your ISP or a service such as Google's 8.8.8.8. These queries are unencrypted, so it is possible for someone to monitor which sites are being visited or even redirect the request to a fake website. A new technique developed by Cloudflare, Apple, and Fastly, called Oblivious DNS, can prevent this snooping and make the Internet more private. Engineers are still measuring the performance cost of implementing the protocol, but early results appear promising. |
Facebook’s new fantasy sports-like prediction games let you blast your boldest picks to everyone you know . Facebook Fantasy Games are fantasy sports-like prediction games that let users guess what will happen in sports, TV shows, and pop culture. The games will roll out first for mobile users in the US and Canada. Games will have public leaderboards, but users can make their own public or private leagues. Users won't be able to wager real money on the games through Facebook. Facebook launched a website for its cloud gaming service in July, and it also offers a game streaming service. |
I generated this set of icons in 3D style using DALL-E 2 by @OpenAI . This Twitter thread features 3D icons generated by DALL-E 2. It shows the text prompts used to generate the icons and explains how keywords were used in the prompts. While DALL-E only exports in 1024x1024px, the images would work fine as small icons on a website. |
Amazon's Prime Air can officially begin drone delivery trials in the US . Amazon has officially become an air carrier, with the Federal Aviation Administration granting Amazon Prime Air approval to begin its first commercial delivery trials in the US. The FAA still needs to define regulations beyond the trial phase, so it may still be a few years before a full commercial drone delivery service is available. Amazon has not revealed when or where it will begin its trials. It will be using its hexagon-shaped next-gen hybrid drones for the project. |
Webiny (GitHub Repo). Webiny is an open-source platform created for building modern web apps. It allows developers to easily develop serverless Content Management Systems powered by GraphQL and React. It features a visual website builder, image editor, themes, and more. Users can use Webiny to create websites, build APIs, and make web applications. The Webiny website contains a CMS guide and developer tutorial, as well as a community forum. |
iPhones with 'Fortnite' installed are being sold for as much as $10,000 after Apple pulled the game from the App Store . Fortnite was removed from Apple's App Store last week due to terms-of-service violations. While users can't install the game on their devices anymore, Apple has no way of removing existing installations. Some iPhone owners who already had the app installed listed their devices on eBay with listing prices as high as $10,000. Apple is working with Epic to resolve the issue, so it is unlikely that Fortnite will stay banned forever. |
Quantum Katas (Github Repo). This is a Github Repo from Microsoft, with tutorials and exercises for learning quantum computing and their new quantum computing language Q#. |
Brain implant allows mind control of computers in first human trials . The Stentrode device is an implant that has the potential to treat a wide range of neurological conditions using electrical stimulation. It is implanted through a keyhole incision in the neck, where it can monitor electrical signals coming from the brain and also stimulate brain regions that correspond with particular muscle movements. In its first human trials, the Stentrode brought about significant quality-of-life improvements for two Australian men living with motor neurone disease. A two-minute video showing one of the patients talking about their experience with the Stentrode is available in the article. |
Opacus (GitHub Repo). Opacus enables training PyTorch models with differential privacy. It was designed for machine learning practitioners who are new to training models with differential privacy and for differential privacy scientists who want to experiment and tinker with the library. Opacus supports training with minimal code changes and allows the client to track their privacy budget expended at any moment. |
These Ants Can 'Heal' Wounded Trees in a Fascinating Symbiotic Relationship . An accidental slingshot hit on a Cecropia tree in Panama led to the discovery that the ants that live inside these trees often fix damage to their living homes. Azteca alfari ants have a well-known mutually beneficial relationship with the trees. The ants use material found within the plant stem to make the repairs. It appears that the ants mostly repair areas where the damage might put the brood at risk, but more research is needed to clarify this. |
Emoji under the hood . All text inside computers is encoded with numbers, with the most popular system being Unicode. Unicode defines around 150k characters, which covers all the scripts used on Earth, along with other symbols. Emojis are included in the Unicode table, which is why they can behave like any other text. This article explores the seven different ways emojis can be encoded and shows how the techniques can be combined to construct complex messages. |
Teleport 9 - Introducing Machine ID (Sponsor). Big release from Teleport today! Teleport 9 now includes Machine ID: the identity-based access for machine connections. Learn more in this blog post. |
Drago Anguelov (Waymo). Waymo is a self-driving technology development company, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Self-driving technology is developed through obtaining a large amount of data, creating machine learning models from the data, and then a lot of testing. While there has been huge leaps in the last few years with the development of the technology, there is still a lot to be done, as the problems needed to be solved before a safe, reliable, self-driving car are vast and complex, requiring a lot of testing in multiple environments. Drago Anguelov presents the results of these tests and also discusses the problems that need to be solved before self-driving cars become a viable reality. |
