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Cybersecurity researchers trace Lapsus$ attacks to a teenager from England | Cybersecurity researchers investigating the recent Lapsus$ attacks have identified seven accounts associated with the hacking group. A 16-year-old living with his mother in England is believed to be the mastermind of the group. Rival hackers had posted his details online. The attacks were believed to be motivated in part by the desire for notoriety as the group didn't try to cover its tracks and made public announcements. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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A Single Shot Restored Vision to a Blind Child for an Entire Year | Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) is an eye disorder that affects the retina, causing severe visual impairment from infancy. It has a genetic component, and the associated mutation has been identified. A team of scientists recently injected a short RNA molecule into a group of LCA patients' eyes, which reversed the effects of the mutation and improved their retinal function and perception in daylight. Some improvements in visual acuity remained for more than 15 months. The method is a major step towards developing ways to improve vision in people who are genetically predisposed to suffer from eye-related diseases. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Tensorflow Course (Github Repo) | This is a repo of simple tutorials with ready-to-use code examples for learning Tensorflow. It has everything from basic arithmetic operations all the way to neural networks, so if you're looking to play around with Tensorflow, this is a great place to start! | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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3D Printed Homes Will Be the Teslas of Housing, Says ICON CEO | The US is in the middle of a housing shortage. Not only are there two million fewer homes built than needed every year, but construction quality and materials have also declined significantly. ICON is a company that makes 3D printed homes and structures. It is planning to build a 100-home community in the Austin area this year. The company aims to create the best homes on the market. A video showing off one of ICON's homes is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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My deepfake DALL-E 2 vacation photos passed the Turing Test | After a trip to Roatan, Matt Bell decided to run an experiment with his Facebook friends to see whether they could tell the difference between his real vacation photos and images generated by DALL-E 2, OpenAI's image generating AI system. 19 out of the 23 people who participated in a survey at the end of the photo reel missed the fact that there was something different about the DALL-E images. There could be many factors contributing to the results, such as it being a casual Facebook post and the fact that people are unfamiliar with ocean environments, but the experiment shows how far DALL-E 2 has progressed. The collection of images used in the experiment is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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YouTube no longer allows ‘instructional hacking and phishing’ videos | YouTube updated its list of ‘harmful or dangerous content’ banned from the platform, adding instructional hacking and phishing videos to the list. Other items on the list include ‘extremely dangerous challenges’, ‘violent events’, and ‘eating disorders’. A major channel that creates videos on computer security had its videos removed and was banned from uploading new content. However, the ban was quickly removed and the videos were restored after complaints from the community. An exception to the dangerous content rules exists for videos that are primarily educational, documentaries, scientific, or artistic. These rules are usually enforced by machine learning algorithms, and these algorithms have performed poorly at distinguishing between genuine content and targeted videos in the past. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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I Used to Work for Google. I Am a Conscientious Objector | A former research scientist at Google speaks out against the company’s practices as it complies with China’s demands for increased powers to monitor its citizens’ data. Executives argued that government requests were common for the company and that complying with their legal requirements was the right thing to do. However, compliance with these demands raised questions of whether it was right to use their technology to aid China in infringing on human rights. | 4Miscellaneous
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Wasmino = WASM + Arduino | Wasmino is an Arduino core that can compile your Arduino sketch to WebAssembly and run it in a browser. It has only been tested on Windows and Linux, but it will probably work for macOS. A 64-bit system is required due to some of its dependencies. The Arduino IDE is required. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Meta open sources early-stage AI translation tool that works across 200 languages | Meta has created a single AI model capable of translating across 200 different languages. It has open-sourced the project so that others can build on the work. Meta sees the universal speech translator as important for growth across its platforms. Machine translation helps the company better understand its users, and the technology could develop into a killer app for its future augmented reality glasses. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Difftastic (GitHub Repo) | Difftastic is a diff tool that understands syntax. It supports nesting, alignment, line wrapping, and a large list of languages. Difftastic uses a line-oriented diff for unrecognized extensions. Examples are available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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TikTok tests letting US users to apply for jobs with video resumes | TikTok is expanding into job recruitment with a pilot program that allows people in the US to apply for jobs by uploading videos to the platform using the #TikTokResumes hashtag. Approximately three dozen companies are taking part in the pilot. Applicants have until July 31 to apply for the first set of jobs. A link to TikTok's dedicated resumes website is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Samsung beats TSMC to production of 3nm chips | Samsung has started producing 3nm chips. Its new process is 45% more power-efficient than its previous 5nm process and it produces chips with 23% higher performance and a 16% smaller surface area. TSMC's 3nm process isn't expected to go into mass production until the second half of 2022. Samsung's chips will be manufactured in South Korea for now. Its Texas plant is not scheduled to start manufacturing until 2024. | 4Miscellaneous
