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Learn Puppeteer & Playwright (Website) | This website contains tips, tricks, and in-depth guides on Puppeteer and Playwright. Puppeteer is a Headless Chrome Node.js API and Playwright is a Node.js library to automate Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Recent guides cover topics such as clicking and typing, navigating and waiting, and working with selectors. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Mind-Controlled Flamethrower | Nathaniel F built a mind-controlled flamethrower by combining brain-computer interface technology with machine learning. The system fires the flamethrower when it detects the correct thought patterns. It was created using a Mindflex, a Raspberry Pi 4, an Arduino, and a flamethrower. A 7-minute video showing how the flamethrower was made is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Windows code-execution zeroday is under active exploit, Microsoft warns | Microsoft has warned users that attackers are actively exploiting a Windows zero-day vulnerability that can execute malicious code on fully updated systems. The security flaw exists in the Adobe Type Manager Library, consisting of two code-execution flaws that can be triggered by the improper handling of maliciously crafted fonts. Until a patch is available, Microsoft recommends that users disable the Preview Pane and Details Pane in Windows Explorer, disable the WebClient service, and rename ATMFD.DLL or disable it from the registry. Users should also be wary of suspicious requests to view untrusted documents and install a patch once it becomes available. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Developer Burnout: Why It Happens and What We Can Do About It (11 minute read) | This article discusses burnout and ways to deal with it as a developer and as a manager looking after a team. Burnout can cause people to experience feelings of exhaustion, increased mental distance, demotivation, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. Being able to identify and name the factors that lead to burnout can help people find solutions to manage stress and avoid burnout. The article covers the definition of burnout, the internal and external factors that cause it, the different stages of burnout, how to measure burnout, and much more. | 4Miscellaneous
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Artificial Intelligence cheatsheets for Stanford's CS 221 (GitHub Repo) | This repository contains notes that sum up all the important information that is covered in Stanford's CS 221 Artificial Intelligence course. It has cheat sheets on each artificial intelligence field and compiles these concepts into a compact form that can be carried anywhere. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Thousands Of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin | Over 4,000 Swedish people have opted in to being microchipped, and the biggest microchip company Biohax International says that it can't keep up with demand. Microchips the size of a grain of rice are inserted into users' hands for just $180, and allow users to enter homes, offices, and gyms by swiping their hands against chip readers.They can also store contact details, social media profiles, and etickets for events and trips. One user says "The chip basically solves my problems. I see no problem for it becoming mainstream. I think it's something that can seriously make people's lives better." | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Microsoft Edge surpasses Safari as the second most popular desktop browser | Microsoft Edge is now the second-most popular desktop browser after Google Chrome. A recent analysis by Statcounter shows that Microsoft Edge has surpassed Safari in users. The number of Safari users is decreasing, possibly due to the redesign introduced during WWDC 2021. Firefox almost surpassed Safari in February. | 4Miscellaneous
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Anti-aging molecules safely reset mouse cells to youthful states | As the body ages, it becomes less efficient at repair, resulting in diseases like Alzheimer's, heart disease, and cancer. Scientists from the Salk Institute have reversed the aging process in mice by using four reprogramming molecules called Yamanaka factors. The molecules reset the mice's cells to more youthful states, making them resemble younger animals in many ways. Mice that were treated for longer periods showed more beneficial effects. The next steps in the research will be to improve the delivery of the molecules and see how long the effects of the therapy can last. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Responder (Open Source) | This is a Python web server framework by Kenneth Reitz (the author of the excellent Python requests library). It comes with a lot of nice stuff out of the box like GraphQL support, SPA support, and built in OpenAPI schema generation. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Israeli bee tech startup Beewise pulls in $80m investment for robotic beehives | Beewise is an Israeli startup that makes a robotic beehive that can monitor and care for honeybees around the clock. The Beehome uses robotics, artificial intelligence, imaging, a software platform, and a mobile app to look after up to 24 bee colonies at a time. It automatically controls climate and humidity and sends alerts when human intervention is required. The Beehome can even harvest the honey that its bees produce. Beewise recently announced a new version of its Beehome after raising $80 million in funding. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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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. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Robinhood says a hacker who tried to extort the company got access to data for 7 million customers | Personal data for more than 7 million Robinhood customers was accessed during a data breach on November 3. The attacker attempted to extort the company after the attack was contained. No social security, bank account, or debit card numbers appear to have been exposed and the affected customers didn't lose any funds in the incident. The attacker obtained a list of emails for around 5 million people. Around 310 people had additional personal information exposed, and about 10 customers had more extensive account details revealed. The company is in the process of notifying those who have been affected. | 4Miscellaneous
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Meta announces plans to build an AI-powered ‘universal speech translator’ | Meta has announced an AI research project to create translation software that works for everyone in the world. Roughly 20% of the world speaks languages not covered by current translation tools. Many of these languages don't have easily accessible texts in the quantity required to train AI systems. Meta will develop tools to train AI models using fewer training examples and a system to directly translate speech in real-time without the need for a written component to serve as an intermediary. There is no set timeframe for completing the project. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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A US firm is turning Arabian Desert air into bottled water | Zero Mass Water, an Arizona-based technology firm, is using renewable energy to harvest water from the air to create bottled water at a plant near Dubai. Its bottling plant runs on solar energy. The bottles that Zero Mass use are recyclable and the bottle caps are made from bamboo. Zero Mass will only be able to produce up to 2.3 million liters annually, selling the water at around $3.80 a liter. Gulf nations are finding ways to reduce their heavy dependence on food imports as it deals with the pandemic disrupting global supply chains. The technique that Zero Mass is using could be used to supply indoor farming setups with water in dry countries. | 4Miscellaneous