Apple buys Intel’s smartphone modem business . Apple has bought Intel's smartphone modem business for $1 billion. The deal includes the acquisition of intellectual property, equipment, and around 2,200 Intel employees. Intel will continue to develop 5G modems for non-smartphone devices. This deal means that Apple will soon be able to produce its own custom hardware for its smartphones. Apple currently relies on Qualcomm for its hardware, a relationship that has caused problems in the past. Qualcomm requires customers to agree to high patent royalty fees before supplying hardware. |
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. |
This Tech Conference Is Being Held on an Animal Crossing Island . A free tech conference called Deserted Island DevOps was held on April 30th. The event was held inside the game Animal Crossing and it was streamed live on Twitch.tv. Speakers held talks on an Animal Crossing island build specifically for the conference. More than 1,000 people registered for the event, |
Uniqlo’s Tokyo warehouse is 90 percent robotic and yes, the robots can even fold shirts . Uniqlo has managed to automate 90 percent of its flagship Tokyo warehouse. The facility includes a two-armed robot that can fold and box t-shirts. Uniqlo's parent company, Fast Retailing, partnered with robotics startup Mujin to produce the industrial t-shirt folders in order to reduce reliance on human labor. Japan has embraced automation as a potential solution to its aging population, falling birthrates, and shrinking workforce. The t-shirt folding robots are unlikely to be seen at local Uniqlo retail outlets any time soon. |
The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future . Starship is a startup that uses six-wheeled, microwave-sized robots to deliver food in campuses across the US. With a simple app, Starship now has hundreds of robots in service delivering food to real customers. The robots run at a low cost, do not require tips, and are more popular than ever as they start to displace human-driven food deliveries. For Starship to work in a city, it must create a map, get approval from city officials, sign up with commercial partners, and make sure it has enough back-end resources to support each robot. This makes its rapid growth particularly impressive as it continues to deploy robots around the world. |
Larry Page is quietly funding efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine . Google co-founder Larry Page has been funding flu-fighting efforts through private, for-profit companies. Flu Lab is a company that provides funding for flu vaccine development initiatives. It funds a program called Shoo The Flu that provides flu shots for school children in Oakland, California. Shoo The Flu's director is also the CEO of Flu Lab. The goal of the funding is to create a universal flu vaccine, which would mean that one shot would protect people for more than one flu season. A final product is still likely years away. As both companies are private, they are not required to file public tax returns, nor are they required to reveal what they do with the money that they receive. |
Feathr (GitHub Repo). Feathr is an enterprise-grade, high-performance feature store. It was built to simplify machine learning feature management and improve developer productivity. Feathr can be used to define features, compute them for training, deploy them in production, and share them across teams. It can significantly reduce the time required to add new features to model training workflows and improve runtime performance. |
Japan successfully tests flying car which hovers steadily for a minute . A flying car unveiled by NEC at a facility in the city of Abiko was able to hover steadily for about a minute using its four propellors during two brief demonstrations. Japan aims to be using flying cars by 2030 to connect islands in the Mie resort area. Dubai is also aggressively pursuing the technology. Flying cars are defined as aircraft which are electric, or hybrid electric, with driverless capabilities and the ability to take off and land vertically. They are also known as EVtol, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Compared to helicopters, they are less expensive to maintain, produce less noise, and don't require trained pilots. Uber is also launching a similar technology called Uber Air, starting demonstrator flights in 2020 and commercial operations in 2023. |
Awesome Hacker Search Engines (GitHub Repo). This repository contains a list of search engines that are useful for penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, red team operations, and bug bounties. It includes categories for exploits, mail addresses, threat intelligence, web history, and much more. |
Amazon hit by extensive fraud with hackers siphoning merchant funds . Unidentified hackers were able to siphon funds from merchant accounts over six months on Amazon last year. The attack targeted about 100 accounts and transferred cash from loans and sales from merchant accounts into their own bank accounts at Barclays and Prepay Technologies. Amazon issued around $1 billion in loans in 2018, and it is unclear how much the hackers stole. |
Wirelessly Rechargeable Soft Brain Implant Could Cure Brain Diseases . Researchers from Korea have invented a smartphone-controlled soft brain implant that can be wirelessly charged after being fitted into a user's brain. It enables long-term neural circuit manipulation without the need for periodic surgeries to replace the implant's battery. The device uses micrometer-sized LEDs to wirelessly manipulate target neurons via light. It uses a circuit that integrates a wireless energy harvester with a coil antenna and a Bluetooth low-energy chip to generate electricity inside the device for charging. The technology used in the implant could be applied to a variety of other implants to reduce the burden on patients for long-term use within the body. |