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Researchers Demonstrate The World’s First Quantum Radar | A team of researchers in Austria have created the first quantum radar. Quantum entanglement is when pairs or groups of particles' quantum states cannot be described independently of the other's state even when separated by a large distance. The quantum radar works by creating pairs of microwave photons using a superconducting device called a Josephson parametric converter. It uses low power and is more precise than conventional radars used today. The quantum radar is able to reach larger distances while remaining undetectable over background noise. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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At long last, NASA’s probe finally digs in on Mars | The InSight lander has provided valuable data on Mars' activities. It has observed marsquakes, swirling vortices, weather, and the changing of seasons. Despite its successes, it has so far been unable to dig into the ground. A new plan has been developed to push the probe into the planet in order to track its temperature variations. It is likely that martian soil is too dense for the probe to dig through as designed. The probe only needs a small adjustment in order to dig through the ground, so NASA scientists have been trying to use the scoop at the end of InSight's robotic arm to readjust the probe. After failing to readjust the probe, the scientists decided to use the scoop to dig directly into the dirt. This was a risky decision as the scoop was not designed for digging and could break, but the current maneuver appears to be working. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Reseter.css (GitHub Repo) | Reseter.css resets all premade styles and normalizes the browser's stylesheet, removing most inconsistencies. An example is available in the repository. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Fastest-growing black hole in the universe eats the equivalent of one sun per day | The black hole known as J2157 consumes gas and dust equivalent in mass to the sun every day, making it the fastest-growing black hole in the universe. J2157 is 8,000 times larger than the supermassive black hole found at the heart of the Milky Way, or 34 billion times the mass of our Sun. It is classed as a quasi-stellar radio source, meaning that it is extremely bright. As it is very far away, scientists are only just now observing its gravitational influence from 1.2 billion years ago. It has likely grown since then. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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China’s CRISPR twins might have had their brains inadvertently enhanced | The removal of the CCR5 gene has been shown to have an effect on memory, cognition, and brain recovery. A lack of the CCR5 gene also protects against HIV, as the virus requires the gene in order to attach to a host. A scientist in China used CRISPR to delete the CCR5 gene in a pair of twin girls while they were embryos. It was claimed that the procedure was done in order to make the girls immune to HIV. The scientist is under investigation by China, but there is a lack of evidence that the procedure was done with the intent of enhancing the cognition of the twins. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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19 States Voting Records Being Sold on the Dark Web | The voting records of over 35 million Americans are available on the dark web. There are records from 19 states, and it's being hinted at that the data leak is not technical, it may be coming from a leaker within the government. You can buy voter records from a state for between $150 and $12500, battleground states tend to cost more. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Baby Shark is the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, and there’s no end in sight | Baby Shark has crossed 7.043 billion views, making it the most-watched YouTube video ever. Despacito was the previous record holder, gaining the title over three years ago. Baby Shark only had 2.5 billion views last April. The trend will likely continue. | 4Miscellaneous
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How to use undocumented web APIs | The information browsers send to the backend are just HTTP requests. There's no way for the backend to tell that a request isn't sent by a browser unless too many headers are removed. This article shows how anyone can access undocumented APIs by sending requests to endpoints authenticated with cookies. It uses Google Hangouts as an example and then points out some of the issues with the technique. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Spotify comes for audiobooks | Spotify is aiming at audiobooks as its next target for industry domination. The company is in the process of acquiring audiobook platform Findaway, with the deal currently under review by the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Spotify will apply the freemium model to audiobooks with ad monetization. The model would be a massive change for the industry and will greatly expand the market. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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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. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Giant rhino unearthed in China was one of largest mammals ever to live | A new species of giant rhino has been unearthed in north-western China. A completely preserved skull and jawbone was found in the Linxia Basin of Gansu Province, where people have been looking for mammal fossils since the 1980s. The giant rhino had a long neck, slender skull, and two cone-shaped upper first incisors. It would have looked more like a horse than a rhino, but with a head height of 7 meters. The rhino is estimated to have weighed about 21 tonnes. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Researchers one step closer to bomb-sniffing cyborg locusts | Locusts can smell explosives and technology can help us direct them and receive signals from them to determine what they are smelling. Scientists at the McKelvey School of Engineering have developed a biorobotic sensing system that can be implanted into locusts to detect and discriminate between different explosive scents, returning the information within a few hundred milliseconds of exposure. The system can determine how strong a scent is, making it ideal for use in searching for explosives. | 4Miscellaneous
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Audi develops and uses a virtual 3D world for WFH | Audi Spaces is an interactive 3D world that copies the real working environment. Participants can use it to communicate, learn, and work with others using avatars in real-time and in a virtual space. The avatars can make gestures, interact, and talk to each other. It allows for meetings, training sessions, workshops, and other office activities. Screenshots from Audi Spaces are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter's board of directors | Jack Dorsey has left the board of Twitter. Dorsey resigned from his CEO position last fall. He is friendly with Elon Musk and has discussed rolling over his 2.4% ownership stake in Twitter into Musk's takeover deal. Dorsey's next move remains unclear. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Japan to Have Blockchain-Based Stock Exchange in 2022 | SBI Holdings and the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) have partnered together to build the Osaka Digital Exchange (ODE), a blockchain-based stock exchange to compete against the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The exchange will allow investors to trade digital securities using blockchain technology. SBI and SMFG will set up the ODE in March. The exchange will start trading digital securities in 2023. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Jack Dorsey’s Square, Inc. is buying a majority stake in Jay-Z’s streaming service Tidal | Square is acquiring Tidal for $297 million in cash and stock. Tidal will operate independently alongside Square's other ventures. Square will use Tidal to help find new ways for artists to support their work. The company has given sellers of all sizes business and wants to do the same for artists. Tidal has struggled to compete against Spotify, and it has been behind on payments to rights holders since 2020. Jay-Z will join Square's board of directors as part of the deal. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and partnering with Facebook Gaming | Microsoft will be closing its Mixer service on July 22, with plans to move existing partners over to Facebook Gaming. Mixer has struggled to compete with Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming. The transition to Facebook Gaming will happen over the coming weeks. Existing Mixer Partners will be granted partner status with Facebook Gaming and streamers who were using the Mixer monetization program will be granted eligibility for Facebook's Level Up program. Viewers with outstanding Ember balances or subscriptions will receive Xbox gift card credit. Microsoft will be working closely with Facebook to bring its xCloud game streaming service to Facebook Gaming. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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‘My God, I’m in a whale’s mouth’: lobster diver on brush with hungry humpback | Michael Packard, a New England lobster diver, recently survived being trapped in the mouth of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod. He was able to keep breathing through his scuba tank. After half a minute, the whale surfaced and vomited him out. Packard was taken to hospital and discharged later that day. A humpback's esophagus won't accept anything larger than a melon, so the whale likely panicked. The area that Packard was diving in is known for gatherings of juvenile humpback whales. | 4Miscellaneous
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Create Dynamic Spinners only using CSS | This blog post teaches you how to build a dynamic spinner using only CSS. It breaks down each step of the animation to demonstrate how to put together a complex animation. The complete code is provided. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Netflix is raising the price of standard and premium plans in the US | Netflix will raise the prices of its standard and premium plans in the US over the next two months. The new standard plan is $14 a month, and the premium plan is $18 a month. Netflix raised prices in Canada earlier this month and the price increase in the US was expected. The company recently stopped offering free trials in the US. It is unclear whether prices will increase in Netflix's other markets. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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zmurl (Website) | zmurl lets you create a webpage for your zoom event. It allows attendees to see event information, RSVP to events, and add events to their calendar. A short video is available on the page that shows how the site works for both event creators and attendees. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple now lets apps send ads in push notifications | Apple will start allowing apps to use push notifications for advertisements, as long as users agree to receive the ads first. Users will have to explicitly opt-in to receive push notification ads, and there must also be an option for users to opt-out. Apple has bent its own rules over the past few years by sending out push notifications that were borderline advertisements. This behavior was criticized as other companies could have their App Store accounts banned for the same behavior. Apple's intention was for users to not be spammed with marketing messages, and the new policy relaxes these rules while still allowing users control over what they see. There were a few other updates regarding Apple's App Store rules, including an April 30 deadline for when Sign in with Apple has to be implemented. | 4Miscellaneous
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Work with APIs? Get better API observability in minutes (Sponsor) | Postman and New Relic have teamed up to help you get real-time visibility into your API performance in context of your other application performance metrics. Don't know where to start? The New Relic & Postman quickstart gets you up and running in minutes, for free. Learn more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Scientists Find Vital Genes Evolving in Genome’s Junkyard | Scientists had previously thought that essential genes were frozen in time, not evolving. Experiments have shown that the genes guiding the development of the body plans in fruit flies and mice can be swapped out because they are so similar. However, a new study has found that a large class of genes in fruit flies essential for survival are evolving extremely rapidly. The genes' ability to keep changing could be the key to their essential nature. The results also mean that gene scientists could be looking in the wrong place for important genes relevant to a variety of medical conditions and biological mysteries. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Apple took us on a surreal walk through San Francisco, looking at digital art on an iPhone | Apple's AR[T] Walk is a new program at Apple stores that takes people on an actual walk through a city while displaying digital art that can only be seen through an iPhone. The aim of the project is to promote augmented reality technology. AR[T] walk is available in six Apple stores in major cities, including New York, Hong Kong, and Paris. It takes about two hours to complete the walk. Reservations are made online, but if there are available spots, Apple will accommodate people who are there, so it is worth seeing if there are open spaces even if you can't make a reservation. During the walk, everybody is allocated a loaned iPhone XS Max with the non-public AR[T] app and a pair of Beats Solo headphones. The tour guides are able to control the experience from an iPad pro, and they also lead discussions about the artwork that is displayed. The walks will be available until at least the end of 2019. | 4Miscellaneous
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The 7 biggest announcements from Apple’s Peek Performance event | Apple announced a new version of the iPhone SE, a new desktop Mac, an external monitor, and more at its Peek Performance event. The new iPhone SE, which will launch on March 18, has 5G and will start at $429. Apple's new 27-inch 5K Studio Display costs $1,599 and can reach up to 600 nits of brightness. The display will support P3 wide color and work with macOS's TrueTone feature. The Mac Studio is similar to a Mac Mini but aimed at creative professionals. Customers will be able to choose between an M1 Max version starting at $1,999 or an M1 Ultra version starting at $3,999. More details about the announcements from the event are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How Does One Get Hired by a Top Cybercrime Gang? | The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced the arrest of a 55-year old Latvian woman who allegedly worked as a programmer for Trickbot. Trickbot has infected millions of computers and installed ransomware on many systems. The woman did not cover her tracks very well and her personal information was easily obtained by authorities. Trickbot's hiring model allows the gang to recruit a steady stream of developers cheaply and covertly. However, each new recruit increases the risk of investigators infiltrating the group. Ransomware attacks are nearly all instigated by ransomware affiliate groups, who are constantly recruiting new members. | 4Miscellaneous