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Android Messages update handles Apple iMessage reactions properly | Google Messages on Android can now properly display emoji reactions sent from the iPhone's Messages app. Before the update, Android users would see a separate text message when receiving an emoji reaction. The emojis sometimes appear different on Android. The feature is still rolling out, so it may not appear for all users yet. A screenshot of a chat with emoji reactions on Android is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Floating UI (GitHub Repo) | Floating UI is a low-level JavaScript library for positioning floating elements. It is tiny and features hyper-granular control of every positioning behavior and a powerful middleware system for extensions. Floating UI can run on any JavaScript environment that provides measurement APIs. Examples are available on the main website. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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First Apple TV+ AR app launches with 'For All Mankind' backstory through mixed reality | 'For All Mankind: Time Capsule' is now out on the iOS App Store. The augmented reality experience was built using Apple's ARKit framework. It includes exclusive experiences for the latest iPad Pro, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The app lets users interact with virtual objects through the lens of their devices. It adds on to the story in-between seasons of For All Mankind, but knowledge of the series isn't required to enjoy the app. A short ad for Time Capsule is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Instagram clones TikTok with new short-form ‘Reels’ video feature launching today | Reels is a new feature from Instagram that has rolled out in 50 countries. It focuses on entertaining short-form video just like TikTok. TikTok is currently facing a ban in the US. Reels offers creative tools, with a 15-second limit for each mini clip. Tools include adding audio, AR effects, setting a timer and countdown for recording, video alignment, and speed editing. Reels can be shared publicly or made private to followers. The new feature is still being tested and may change. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How to Create a CSS Typewriter Effect for your Website | This article teaches the reader how to create a CSS typewriter effect that reveals text gradually as if it is being typed. Adding typewriter effects can help engage readers and keep them interested in reading further. The effect is best used on small portions of non-critical text. Practical examples of use cases are provided. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Google’s AirDrop competitor, Nearby Share, is reportedly getting a big upgrade | Android's Nearby Share feature is getting a new 'self-share' mode that will let users send files between their own devices with a single tap. The feature will only send files between devices that are physically close to the user and signed into the user's Google account. Other devices can still receive files using Nearby Share, but they will have to accept each file request. There is no release date yet for the feature. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google buys NYC campus for $2.1 B, one of biggest office deals in history | Google has purchased a 1.3 million-square-foot waterfront building in New York City. The company had signed an agreement to lease the Hudson Square office building in 2018. The lease terms included an option to buy the building. Google currently has 12,000 employees in New York and plans to add at least 2,000 more. The company recently rolled out an internal pay calculator to determine salary cuts for employees who choose to continue to work from home. Employees who choose remote work will have their pay adjusted according to their distance from Google's offices. | 4Miscellaneous
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Inside the Longest Atlassian Outage of All Time (17 minute read) | Atlassian is currently experiencing its longest outage ever. Almost 400 companies lost access to Atlassian Cloud services starting on April 4. The company estimates that many customers will not be able to access its services for another two weeks. This article discusses the timeline of events, the cause of the outage, the impact of the outage on customers and Atlassian's business, and lessons learned from the outage. The outage was caused by a script that accidentally deleted all customer data for anyone using a plugin that was being retired. | 4Miscellaneous
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This is my new favorite (free) | GitHub Actions is a continuous integration tool that also works as a general-purpose code execution platform. It is built into a website that people use to manage their everyday projects. Projects can be deployed and run using GitHub Actions. This tutorial will show you how to build a weather bot and deploy it using GitHub Actions. It will show you how to securely store environment variables, configure details within repositories, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The only time you'll hear ppl cheer for a rocket to explode (Twitter Video) | SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule was launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday, and about 84 seconds after liftoff, it ejected itself from the rocket to simulate emergency procedures. Bad weather had delayed the test, which was planned for Saturday. With the test's success, the first astronaut mission could happen as soon as April. A 17-second video is available that shows the Falcon 9 rocket exploding during the test. | 4Miscellaneous
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Scaling our Spreadsheet Engine from Thousands to Billions of Cells (10 minute read) | Causal is a spreadsheet with a complex calculation engine that executes formulas on an in-memory, multidimensional database. This article discusses how Causal plans to scale from millions to billions of cells. Causal still doesn't smoothly support one billion cells yet, but its team is confident in its ability to iterate to its goal. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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CSS Grid Generator (GitHub Repo) | The CSS Grid Generator allows people to use CSS Grid features quickly to generate dynamic layouts. Users set the parameters for the grid, and create divisions by clicking and dragging along the generated grid. Once the user is happy with the design, they can click a button to copy the code to their clipboard. The generator is hosted on a website, but users can choose to download the code and run it on their own servers if required. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Instacart workers are organizing national boycott to reinstate a default 10 percent tip | Instacart workers will be holding a protest against the company next week in order to push for the reinstatement of a 10 percent default tip on all orders. They plan to start a social media campaign to encourage customers to #DeleteInstacart until the company restores the 10 percent tip. Workers claim that Instacart has lowered pay steadily over the last few years, reducing the default tips from 10 percent to 5 percent in 2016. It introduced an earnings structure in 2018 that resulted in less pay for most of its laborers. Workers' tips were being factored into their minimum payments, but Instacart reversed the policy after widespread criticism. Instacart later eliminated its bonus program. An IPO may be on the horizon for Instacart, which had a valuation of around $8 billion last year. | 4Miscellaneous