The UAE is Using Drones to Control Dubai's Weather . The United Arab Emirates often sees high temperatures and little rainfall. It has invested $15 million in nine different rain-enhancement projects. One of those projects involves using drones to jump-start rain production through cloud seeding, a process where clouds are zapped with an electric charge, charging the droplets inside. The technique makes the droplets inside the clouds big enough to fall out, creating rain. Potentially carcinogenic chemicals are sometimes used in cloud seeding. |
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says she is stepping down . Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from her role as Chief Operating Officer at Meta. Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 and helped turn the company into an advertising juggernaut. Javier Olivan will take over as COO this fall. Sandberg will now be able to focus more on her philanthropic work. She will continue to serve on Meta's board of directors. |
Apple promises third-party payment options in iOS for South Korean users . Apple is introducing third-party payment options for iOS in South Korea. South Korea recently passed new legislation to open up the perceived monopolies of Google and Apple's app stores. Apple will charge developers a reduced fee to implement third-party payment options. The exact details, such as how much Apple will charge developers or when the new changes will begin, have yet to be announced. |
BlockLike.js (GitHub Repo). BlockLike.js is an education JavaScript library that bridges the gap between block-based and text-based programming. It was designed following Scratch concepts, methods, and patterns. BlockLike.js is environment independent and can be used anywhere modern JavaScript runs. |
Dopefolio (GitHub Repo). Dopefolio is a multipage portfolio template for developers. It is easy to set up, free to use, and can run without any additional frameworks or libraries. A playground demo is available. |
Bitcoin Comes to Whole Foods, Major Retailers in Coup for Digital Currency . A new retail initiative will see many major retailers start to accept cryptocurrency as payment. The initiative comes from a partnership with Flexa, a payments startup, and Gemini, a Winklevoss-owned digital currency company. Existing scanners will be able to scan a QR code from a cryptocurrency wallet app for payments. The app, Spedn, supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Ethereum, and Gemini Dollar. While there is a large list of retailers who will be able to support these payments, none have given any official statements, probably as the payment system is still experimental. |
eBay is suing Amazon over allegedly poaching its third-party sellers . eBay is suing Amazon for allegedly using eBay's messaging system to lure third party sellers to Amazon's marketplace. eBay wants to ban Amazon from ever using its messaging system in this manner again, and is also seeking unspecified monetary damages. eBays terms of service prohibit using the messaging system to promote outside businesses, and Amazon's employees were sending up to 120 messages a day without purchasing anything. |
Facebook introduces portable Portal Go for $199 . Facebook has announced two new Portals and upcoming software updates. The brand-new Portal Go can be taken out of its dock and carried around. It has a 10-inch display and will be sold for $199. The new Portal+ will feature an improved design and a 14-inch display at $349. Both Portals will have a 12-megapixel camera with an ultra-wide field of view and use Facebook's Smart Camera technology. They will also have built-in camera lens covers and buttons to disconnect the camera and the microphone. The new software updates include Household Mode and an updated Watch Together experience. |
LinkedIn cuts 960 jobs as pandemic puts the brakes on corporate hiring . LinkedIn reported on Tuesday that it would cut about 960 jobs due to the sustained impact that the coronavirus pandemic is having on the demand for its recruitment products. The company helps employers assess a candidate's suitability for roles, and employees use the platform to find new jobs. Sales and hiring roles will be cut and the company will provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for US employees. Employees affected by the job cuts will also be allowed to keep company-issued equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions. No other layoffs are planned. |
Murderer on the run in China turns himself in because he doesn’t have a health code . China has introduced a color-based QR code system to control where people can go. Chinese citizens are assigned a red, yellow, or green code to indicate their health status. People with a yellow status are asked to self-quarantine for seven days and those with red codes are asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. The codes are generated inside mini-programs within WeChat and Alipay. A man who committed a murder in 1996 turned himself in as he didn't have a smartphone, which meant that he didn't have access to a code, making it impossible for him to travel or find accommodation. |
Apple Threatens to Terminate Epic Games' Developer Accounts on August 28 . Apple plans to terminate Epic Games' access to its App Store and app development tools by August 28. This includes the development tools required to create software for the Unreal Engine. Epic has filed a court order in Northern California to remove the restrictions that Apple has placed on it. The dispute started when Epic attempted to introduce a direct payment system in its Fortnite app to defy Apple's App Store rules. |
Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches . Storyliving by Disney is a new part of the company's theme park division that plans to develop a series of communities for residential living. Its first location will be a community of 1,900 housing units in California's Coachella Valley. Disney is partnering with third-party developers on the project and will not own, build, or sell the homes. It will only manage the branding and marketing of the communities. A video with concept art of the communities is available in the article. |
How do Spotify Codes work? . Spotify codes can be used to easily share Spotify songs, artists, playlists, and users. They work like the Intelligent Mail Barcode, which stores information in bars by setting them to different heights. This article breaks down the codes and how they work, explaining the process of reverse-engineering the system. |
Python-Mini-Projects (GitHub Repo). This repository contains a collection of simple Python mini-projects to enhance your Python skills. Completed projects are reviewed by a team of contributors. |
SpaceX ISS docking simulator (Website). This simulator allows you to fly with the actual interface used by NASA astronauts to manually pilot a virtual SpaceX Dragon 2 vehicle to the International Space Station. Operating instructions are available. Remember to slow down! |
T-Mobile, Sprint consider dropping Huawei, expect US security clearance for deal . The US national security panel has been conducting a review of the T-Mobile and Sprint merger that was announced in April. It looks like the merger will be approved as early as next week, as both companies have agreed to consider curbing their use of Huawei equipment. US officials say Huawei is controlled by the Chinese state and might have back doors built into their networking equipment. Huawei says these claims are unfounded. |
China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon . Two cotton leaves have grown from a mini biosphere that was part of an experiment onboard China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft, which landed on the far side of the moon earlier this year. Other seeds, fruit-fly eggs, and yeast were also contained in the biosphere, but only the cotton produced positive results. The cotton died on the onset of the first lunar night as temperatures dropped to minus 190 degrees Celsius. This is the first time a seed has sprouted on the moon. The team behind Chang'e-4 plans to send more biology payloads, including some with animals, into space for future missions. |
Geologists Discover Largest Underwater Volcano, Explain Weird Hum Heard Around the World . Scientists have recorded the largest ever underwater volcanic eruption after investigating a weird seismic event off the coast of Africa. Researchers were trying to determine the source of a seismic hum that could be heard across the world when they discovered the volcano forming in the Indian Ocean. It is unknown whether the volcano is completely new or whether it has formed on top of older volcanic structure. A nearby French Island, Mayotte, has sunk 13 centimeters and moved about 10 centimeters to the east as a result of the volcano. |
‘It’s time’: Blue Origin teases ticket sales for its New Shepard rocket . Blue Origin announced on Thursday that the company will soon be selling tickets for seats on its New Shepard rocket. People can now register their interest on the Blue Origin website. A link is available in the article. The company will announce more details on May 5. |
Auth Considerations for Kubernetes - Free eBook (Sponsor). Everyone is talking about Kubernetes! Apps running in these workloads probably have the concept of users. And where you have users, you have auth. We'll cover topics like service-to-service communication, RBAC, OIDC mapping, and more. Download the eBook today! |
axum (GitHub Repo). axum is a web application framework that takes full advantage of the tower and tower-http ecosystem of middleware, services, and utilities to get timeouts, tracing, compression, authorization, and more for free. It can route requests to handlers with a macro-free API, declaratively parse requests using extractors, and generate responses with minimal boilerplate. axum uses a simple and predictable error handling model. Usage examples are available. |
How Disney’s ‘real’ lightsaber patent actually works . Disney Parks' chairman recently ended a presentation by showing off a retractable lightsaber. The design appears to be based on a patent registered in 2018. This article contains a description of how the design works. 3D animations of the lightsaber's internal mechanism are available. |
5 reasons the iPhone XR will succeed where iPhone 5c failed . The iPhone 5C failed because it was literally just the parts from an iPhone 5 put into a new plastic shell. It was also pitched as a "budget" iPhone, and had a new unproven design. The iPhone XR can succeed where the iPhone 5C failed because it is actually a premium phone (it costs $749), it is meant for people who bought the iPhone 8 last year instead of the iPhone X (which introduced a sort of "super flagship" $999 price point). The iPhone XR looks like an iPhone X from the front and the iPhone 8 from the back, so it's a proven design, and given Apple's scale (they now sell over 220 million iPhones a year, whereas when the 5C came out they only sold about 150 million per year) it will be much easier for the iPhone XR to succeed. |
Virgin Hyperloop Shows off the Future: Mass Transport in Floating Magnetic Pods . Virgin Hyperloop is developing its technology at a site in the desert just north of Las Vegas. Its passenger pods travel at up to 750 miles an hour through vacuum tunnels using magnetic levitation. The system is able to react to turbulence and cancel it out. Each pod can seat 28 passengers and can be customized to carry other cargo over both long and short distances. The first commercial operations will begin as early as 2027 in India and Saudi Arabia. |