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Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters | Amazon has canceled its plans to build a new headquarters in New York City after heavy resistance by lawmakers, progressive activists, and union leaders. Groups opposing the deal contended that the government should not provide the tech giant with the up to $3 billion dollars in incentives that it had promised. Amazon decided that dealing with the heavy resistance would not be beneficial to the company in the long term, however, it has decided that it will still continue growth in its existing branches in the city regardless of government subsidies. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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This is Sony’s Airpeak drone | Sony unveiled its new Airpeak drone at CES 2021. It is the smallest drone capable of carrying an Alpha camera. The drone was designed for video content creation and professional photography. It has a quadcopter design that features two retractable landing gear extensions. A video that shows off its capabilities as a chase camera is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Reshape (GitHub Repo) | Reshape is a zero-downtime schema migration tool for Postgres. It automatically handles complex migrations that would normally require downtime or manual multi-step changes by ensuring both old and new schemas are available at the same time during a migration. Reshape is still experimental and should not be used in production. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Scientists use sound to see around corners | Researchers in Long Beach, California have developed a device - a vertical pole fitted with standard microphones and small car speakers - that uses sound to see around corners. The microphones pick up echoes resulting from a series of chirps emitted by the speakers, and after collecting echoes from different positions, the scientists used algorithms from seismic imaging to reconstruct objects that were not visible from the device’s position. Using this method was faster and more accurate than current optical techniques. While the results are promising, the technique is still years from being able to be practically applied. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Tilck (GitHub Repo) | Tilck (Tiny Linux Compatible Kernel) is an educational monolithic x86 kernel designed to be the perfect playground for playing in kernel mode while being able to compare how the same usermode bits run on the Linux kernel. It is Linux-compatible at the binary level and can run mainstream Linux programs. Screenshots and more details about how Tilck works are available in the repository. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google traffic misdirected to China & Russia today, resulted in downtime for some services | Google Search, Youtube, and Google Cloud all experienced intermittent downtime for about an hour, due to their traffic being misrouted to locations in China, Russia, and Nigeria. This incident was due to BGP's flawed design, BGP (the protocol that defines how internet packets are routed) was designed to be a chain of trust between well-meaning ISPs and universities that blindly believe the information they receive. However, malicious actors can sometimes take avantage of it to hijack traffic (hackers hijacked Amazon's Route 53 DNS traffic in April to steal a bunch of Bitcoin). All data was encrypted, and Google does not believe that this was the result of a malicious attack, but they are investigating the issue. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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The PinePhone Pro brings upgraded hardware to the Linux phone | Pine64 is now taking preorders for the PinePhone Pro, the fastest mainline Linux smartphone on the market. It features a removable back with privacy dip switches to kill the modem and pogo pins that support a variety of attachable backs that can add extra functionality. The phone is designed for users who want to use a Linux-only smartphone and are willing to accept software limitations. It will start shipping on January 24. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tesla launches new virtual power plant that pays Powerwall owners to help end brownouts | Tesla and PG&E have launched a virtual power plant in California. A virtual power plant uses distributed energy storage systems to provide grid services. The new system will allow Tesla Powerwall owners to receive $2 per kWh when the grid needs emergency support. There are about 50,000 eligible Powerwalls, which adds up to 500 MWh of energy capacity. The move could turn Tesla into a major decentralized electric utility company. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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BrainNet is The World's First Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface | Researchers have created the world's first non-invasive brain-to-brain interface called BrainNet. It uses EEG to record brain signals and transcranial magnetic stimulation to deliver information to the brain. In an experiment, one person sees a game of Tetris and decides whether to keep or rotate the block. They then send this information through BrainNet to a second person who can't see the game screen, who must then decide whether to turn the block or keep it in position. The players were able to play the game with 81.3% accuracy. The researchers believe that this technology could eventually be used to create a '"social network" of connected brains.' | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Human-centred mechanism design with Democratic AI | Deep reinforcement learning can be used to find economic policies that people will vote for. | 4Miscellaneous
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity (Website) | The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity is an introduction to various online tracking techniques, online ID verification techniques, and creating and maintaining anonymous online identities. It is not sponsored or endorsed by any commercial or government entity. Links to online and PDF versions of the guide are available. | 4Miscellaneous
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Ex-NSA hacker drops new zero-day doom for Zoom | Zoom's popularity has recently rocketed and this has led to an increased focus on the company's security and privacy practices. Three bugs have been discovered, one that can be abused to steal Windows passwords, and another two that can be abused to take over a Zoom user's Mac, including tapping into the webcam and microphone. One of the Mac bugs allows a user with low-level privileges to inject the Zoom installer with malicious code to obtain root access. The other bug tricks Zoom into giving an attacker the same access to the webcam and microphone that Zoom already has without notifying the user. Zoom has not yet fixed the Mac vulnerabilities. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Blush (Website) | Blush is a tool that allows developers to use and customize illustrations from artists around the world. It is currently available as a plugin on Figma and as a web app. Additional integrations are coming soon. There are 13 collections of images with categories such as Fancy Plants, Cityscapes, Squiggles, and more. Blush's high-quality PNG images are free to use for personal and commercial purposes. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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zheap (GitHub Website) | zheap is a way to keep table bloat under control. It implements a new PostgreSQL storage engine capable of running "UPDATE - intense workloads" more efficiently. A link to a series of blog posts explaining how zheap works is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The Pentagon’s New Laser-Based Tool Uses Your Heartbeat to Track You | A new laser-based tool developed by the Pentagon can detect a heartbeat signature from up to 200 meters away. The laser uses a technique similar to common infrared heart rate monitors, and can positively identify a target as long as the target remains still. Biometric security may be convenient for smartphones, but the information that is used to keep your phone secure is the same information that can identify a person for surveillance reasons. Facial recognition is already being used to survey populations around the world, even when the technology isn’t perfect. Cardiac biometrics are significantly better at identifying individuals, with a 98 percent accuracy rate. Other biometrics such as voice are being researched to increase their ability to identify individuals accurately. Even ‘brain prints’ could eventually be used for our security and surveillance. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Take Your WordPress to the Cloud! (Sponsor) | Build, deploy, scale & manage Wordpress on AWS, Google, Digital Ocean, Vultr, or Linode with one click. Cloudways allows you to focus on your business and avoid all the cloud hosting hassles with their managed Wordpress service.TLDR readers get a $50 credit with coupon code tldr50. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Building a Feedforward Neural Network from Scratch in Python (18 minute read) | A feedforward neural network, also known as a Multi-layered Network of Neurons, is a network of models where information only travels forward through input nodes and output nodes. Traditional models such as the Perceptron are limited to linear functions. Multilayered-Network of Neurons are able to handle the complex decision boundary between inputs and outputs. This article is a guide on how to build and test a simple neuron network from scratch. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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How to Map Mouse Position in CSS | This article teaches you how to create a click-and-drag effect with pure CSS. Several examples of how to use the techniques taught in the article are available at the end. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Rust GPU (GitHub Repo) | Rust GPU is an attempt at making Rust a first-class language and ecosystem for building GPU code. It can currently compile and run simple shaders, but many things, such as loops and switches, aren't supported yet. An example rendering is available in the repository. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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This Electric Tiny Car Can Be Rented for the Price of an Electric Scooter | Recently, electric scooters, bikes, skateboards, and other one or two-wheeled self-balancing boards have emerged as alternative forms of transportation. Cars are often inefficient, getting stuck in traffic, not to mention the high costs of storage and upkeep for an often dormant, depreciating asset. Citroën has unveiled an 8-foot mini electric car with an 8-horsepower motor and a top speed of 27.9 miles per hour. It is technically classed as a quadricycle under French law, so anyone over 14 can drive one without a license. Its travel range is 43 miles, and it takes three hours to charge. The vehicle is only $6,700, or customers can choose to lease it for $5.67 a week after a $3,000 down payment. Ami will roll out in France in June, and it will be available later in Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Germany. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Excalidraw (GitHub Repo) | Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that allows you to sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them. A web version is available to use. It is built using React and Rough.js. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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London’s Crossrail Is a $21 Billion Test of Virtual Modeling (16 minute read) | Crossrail is currently the biggest engineering project in Europe. The network started construction in 2009 and fully opened in 2019. It carries an estimated 200 million passengers every year across its 40 stations. Crossrail was built using many technologies. The entire network was designed in a 3D virtual environment, which is used to help monitor every part of the network. Everything in the system was engineered to reduce energy use, improve safety, and streamline operations. This article details how Crossrail was built and explains some of the technology behind the network. | 4Miscellaneous
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LG’s Rollable phone is real and launching in 2021 | LG has confirmed that its Rollable phone will be available in 2021. The LG Rollable has a screen that can extend into a small tablet display. Details about the different display sizes have not yet been released. Other phone manufacturers will now likely race to roll out this rollable screen technology. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Epic Games buys a huge mall for its new global HQ | Epic Games is buying an old shopping mall and converting it into its new global headquarters. The Cary Towne Center was sold for $95 million. Epic has been based in Cary, North Carolina, since 1999. It has about two dozen subsidiaries and studios in other locations around the world. The Cary Towne Center has struggled to remain open due to online shopping, and much of the mall is blocked off. Its owners got the Cary Town Council to approve its rezoning, permitting Epic to use it for office space. Epic's new campus will include office buildings and recreational spaces. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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SpaceX Has Starry-Eyed Ambitions for Its Starship | Elon Musk unveiled SpaceX's prototype spaceship, Starship, a vessel that is roomy enough to fit 100 passengers that will be powered by a massive, reusable rocket. Starship will be involved in multiple missions to carry people to different cities on Earth as well as to the moon and Mars. The unveiling event marks 11 years since SpaceX reached orbit for the first time with the earliest version of its Falcon rockets. Last month, a Starship prototype levitated about 500 feet into the sky and then glided down. Musk aims to have the prototype fly to 65,000 feet within one to two months, and in orbit within six months. While SpaceX has demonstrated that it can reliably deploy satellites and cargo to space, it has never launched people. NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing are each building their own transportation systems to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, but the projects are behind schedule. | 4Miscellaneous