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TikTok traders are pumping joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin | Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency based on an old internet meme. Day traders on TikTok recently started encouraging people to buy the cryptocurrency, causing it to quickly rise in value. The official Dogecoin Twitter account warned people to be careful about their investment choices and to be mindful of people's intentions when telling them to invest in a particular asset. Dogecoin has no cap on its supply, unlike Bitcoin, a feature that practically guarantees inflation. | 4Miscellaneous
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What a World at Home Looks Like (3 minute video) | Public spaces around the world are now nearly deserted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This video shows many normally-crowded locations empty of people, some of them appearing to be completely deserted. In locations where there are still people, they are few and spread apart. | 4Miscellaneous
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Pigs Can Game, Scientists Discover | Scientists have confirmed that pigs can game. Four pigs showed a remarkable ability to play a joystick-operated video game originally developed by NASA to test monkeys. The pigs were trained on how to use a joystick and then they gamed once a day for 12 weeks. They had to stop the study as some of the pigs had grown too large to stand long enough to complete the sessions. Each pig had its own individual aptitude for the tasks. Positive encouragement from their caretakers resulted in better outcomes in the game. A picture of a pig on one of the gaming consoles is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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How Lord of the Rings changed big screen battles forever (12 minute read) | Massive is a software that creates computer-generated armies using artificial intelligence to simulate realistic battles at tremendous scales. It was designed specifically for Lord of the Rings and has since been used for many other productions, including Game of Thrones and Marvel's Avengers: Endgame. This article tells the story of how Massive was developed and used in several productions. The software has evolved and gotten better over the years, but the core elements have stayed the same, showing how far ahead of its time the software was when it was made 20 years ago. | 4Miscellaneous
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DS Cheatsheets (GitHub Repo) | This is a set of open source cheatsheets for topics in data science including deep learning, machine learning, data visualization, Python, R, SQL, and more. They're all in PDF form so if you want to print them out and tape them somewhere you could probably do that too. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Photos: The Culture Of Whales | Humpback whales frequently and mysteriously change their songs. Songs can go for up to 20-minutes. They are passed on perfectly to other whales across the entire pacific. This article contains a series of images by National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry. It includes images of nursing sperm and humpback whales, belugas playing in the shallows, and orcas teaching their pups how to hunt. | 4Miscellaneous
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This bug doesn’t exist on x86: Exploiting an ARM-only race condition (30 minute read) | This article explains how to exploit a double free vulnerability and get a shell on ARM architecture. It walks through how to discover vulnerabilities and explains how this particular vulnerability works in the architecture. The full exploit code is provided. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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zenv (GitHub Repo) | zenv is an enhanced env command for setting environment variables using various methods. It can load environment variables through static values, reading file contents, or by command-line argument. zenv can securely save, generate, and get secret values with Keychain and replace command-line arguments with loaded environment variables. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV (30 minute read) | Our phones are now TVs, with more and more shows to watch on them all the time. Media companies such as HBO, who have always strived to produce premium, high-quality shows, are now pressured to create a higher volume of content at a lower cost to compete with other streaming services. HBO is now experimenting with creating a game show, which may be released under a different brand name. Streaming services are now competing for attention. New formulas for shows are being created to continue capturing the attention of audiences. The media world seems to be changing, with a wide variety of shows being created, but it may eventually result in a scenario where a few large companies dictate a certain formula of shows being released. | 4Miscellaneous
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Tesla Video Shows Gigafactory Shanghai Automation Nearing 'Alien Dreadnought' Phase | Tesla has shared a 49-second long time-lapse video from Gigafactory Shanghai. It is linked in the article. Elon Musk had wanted to produce a factory that functioned as a product and looked alien. By version 3, the 'alien dreadnought' will be completely automated, with people only present to maintain the machines, upgrade them, and deal with anomalies. At the end of the last quarter, Tesla had an annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles at Gigafactory Shanghai. | 4Miscellaneous
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Why did the former CEO of Nissan just get smuggled out of Japan? | Carlos Ghosn, the executive that used to run the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, was arrested by Japanese police in November 2018 on charges of financial misconduct. He claimed that he was set up by rivals at Nissan, and was released on bail. The Japanese criminal justice system has a near-perfect conviction rate, and on December 29, Ghosn left Japan for Lebanon. Ghosn released a statement on New Year's Eve denouncing the Japanese justice system. Japanese authorities have yet to determine how Ghosn escaped the country. Lebanese authorities say he entered Lebanon legally. Turkish authorities have arrested four pilots, two ground handlers, and the operations manager of a cargo company for their involvement in the escape. Interpol has issued a 'red notice' for Ghosn. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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TUIC (GitHub Repo) | TUIC is a high-performance proxy built on top of the QUIC protocol. QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) is a general-purpose transport layer network protocol that improves the performance of connection-oriented web applications that use TCP. TUIC features two relay modes, user-space congestion control, smooth session transfer on network switching, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook is suing a domain registrar for selling deceptive web addresses | Facebook has filed a lawsuit against Namecheap and Whoisguard for allowing customers to register domains intended to deceive people. Namecheap has stated that it takes fraud and abuse allegations extremely seriously and that it follows standard industry protocols in instances of trademark claims. It claims that Facebook's lawsuit was an attempt to infringe on the privacy of its customers. In 2008, Verizon won $33.2 million in a lawsuit against a domain registrar in a similar case. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Solar Orbiter’s first images reveal ‘campfires’ on the Sun | Solar Orbiter, ESA and NASA's new Sun-observing mission, has discovered omnipresent miniature solar flares near the surface of the star. The discovery was made with one of the first images received from Solar Orbiter, demonstrating the enormous potential for the mission. Solar Orbiter carries six telescopes to image the Sun and its surroundings and four instruments that monitor the environment around the spacecraft. The images, taken 77 million km away from the Sun, are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Tesla Model S Plaid breaks 200 mph top speed for the first time | A Tesla Model S Plaid was able to reach the automaker's promised top speed of 200 mph after it was hacked to remove software limitations. | 4Miscellaneous
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Bake data privacy into your app from day one by avoiding these common mistakes (Sponsor) | Bake data privacy into your app from day one by avoiding these common mistakes . Your business needs to move fast, but not at the expense of data privacy. As you aim to balance speed and security, don’t lose sight of the most common privacy pitfalls and how you can avoid them. Learn more about data privacy and what your company should avoid doing with the free white paper: Avoiding the Five Cardinal Sins of Data Security and Privacy. | 0Sponsor
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YugaByte DB (GitHub Repo) | YugaByte DB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database. It works by using a combination of high-performance document store, auto sharding, per-shard distributed consensus replication, and multi-shard ACID transactions. YugaByte DB can easily be deployed across public and private clouds, as well as Kubernetes environments. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor | Billions of dollars are being poured into AI-based projects by governments around the world to change how low-income people will interact with the state. Governments are looking into ways to automate how welfare payments are distributed amongst those who need them. They claim the new systems will speed up benefits payments, increase efficiency and transparency, reduce waste, save money for taxpayers, eradicate human fallibility and prejudice, and ensure that limited resources reach those most in need. However, many have seen their payments reduced or stopped, and unexplainable mistakes often occur. Victims of these mistakes often have no way of seeking remedies. The technology is also being used to demand repayments from those who have been overpaid, with some cases where up to 30 years of overpayments were demanded to be repaid. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Why Some Memories Seem Like Movies: 'Time Cells' Discovered In Human Brains | Episodic memories are memories that play like a movie. Scientists have identified the cells that make episodic memory possible. Time cells place a timestamp on memories as they are being formed, allowing events or experiences to be recalled in the right order. While time cells have been identified before in mouse brains, this is the first time they have been identified in human brains. The presence of time cells in humans explains why people with damage to the hippocampus have problems remembering events in the right order. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google search will now give you feedback on your pronunciation | Google search has a new feature that will help users check their pronunciation of unfamiliar words. After a user searches for a pronunciation guide, they will be able to speak the word and Google's AI will analyze how the word was pronounced. It will then provide feedback on how each syllable matches Google's expected pronunciation. The feature currently only works for American English, but Spanish pronunciations will be released soon. Google will also start to include images with its translations so that users will be less confused with definitions. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Prospectus On Próspera (50 minute read) | Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) are special economic zones inside Honduras that receive help from entities that govern the territories to bring improved human rights and economic growth. Próspera is Honduras' first ZEDE, occupying a 58-acre tract of land. It currently only has three buildings, but it eventually plans to expand to a network of city-sized hubs. People interested in joining the project will need to sign a social contract, pay a fee, and get Honduran residency. Próspera has the lowest tax rate in the world. | 4Miscellaneous
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Command Line Interface Guidelines (Website) | This is a guide for writing better command-line programs. It is written for those who are looking for principles and best practices for CLI UI design. The guide covers the philosophy of CLI UI design first before delving into design guidelines. Further resources are offered at the end of the guide. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Smart Upscaler (Website) | Smart Upscaler can upscale images up to 3000x3000px. It uses artificial intelligence to predict a high-resolution image given a low-resolution image. It is free to use for the first three images. API integration is available for large batches of photos. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The No-Code Generation is arriving | Over the past few years, no-code platforms have become more common, making it easier for users to harness the power of computing in their daily work. Projects that used to take a team of engineers hours to create can now be created in a few clicks through a user interface. These tools still require coding logic and other skills, but a generation of kids have now grown up with toys and games like Roblox and Minecraft, making these skills more prevalent. They also know how to use search engines to find answers to problems they are having. The generation that grew up with these technologies will likely further hone their skills in using them, raising the bar for how technology is used in the workplace. | 4Miscellaneous