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Advanced NLP with spaCy: A free online course (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains an online course which can also be used as a framework to build other online courses. The course will teach students how to use spaCy to build advanced natural language understanding systems using rule-based and machine learning approaches. It features the use of slides, interactive code exercises, multiple-choice questions, and is completely customizable using Markdown with custom elements. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook launches an ‘Audio’ hub in the U.S. for podcasts, live audio, and short-form clips | Facebook has announced a new Audio destination in its mobile app for users in the US. The feature can be accessed through the Watch tab. It allows users to discover podcasts, Live Audio Rooms, and short form audio. Facebook is working on tools that will help it identify and act upon audio content that violates its Community Standards to prevent the platform from spreading more misinformation. Screenshots of the new feature are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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ClusterFuzz (GitHub Repo) | ClusterFuzz is a scalable fuzzing infrastructure which finds security and stability issues in software. Fuzzing involves providing random inputs into software in order to test for bugs. ClusterFuzz is highly scalable (Google runs 25,000 instances to test products like Chrome Browser) and is able to automatically file bug reports. Users are able to customize fuzzing conditions to suit their needs and monitor and manage statistics through a web interface. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Envisioning and Designing the Floating Future | Researchers are building floating buildings to test the viability of floating cities in the future. Floating structures could help make marine ecosystems healthier. They could protect coastlines from further erosion, especially in areas where densely-populated land may start sinking into the sea in the coming decades. Climate change is already affecting the world's oceans, causing habitat loss for marine species, ocean acidification, widespread coral bleaching, and even changes in ocean currents. Floating structures may be able to use their underwater surfaces to create new habitats for marine species to settle. A structure out in the sea before a coastline may be able to break up waves before they reach the shore, lessening the effects of erosion. While the work is still largely theoretical, the vision is to eventually build large modular structures that could link together to create communal, self-sustaining systems. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Tesla got hauled in by Chinese government after it quietly downgraded the chips in some of its Model 3 cars | Tesla Model 3 owners in China recently started to notice that their cars were being equipped with an older generation computer chip despite being told that the cars came with the newest chip installed. The Chinese government had ordered Tesla to shut down its Shanghai Gigafactory at the end of January. It re-opened on February 10, but the company is still trying to recover from the disruption. Tesla executives were summoned to explain the issue to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who ordered them to rectify the problem according to related regulations. Tesla has offered a free hardware upgrade for customers once production recovers, but some owners are looking at forming a class action suit. The newest chip is 21 times faster than the older generation chip, but Tesla insists that this makes almost no difference to the driver experience. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Facebook exposed up to 6.8 million users' private photos to developers in latest leak | Facebook accidentally exposed the private photos of 6.8 million users to 1500 apps using their API between the dates of September 12th to September 25th. Users affected by the breach should get a notification telling them that their data has been breached. They are working with the developers to get these photos removed. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Top 10 architectural oddities of 2021 | Some pretty wild architecture popped up in 2021. This article highlights 10 projects from around the world that offer something a little different. Entries include a house with a built-in skateboard ramp, a building that looks like a mirrored mixing bowl, an ultra-thin skyscraper, and a 100-foot-high sky pool between two high-rise buildings. | 4Miscellaneous
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TikTok is building its own AR development platform, TikTok Effect Studio | TikTok is building tools to allow developers to build augmented reality experiences and features on its platform. Effect Studio is currently in private beta testing. Developers can sign up for early access on TikTok's new Effect House website. Effect Studio is still an early experiment and might not make it to launch. TikTok has been increasing its investment in developer tools over the last few years, with a focus on toolkits aimed at third-party developers for better app integration. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Shopify's payment option to be added to Facebook, Instagram | Shopify is expanding its Shop Pay payment option to all users selling on Facebook and Instagram. It will be available to Instagram users in the US from Tuesday, and to Facebook users in the coming weeks. Customers will be able to use Shop Pay alongside other payment options such as Facebook Pay. This is the first time the feature has been made available outside Shopify's platform. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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The Psychological Trap of Freelancing | Freelancing may provide freedom from having to go to a workplace every day for a certain amount of hours in exchange for a paycheck, but this freedom may come with some unforeseen problems. One of those problems is that once you start freelancing, your livelihood is completely dependent on your own effort and your time becomes significantly more valuable than if you just got a steady paycheck. This results in freelancers becoming increasingly more anxious as they monitor their time more closely. In the end, the article suggests that freelancers need to have stronger boundaries with themselves and their time in order to have a healthy work-life balance. | 4Miscellaneous
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JS Cloudimage 360 View (GitHub Repo) | JS Cloudimage 360 View is a tool that creates a 360 degree view virtual tour of a product. Adding images to a page is simple and there is a large list of options to use to customize the view. Responsive integration and lazy loading are available through plugins. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Amazon pauses new grocery signups, hires another 75,000 workers | Amazon is attempting to catch up with demand by hiring 75,000 new part and full-time employees and by limiting new signups to its services. Third-party sellers will be able to resume shipping non-essential items through Amazon’s fulfillment service later this week. Amazon has increased Whole Foods’ online order capacity by more than 60 percent since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, but it still expects that customers will have difficulty finding open delivery slots. Customers are encouraged to shop in-person if they are able to. Employees are not immune to the virus, and tensions within the company are high. Science & | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How Apple could kill CAPTCHAs with Private Access Tokens | Apple plans to kill CAPTCHAs with its new Private Access Tokens technology. Private Access Tokens can prove that an HTTP request is coming from a human by recognizing if a client device is following typical user patterns. Signed tokens are sent to servers in a multi-step process that doesn't involve the server knowing anything about the device or user. Using Private Access Tokens requires a device running iOS 16 or macOS Ventura. Apple is working to make Private Access Tokens a web standard. More on how the technology works is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google Duplex rolling out to non-Pixel, iOS devices in the US | Google Duplex is currently available in 44 US states on Pixel devices and will soon be available on non-Pixel and iOS devices. The rollout will likely happen in stages as Google continues to test the platform. Google Duplex allows users to make restaurant bookings using Google Assistant. It calls restaurants on your behalf and organizes the booking before emailing you a confirmation and setting a calendar event on your phone. A video is available demonstrating how Google Duplex works. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Walt Disney Imagineering is developing walking animatronics | Disney's Imagineering team's newest robotic initiative is about building extreme Marvel and Star Wars characters such as The Incredible Hulk and Yoda. Project Kiwi aims to create advanced robotics to bring characters that humans can't believably play to life. Robots won't replace cast members, but park guests will soon be able to see non-human characters walking around. Some characters will be combinations of humans with animatronics. While iconic attractions will probably stay, their old animatronics will likely be replaced with more believable and mobile ones in the future. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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What I loved about Paul Allen by Bill Gates | A touching eulogy by Bill Gates for his late friend and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who he met when he was in 7th grade. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Facebook's smart glasses could give you hearing superpowers | Facebook Reality Labs has developed technology that allows headsets to enhance targeted sounds while dimming loud background noises. At the moment, the technology exists as an in-ear monitor that pairs with an eye-movement tracking device. The eye-movement tracking device identifies what the user is looking at and amplifies the volume for whatever the person is focusing on. This could be combined with other technologies Facebook has developed to create virtual maps of both physical objects and sounds surrounding the user. The technology can be used to immerse people in virtual environments, creating sounds that feel like they are produced in real space. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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NASA simulation shows kaleidoscope of sunsets on other worlds | Geronimo Villaneuva, a planetary scientist from NASA, created a collection of sunset simulations while making a computer modeling tool for a possible future mission to Uranus. The simulation can display the known sky colors of Uranus, Earth, Venus, Mars, and Titan, showing the Sun setting from the perspective of someone standing on these worlds. The simulations have been implemented into the Planetary Spectrum Generator, an online tool that helps scientists replicate how light is transferred through the atmospheres of planets, exoplanets, moons, and comets. Videos of the simulations are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data | A subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot sold highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies. Jumpshot says it has data from 100 million devices, which it received from Avast. The data includes Google searches, location lookups and GPS coordinates in Google Maps, and browser history information. Using the data, it is possible to identify individual users and the search terms they used on a wide range of sites, including YouPorn and PornHub. The data doesn't contain users' names, but there is enough specific browsing data to deanonymize certain users. Avast collected the data via a browser plugin designed to warn users of suspicious websites. It claimed to have stopped sending customer data to Jumpshot after the data collection was publicly exposed in 2015, but documents indicate that the data collection is still ongoing through the antivirus software itself. Jumpshot sells a variety of different products based on the data. | 4Miscellaneous
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Major book publishers sue Amazon’s Audible over new speech-to-text feature | Seven book publishers have jointly filed a lawsuit against Audible because of a new speech-to-text feature that they claim is a violation of copyright law. A new feature called Captions allows users to view a transcribed text of an audiobook as it plays. It is restricted to view only the section where the audio is currently playing, generating text as the audio is played. The US Authors Guild claims that the feature is copyright infringement and would lead to fewer ebook sales and lower royalties for authors. Amazon says that the feature was designed to help people to engage with reading more through listening, and that Captions was never intended to be used to produce text copies of books. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Alphabet’s Loon sets a new record for longest stratospheric flight | One of Alphabet's Loon balloons spent 312 days aloft, breaking the previous stratospheric flight record of 223 days. It flew 135,000 miles over the 10 months, launching in Puerto Rico and landing in Mexico. Loon's balloons go through millions of simulated flights before they are even created. Alphabet has fine-tuned the manufacturing process to remove the tiny defects that drastically shortened its earlier flight attempts. Google carefully monitors the data from the balloons during flight to make adjustments and to maximize flight time. Longer-lasting balloons cost less and provide more consistent connectivity for those on the ground. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tesla Model 3 zips through Boring Co. tunnel at 116 mph in latest video | A new video shared by a Tesla board member shows a Tesla Model 3 transporting two passengers between the corner of Prairie & 120th Street to the corner of Crenshaw & Rocket Rd in Hawthorne, CA. The car reached speeds of up to 116 mph and completed the trip in about one minute. At the moment, Autopilot is enabled up to 90 mph, but Tesla will soon be increasing it to 125 mph. The Boring Company built the one-mile tunnel at a cost of $10 million. Tunnels of the same type usually cost more than $500 million. Tesla has been approved to build two tunnels underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, and a new tunnel connecting Washington DC and Baltimore is currently being considered. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Britain intervenes in Nvidia's $40 billion Arm takeover on national security concerns | The UK government has issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice on Nvidia's proposed takeover of Arm. A report on the competition and national security aspects of the deal will be compiled before July 30. While the UK government wants to support the tech industry and welcomes foreign investment, it has to consider the national security implications of a transaction of this nature. Nvidia does not believe that the transaction poses any material national security issues. | 4Miscellaneous