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Microsoft’s next Xbox is Xbox Series X, coming holiday 2020 | The Xbox Series X has been officially revealed by Microsoft at the Game Awards. It is designed to be used in both vertical and horizontal orientations. The Xbox Series X will deliver four times the processing power of the Xbox One X. It has a custom-designed CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. The console will support 8K gaming, frame rates of up to 120 fps, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate. Microsoft has not officially talked about its GPU performance, but it could be capable of 12 teraflops. A new controller was revealed that is slightly smaller with a new Share button. The Xbox Series X will include an Auto Low Latency Mode and Dynamic Latency Input, which will make the console the most responsive console ever. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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bullet : Beautiful Python Prompts Made Simple (GitHub Repo) | Bullet allows for customized prompts in Python and has extensive support for formatting, colors, styling, and even support for emojis. There are many examples of its usage in the repository. Users can choose between bullet, check, inputs, numbers, passwords, yes/no, vertical, and slide prompts, and have full control over the style and look of the prompts. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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WhatsApp to launch ‘Communities’ | Meta has announced plans for a significant update to WhatsApp that will allow users to participate in discussion groups called Communities. Communities will support file-sharing, 32-person group calls, emoji reactions, admin tools, moderation controls, and more. The feature will allow groups to create networks for their members to interact. Communities can create sub-groups for specific discussions. Communities will not be discoverable, so users will have to be invited to join them. Many more details about the new feature are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Someone Bought a T. Rex Skeleton for a Record-Breaking $31.8 Million | The remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex were sold at an auction in New York on Tuesday for $31.8 million. Casts of the skeleton, called Stan, have ended up in museums all around the world due to the fossil's exceptional condition. Stan is one of the most complete T.rex fossils in the world, with about 188 bones that represent 70 percent of the full skeleton. At 40 feet in length and 13 feet tall, it is thought that Stan was a male based on its skeletal features. The second-most expensive T.rex skeleton was called Sue. It sold for $8.3 million in 1997. Stan's buyer was anonymous, so it is unknown where it will end up and whether it will remain accessible to the public. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google tells employees in Bay Area and other U.S. locations to return to offices in April | Google will start having employees in the Bay Area and several other US locations return to the office starting the week of April 4. The steady decline in cases means the company can officially begin the transition to the hybrid work week. Employees will return to the office based on local conditions. Most workers will come to the office three days a week and have two days of remote work. The company has dropped its mask and testing mandates for fully vaccinated employees and reopened its amenities. | 4Miscellaneous
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Walmart to test drone delivery of grocery, household items | Walmart is running a pilot for delivering groceries and household products using automated drones. It will partner with Flytrex, an end-to-end delivery firm, for the project. Walmart has seen online sales double in the second quarter. It has explored its options with deliveries through autonomous vehicles with Ford and other self driving car startups in the past. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Toshi (GitHub Repo) | Toshi is an open source full-text search engine written in Rust (it's a competitor to Elasticsearch). It works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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How I've Attracted The First 500 Paid Users For My SaaS That Costs $5/mo | This is the story of how former freelance developer Takuya Matsuyama created a SAAS that makes $3200 a month and allowed him to quit freelancing! Since he includes a TLDR in this excellent article that you should definitely read, it would seem a bit rude of me to write a separate one. So from the article, his TLDR/bullet points: you don't have to get covered in large blogs, why churn rate is surprisingly low, spend a lot of time in user forums, publish roadmaps, treat paid users as special, tell your strategy, ignore all competitors, and accept your incompleteness. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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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. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Introducing the Redis OM Client Libraries | Redis has announced a preview release of Redis OM: Object Mapping. It will launch with support for .NET, Node.js, Python, and Java. Redis OM allows developers to get the performance of Redis even if they don't have time to compose their own abstractions using the core data structures Redis provides. It gives developers a toolbox of high-level abstractions that make it easy to work with Redis data. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Jetpack (GitHub Repo) | Jetpack is a wrapper around Webpack that makes it easier to use, it can be used as a drop-in replacement for webpack, webpack-cli, webpackdev-server, and webpack-dev-middleware. It's sort of a set of sane defaults for Webpack that's an alternative to more specific Webpack configurations like Create React App or Next.js. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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China launches world’s fastest programmable quantum computers | Physicists in China have built two quantum computers with performance speeds way above their Western competitors. Zuchongzhi 2 is a 66-qubit light-based machine that is 10 million times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer. Jiuzhang 2 is also light-based, but it has a narrower field of applications. At this stage, the machines can only work in protected environments for short periods on highly specific tasks. The researchers hope to achieve quantum error correction over the next five years so that the machines can be more useful. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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PDM (Website) | PDM is a modern Python manager with PEP 582 support. It installs and manages packages without the need to create a virtualenv. PDM features a simple and fast dependency resolver, a PEP 517 backend, and PEP 621 project metadata. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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India Shut Down Kashmir’s Internet Access. Now, ‘We Cannot Do Anything.’ | Jammu and Kashmir, an area where 12.5 million people live, is being claimed by both India and Pakistan. The tensions have now brought everyday transactions, family communications, online entertainment, and the flow of money and information to a halt. Internet and phone services have been unavailable for over 11 days, causing activity in the region to stop. Pharmacies are unable to restock supplies, vital supplies are running low in shops, cash is becoming scarce, and doctors are unable to communicate with patients. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the rapid adoption of the internet in the country, the country is also the world leader in shutting down the internet. Last year, India blocked the internet 134 times, compared with 12 shutdowns in Pakistan. Many businesses are suffering and people are unable to continue with their lives. It is unknown how long the shutdown will continue, and it is rumored that the continued tensions have escalated to violence in some areas. | 4Miscellaneous
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IdeasAI (GitHub Repo) | This page contains a collection of ideas generated by OpenAI's GPT-3. People can upvote and downvote ideas. Ideas are sorted by Top Monthly, Weekly, Yesterday, All Time, and New. Users can pay a fee to remove ideas from the website. | 4Miscellaneous
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A magnetic helmet shrunk a deadly tumor in world-first test | Researchers used a helmet that generates a magnetic field to shrink a deadly brain tumor by a third. The helmet features three rotating magnets and it was worn by the patient up to six hours per day. It is the first non-invasive therapy for brain cancer. The device has FDA approval for compassionate use treatment. It could one day be used to treat brain cancer without radiation or chemotherapy. A picture of the device is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Billions of cockroaches are being farmed in China to tackle food waste | Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can handle with landfills, so now in the city of Jinan, farms with a billion cockroaches are fed 50 tons of food waste daily through pipes. These cockroaches are then used as pig feed. It's illegal to use food waste directly as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks. Thus, the solution is to use cockroaches as an intermediate step. A farmer asked about cockroaches escaping said "We have a moat filled with water and fish. If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all." Enjoy your breakfast! | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Translator API (GitHub Repo) | This project implements a multi-lingual translation API that can be run on a single server. It supports translations between over 150 languages, and all tools used in the API are fully open source and modifiable. The prediction API can be run on both CPU and GPU instances. Translator API focuses heavily on cost savings, to the detriment of optimal performance. Tips for improving performance are provided. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Verizon Exploring Sale Of Its Media Assets Led By Yahoo, AOL | Verizon is exploring a sale of Yahoo and AOL for a potential $4 billion to $5 billion. Apollo Global Management is rumored to be involved in the deal. Yahoo and AOL merged into a new venture called Oath after their acquisitions by Verizon. Oath was later renamed the Verizon Media Group after it failed to remain competitive in the domestic digital advertising industry. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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'Great Resignation' gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect | A recent survey by jobs site Monster found that 95 percent of workers are now considering changing jobs, with 92 percent willing to switch industries to find the right position. Burnout and lack of growth opportunities were the biggest drivers for the shift. There are also a higher number of job openings than ever before, contributing to why people are willing to try out new opportunities. Many employees want to continue working remotely, so most organizations are trying to work out how to combine remote and on-site work. | 4Miscellaneous
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Using Wi-Fi to "see" behind closed doors is easier than anyone thought | Wifi fills the world with a constant background field of radio signals. Researchers have now figured out how to use this to track the locations of people inside their own homes from the outside using just a smartphone. First they locate the Wifi transmitter by measuring the change in the signal strength as they walk around outside the target building or room. Once they know that, they can use the fact that the Wifi signal should be constant unless disturbed by movement from people inside a home, and each movement changes the signal in slightly different ways to track the people inside the home. These researchers can tell when you are typing, opening a door, or walking around from outside your home using just their Nexus 6 phone. If there are two Wifi transmitters in your home, the accuracy increases from 92.6% to over 99%. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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15 People Lived 40 Days in a Sunless Cave Without Clocks to Study Time | 15 people spent 40 days living in a cave in France without sunlight, clocks, or contact with the outside world as part of an experiment called Deep Time. Deep Time was designed to probe the human brain's conception of time and to study the group's response to life in isolation. There were no natural cues to regulate circadian rhythms in the darkness of the cave. Participants had to pass mental and physical examinations before the experiment, and they were monitored even after their exit. The experiment could help scientists anticipate the challenges of long-term submarine and space missions. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google releasing location data to help track lockdown movement amid coronavirus | Google will release anonymized global location data from 131 countries and regions around the world to help public health officials track movements during coronavirus lockdowns around the world. Officials will be able to track movement trends over time by geography across different categories of places. The data is gathered from Google Maps and other Google services. No personal data is included. There was a 12 percent increase in the number of tracked individuals remaining in their homes between Feb 16 and March 29. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Vilnius, Lithuania built a ‘portal’ to another city to help keep people connected | The city of Vilnius, Lithuania has built a portal that connects it to Lubin, Poland, a city about 600 kilometers away. Five years in the making, the portals have large screens and cameras that broadcast live images between the two cities. The portals were created to encourage people to rethink the meaning of unity. Pictures of the portals are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Bezos says he is now willing to invest in a Moon Lander—here’s why | Jeff Bezos published an open letter to NASA offering to pay more than $2 billion towards the Human Landing System program. NASA already has a $2.9 billion contract with SpaceX for a human lander. The agency had wanted two providers for a lander, but it didn't have the budget for it. Blue Origin had submitted a proposal for the project, but it was rejected for being too expensive. It is up to Congress whether NASA can accept the offer. | 4Miscellaneous