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Windows 11 leak reveals new UI, Start menu, and more | An early version of Windows 11 has leaked online ahead of its unveiling on June 24. It features a new user interface, Start menu, and more. The OS reuses many parts of Windows 10X, an operating system for dual-screen devices that was canceled. Microsoft is overhauling its Windows app store to allow developers to submit any Windows application and it is considering allowing third-party commerce platforms in apps. It is also improving the Xbox experience by integrating the Xbox app to offer quick access to Xbox Game Pass games, the social parts of the Xbox network, and the Xbox store. Screenshots from the leak are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Australia passes social media law penalising platforms for violent content | A new bill passed by the Australian government will make it an offense for service providers and hosting services to fail to notify the Australian Federal police regarding, or fail to remove, content which contains 'abhorrent violent conflict’. The Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material bill was met with opposition by the tech industry as it would punish companies for content uploaded by users. However, the aim of the bill was to make companies more responsible for the content that is hosted, as it seems that some companies do not care about hosting offensive content, even after requests for the content to be removed. | 4Miscellaneous
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The Meltdown of IRON | The IRON stablecoin was partially collateralized with USDC, with the rest coming from TITAN, a volatile asset. If the price of IRON fell below $1, arbitrage traders could buy it and then redeem it with the IRON treasury for $0.75 USDC and $0.25 worth of TITAN. This caused traders to dump IRON and collect risk-free profit, which then devalued TITAN to nothing. The smart contract that holds the USDC to be redeemed requires the price of TITAN to be above zero for it to be unlocked, so now all the coins are stuck. This could have been easily prevented with a code audit. | 4Miscellaneous
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Facebook details AI that can understand videos | Learning from Videos is a project from Facebook that uses AI to automatically learn audio, textual, and visual representations from videos. The project has led to improvements in Facebook's core AI systems and will enable entirely new experiences. This article explores some of Facebook's AI systems, including Generalized Data Transformations, wav2vec 2.0, Audio Visual Textual, TimeSformer, and speech recognition. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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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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China's first nuclear reactor using Hualong One tech connected to grid | Hualong One is one of the world's most advanced nuclear power reactor designs. It was developed in China. The reactor is designed to operate for 60 years, with 177 reactor cores which are replaced every 18 months. It features both active and passive safety features and a double-layer safety shell. The first Hualong One nuclear reactor was successfully connected to the grid in the Fujian Province on Friday. It will undergo various tests before starting commercial operations later this year. The achievement is significant for the country's energy restructuring plan and pursuit of low-carbon development. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Supercomputer shows 'Chameleon Theory' could change how we think about gravity | Scientists at Durham University have demonstrated that there may be another valid explanation for gravity that would still be compatible with the way our universe works. Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is the foundation of modern cosmology and plays a major role in our everyday life. The Chameleon Theory is an alternative to General Relativity which says that gravity changes according to the environment. Simulations run by the team at Durham demonstrate that the same galaxies would form in the universe regardless of which theoretical model was used. These simulations will be further tested by observations using the Square Kilometer Array telescope that will begin operating in 2020. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using the app | WhatsApp users will have to share their personal data with Facebook by February 8 or they will no longer be able to use the app. After WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, it gave its users an option to opt-out of having their account data turned over to Facebook. Its new updated privacy policy will now require users to share phone numbers, contact information, profile names, profile pictures, user status, and diagnostic data. The change is part of a move to allow businesses to store and manage WhatsApp chats using Facebook's infrastructure. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How to Learn Web Development in 2021 - a Web Developer Roadmap (12 minute read) | This is a guide for learning Web Development in 2021. It covers essential tools, programming languages, libraries/frameworks, and example projects. An 11-minute video version is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Apple to close US retail stores and all others outside China until March 27th | Apple will close all of its retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27 in order to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission. The online store will remain operational, as well as the stores within China. Customers will still be able to find authorized repair shops that remain open or arrange mail-in service. Employees will still be paid while the stores are closed. WWDC 2020 will be an online-only experience when it happens in June. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Dapr (GitHub Repo) | Dapr is a portable, serverless, event-driven runtime for building resilient, stateless, and stateful microservices that run on the cloud. It codifies best practices for building microservice applications into building blocks to enable development with the language and framework of your choice. Dapr can transition seamlessly between platforms and underlying implementations without rewriting any code. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook's ready to talk about how its AR glasses will work with neural wristbands | Facebook's first pair of smart glasses are being released this year. The next generation of smart glasses will work alongside a soft wristband that measures hand and finger gestures and provides haptic feedback. It will use neural input tech to convert electrical impulses into inputs. A short video demonstrating how the setup would work is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Wails (GitHub Repo) | Wails is a Go web development framework that allows developers to wrap both Go code and a web frontend into a single binary. It provides tools for handling project creation, compilation, and bundling. Wails is multiplatform and features pre-built templates, auto-generated TypeScript definitions for Go structs and methods, a unified eventing system, and much more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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