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TikTok is rolling out longer videos to everyone | TikTok will increase the maximum length of its videos to three minutes. It has been testing the new limit since December with select users, particularly in categories like cooking. TikTok has not said how the longer clips will affect its recommendation algorithm. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How futuristic floating wind turbines might ride the waves | Floating wind farms hold a lot of potential, but they have so far been too costly to deploy at a commercial scale. GE has received a $3 million award from the US Department of Energy to support a two-year project to solve some of the technical challenges of deploying floating wind farms. It has partnered with Glosten to develop advanced turbine controls that can automatically adjust to catch strong gales without tipping over. The turbines will allow the wind farms to maximize their power output, making them more profitable. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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This microbe no longer needs to eat food to grow, thanks to a bit of genetic engineering | Synthetic biologists have engineered a bacterium that builds its cells by absorbing carbon dioxide. The microbes could eventually be engineered to turn carbon dioxide into medicines and other high-value compounds. Scientists could not engineer bacteria that could photosynthesize, as the process is too complex. Instead, the bacteria were given the ability to eat formate and transform it into ATP. The energy from the ATP is then used to activate enzymes that convert carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic molecules. Initially, the bacteria still preferred their natural metabolism, but after placing the bacteria in environments that heavily restricted their diet, the bacteria eventually evolved the ability to be autotrophic. A total of 11 new genetic mutations were observed in the evolved bacteria. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Milkdown (GitHub Repo) | Milkdown is a markdown editor. It is themeable and hackable and it supports math equations, tables, collaboration, emojis, and more. A live demo is available. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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ARABSAT-6A MISSION (Website) | Falcon Heavy launched the Arabsat-6A satellite on Thursday in Florida. The Arabsat-6A satellite is a high-capacity communications satellite that will provide television, radio, internet, and mobile communications to customers in the Middle-East, Africa, and Europe. There is a video of the launch and a press-kit with more information available. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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This Case Gives Your Phone Robotic Legs So It Can Crawl to a Wireless Charging Pad | Researchers from the Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University have created a smartphone case with robotic legs. The case adds 16mm to one end of the phone and the retractable legs can carry a weight of up to 300 grams. At the moment the case is only able to walk in one direction, but the design can be improved to include sensors and other modifications. A one-minute video is available showing the robot case in action. | 4Miscellaneous
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Amid scandal, Pornhub hires “biometric technology” firm for user verification | Pornhub has announced new security features and policies to ensure that the videos on its platform do not contain potentially illegal material. The company received criticism last year after it was accused of profiting from illegal material. It responded by suspending activity from unverified users and deleting nearly 80 percent of its hosted content. Pornhub has partnered with Yoti, a London-based company that acts as a middle-man for biometric verification. This will allow Pornhub to verify users without ever seeing their private information. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Pinterest is talking to bankers and has hired a key exec as it readies itself for a 2019 IPO | Pinterest is preparing for IPO as early as April. It's expected to IPO for $12 billion, which is the valuation they last raised money at. They made $1 billion in revenue this year, and announced in September that they had 250 million monthly users. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Altos bursts out of stealth with $3B, a dream team C-suite and a wildly ambitious plan to reverse disease | Altos Labs is a biotech company that is developing technology that could revitalize cells and reverse disease, ultimately prolonging human life. It has raised $3 billion in capital from multiple investors, including Jeff Bezos. The Altos team consists of some of the biggest names in the life sciences. Altos is setting up sites in San Francisco and San Diego in the US and Cambridge in the UK. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tesla acquires ultracapacitor and battery manufacturer for over $200 million | Tesla has reached an agreement with Maxwell, an ultracapacitor and battery component manufacturer, to purchase the company for over $200 million. While Maxwell is best known for its ultracapacitor technologies, Tesla’s acquisition is more likely due to the dry electrode technology that Maxwell has been recently showing off. The dry electrode is a battery technology that is able to significantly boost storage capacity, simplify the manufacturing process, and lower production costs. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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The Pragmatic Engineer’s Developer Culture Test | The Joel Test was introduced in 2000 to see whether a workplace had a good developer culture. It doesn't address things that are important for modern developers like autonomy, code reviews, or continuous personal growth. The Developer Culture Test was designed to analyze whether an organization provided a healthy environment for its employees to thrive. A decent company allows developers to voice their opinions, pays its employees fairly, and is flexible with working hours. Clarity, autonomy, and collaboration allow innovative and autonomous people to thrive in the workplace. A sustainable engineering culture will keep developers from burning out or becoming frustrated. A company that allows career progression will have competent managers with hands-on experience that wont frustrate people on their teams. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Andy Jassy officially takes over as Amazon CEO from Jeff Bezos | Jeff Bezos has stepped down as CEO of Amazon and is now the Executive Chair. Andy Jassy is the new CEO. Bezos has served as CEO of Amazon since its founding 27 years ago. Jassy joined the company in 1997 and has led AWS since it was founded in 2003. Bezos will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives, but he will dedicate more time and energy to other initiatives such as the Day One Fund and Bezos Earth Fund foundations, The Washington Post, and Blue Origin. He will fly to the edge of space on July 20. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Robotic Third Arm Can Smash Through Walls | Researchers from the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada have created a waist-mounted remote-controlled hydraulic arm that is gentle enough to pick fruit but also powerful enough to punch through a wall. This type of wearable robotic arm is known as a supernumerary robotic arm. It weighs about four kilograms and can lift five kilograms, with a maximum speed of 3.4 meters per second. At the moment, the arm is remotely controlled by a second human, but researchers have suggested adding sensors on the arm so that it can provide more functionality. Pictures and video of the robotic arm are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers | Amazon Flex hirings and firings are all handled by software, with minimal intervention by humans. Many workers are reporting that they are being fired for reasons outside of their control. The reasons that Amazon gives for the firings often don't match the true reason for the termination. Executives at Amazon are apparently aware of the faults in the system but they are unconcerned as long as there are sufficient numbers of replacements for those who are mistakenly terminated. The Flex app was downloaded 200,000 times in May. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google announces the Pixel 5 for $699 | The Google Pixel 5 will be available in eight countries on October 15th, then in the US on October 29th for $699. Preorders are available now. The device features a Snapdragon 765G processor with Qualcomm's integrated X52 modem for 5G support, IPx8 water resistance, reverse wireless charging, 8GB ram, and more. Its display is a 6-inch 2340 x 1080 OLED panel with a full edge-to-edge display and a hole-punch selfie camera. There are two rear cameras, a 12.2-megapixel main camera with a 77-degree field of view and a 16-megapixel ultrawide that shoots at 107 degrees. More details, including a link for preorders, are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Stress study shows graying hair is reversible | Scientists from Columbia University have identified the proteins in hair that drive the process of graying and demonstrated how graying might be reversed. The scientists measured hair color changes over several weeks along with the study participants' stress levels. They found a high correlation between stress levels and hair color, including cases where hair graying reversed after an individual's stress was alleviated. Mitochondria play a key role in the process. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Zoom is releasing a new tool to let paid users charge for admission to online events like conferences or fitness classes | OnZoom is Zoom's new online event hosting platform. Hosts can organize free and paid events on OnZoom, with PayPal integration for ticket sales. It will only be available to paid subscribers in the US at launch. There are no additional fees for paid users to use OnZoom, but Zoom may take a cut of ticket sales next year. A new feature called Zapp allows Zoom users to open apps like Dropbox, Slack, and Asana directly inside a Zoom meeting. Zoom is also focusing on integrating online education tools. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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SpaceX’s Starlink is in talks with ‘several’ airlines for in-flight Wi-Fi | SpaceX's Starlink team has been in talks with several airlines to connect aircraft to the internet. The company has an aviation product in development and it is hoping to release something soon. Starlink has launched nearly 1,800 satellites. It will need 4,400 to provide global coverage. The design for SpaceX's airline antennas will be similar to its consumer terminals. Starlink's satellites will require inter-satellite links to provide connectivity to airplanes flying over remote parts of the ocean. Competition is growing in the low-orbit satellite internet industry, but SpaceX appears confident that it can provide the best experience. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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New mystery AWS product ‘Infinidash’ goes viral — despite being entirely fictional | Developer educator Joe Nash wondered whether merely mentioning a new AWS product on Twitter would be enough to see it appear in job ads. After tweeting out this idea, AWS Infinidash was born. The idea went viral, with many developers tweeting about the fake product and making songs, blog posts, service integrations, and explainer videos. Three days after Nash's tweet, Signal posted a job ad for a Server Engineer that required Infinidash experience. Examples of some of the content created for Infinidash are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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YouTube’s TikTok clone, “YouTube Shorts,” is live in the US | YouTube Shorts is now rolling out in the US. The feature was first launched in India in September. It functions just like TikTok, except that you can dislike videos. Shorts will also show up on the channel's page and in subscription feeds like normal videos. TikTok is expected to hit one billion users in 2021. A majority of its users are in China, with only around 40 million users in the US. YouTube Shorts receives more than 3.5 billion daily views in India, where TikTok has been banned since June. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house | Ring's new Always Home Cam is an autonomous drone that can fly around to view any room inside a home. It can automatically return to its dock to recharge when it is done flying. The Always Home Cam will be available next year for $249.99. During its setup, users build a map with paths for the device to follow. The camera only records when it is in flight, as the charging dock blocks its view. The drone makes an audible noise when flying so people will know when it is around. An official 30-second advertisement for the Always Home Cam is available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Scientists Have Finally Mapped the Whole Human Genome | A team of scientists have created a gapless human genome sequence, making the complete human genome accessible for the first time. 8% of the information in the sequence is new and could provide insights into our evolutionary journey and other information. The Human Genome Project presented a nearly complete version of the genome in 2003, but the project was limited by the technology available at the time. It took many advances in genetic sequencing to make it possible for scientists to complete the project. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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A scannable QR code advertisement created by drones above the skies of Shanghai (Twitter Thread) | A Twitter user recently captured a photo of a synchronized drone swarm in China creating a scannable QR code in the sky. The code was part of an anniversary show for a mobile game. It linked to the game's download page. A video of the full drone performance is available in the thread. | 4Miscellaneous
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8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service | Voxility has banned 8chan and its new host, Epik, as the company felt that the content on the website was 'intolerable'. Cloudflare had recently decided to cut off services to 8chan after recent mass shootings had been linked to the website. Epik had been renting web space from Voxility, and have been in trouble with Voxility before due to content. Epik states that it aims to be a neutral service provider that won't terminate accounts based on arbitrary reasoning or political pressure. The 'chan' websites are moderated and comply with relevant laws. However, Cloudflare claims that while 8chan was legal, the environment it created reveled in violating the spirit of the law. | 4Miscellaneous
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