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Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps | Facebook had a spyware VPN app called Onavo that got banned from the iOS App Store. Then, Facebook tried to use their special enterprise certificate (meant for internally testing apps) to distribute the app to teenagers. After this was discovered yesterday, Apple revoked Facebook's cert, essentially preventing them from testing any of their iOS apps. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Powered by Sunlight, ‘Artificial Leaf’ Successfully Produces Clean Gas From CO2 and Water | Syngas is a gas usually created from fossil fuels that is used to produce a range of commodities, such as fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and fertilizers. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have created an artificial leaf that is able to produce syngas in a sustainable and simple way. The leaf works by using a combination of two light absorbers and a cobalt-based catalyst. It is able to work in low light, even when it is rainy or overcast. The technology may be able to eventually produce a sustainable liquid fuel alternative to petrol. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Quibi To Shut Down, Ending $2B Streaming Experiment | Quibi is officially shutting down. The process is expected to take several months, with subscribers to be notified about the details soon. About 200 employees will be let go. Quibi developed an original platform fueled with groundbreaking technology and IP in one of the priciest misfires of any entertainment-related startup. The company's marketing strategies were expensive and didn't have much effect. It also faced issues with executive turnover, legal action, and more. The company raised around $1.8 billion in capital and it is estimated that only $350 million is left. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Samsung unveils Apple Card competitor dubbed 'Samsung Money by SoFi' | Samsung has launched Samsung Money in a partnership with fintech company SoFi. The service will act similar to a bank account or credit union. Samsung Money accounts are FDIC insured for up to $1.5 million. Users will be able to check their balance, pause or restart spending, freeze or unfreeze their card, and change their pin from the Samsung Pay app. Samsung Money will be available to Samsung Galaxy users in the US later this summer. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Watch This Hong Kong Protester Instantly Neutralize Tear Gas | A short video shows a protestor in Hong Kong neutralizing a tear gas canister by placing it inside a thermos and shaking it. The protestor reached out and announced that the dark substance seen being poured out of the canister was mud. Tear gas canisters contain chemicals that burn to create a reaction that makes noxious fumes. The fumes work on similar chemical receptors as ones activated while eating wasabi and mustard but are more potent. An expert on tear gas has confirmed that shaking a canister inside a thermos filled with mud would be able to stop the reaction causing the canister to burn, as well as clogging up any pores to prevent it from working after it is released. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple cancels AirPower product, citing inability to meet its high standards for hardware | Apple has canceled the AirPower product due to engineering issues. While developing AirPower, engineers ran into problems such as overheating and were not able to complete a design that was up to Apple's standards. Apple has a habit of announcing products before the final designs are complete but its engineers are usually able to fulfill their promises even if there are delays. It is very rare that Apple will completely cancel a product and this was unexpected as AirPower is featured on the boxes of the newly released AirPods. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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PSA: Last chance to browse using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is this week | Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is officially retiring after 27 years on June 15. The browser reached its peak in 2003 but fell off after new browsers entered the market. Microsoft Edge features an IE mode that provides access to legacy Internet Explorer-based websites and apps. The retirement doesn't affect in-market Windows LTSC, Server Internet Explorer 11 desktop applications, or the MSHTML engine. | 4Miscellaneous
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AI-designed protein awakens silenced genes, one by one | Researchers have developed a method to turn on individual dormant genes by combining CRISPR technology with a protein designed by artificial intelligence. The technique disables the chemical switches that silence the genes so that they can be expressed. It will allow researchers to understand the role of individual genes in various stages of development. The approach can control gene activity without permanently changing the genome. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google has blocked Huawei from using Android in any new phones | Google has suspended all its hardware, software, and technical services business with Huawei after the US Government added the Chinese giant to a trade blacklist. Existing Huawei owners will still be able to download updates provided by Google. However, future Huawei handsets will not include proprietary apps and services from Google, such as Maps, YouTube, or Gmail. As the second biggest smartphone maker in the world, losing access to Google’s proprietary apps could jeopardize Huawei’s business worldwide. Huawei has also lost access to US-made chips, with chipmakers Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx, and Broadcom announcing that they will not sell hardware to Huawei until further notice. | 4Miscellaneous
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2020 State of Software Engineers (13 minute read) | In 2019, the average salaries for top engineering roles went up by nearly 13% in London, 7% in Toronto and New York, and 6% in the SF Bay Area. Demand for AR/VR is up by 1400%, similar to blockchain's strong demand last year. Many companies are evolving into becoming tech companies and demand for front and backend engineers is growing steadily. The full impact of AR and VR technology will be seen in the next five years. Salary growth for the top engineering roles in San Francisco and New York is double the rate of most Americans. Most software developers choose their careers due to passion for the role, rather than just for the pay. Half of all software engineers point to machine learning as the most interesting field in software today. More than half of engineers wouldn't hesitate to hire a candidate without a computer science degree. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Astronomers discover new 'fossil galaxy' buried deep within the Milky Way | A 'fossil galaxy' has been discovered in the Milky Way. It would have collided with the Milky Way when it was still in its infancy, with its remnants accounting for about one-third of the Milky Way's spherical halo. Despite its size, it was previously hidden from view by clouds of interstellar dust. The fossil galaxy was discovered by measuring spectra for more than half a million stars across the Milky Way in near-infrared light. A patch of stars had a chemical composition and velocity that could only come from another galaxy. The fossil galaxy would have been one of the earliest to merge with the Milky Way. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Self-Proclaimed Satoshi Craig Wright Files US Copyright Registrations for BTC White Paper | Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur who claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, has filed copyright registrations for the original Bitcoin white paper. He claims he is the original author of the white paper and Bitcoin code. The Copyright Office receives registrations without verification, and there are no official avenues to challenge a registration. Wright has been steeped in controversy since he has been trying to establish himself as the creator of Bitcoin, which he believes has been ‘bastardized’ by protocol developer groups. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Frog regrows amputated leg after drug treatment | A team of scientists have used a cocktail of drugs to stimulate the regrowth of amputated frog legs. After the frogs' limbs were amputated, their wounds were enclosed in a silicone cap containing a five-drug cocktail. The frogs that were treated showed a dramatic regrowth of tissue, with many re-creating an almost fully functional leg that responded to touch. The scientists believe that a similar method could work on adult humans. They will have to prove the method works on mammals before any human testing will begin. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Scientists develop an 'iron-air' battery that stores electricity for days | Form Energy has developed iron air batteries that can store electricity for days at a fraction of the cost of lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are made using iron, one of the most common elements on Earth. They convert iron into rust and back to store and discharge energy. The batteries are too heavy to use in electric cars. Form Energy plans to stack thousands of the washing-machine sized batteries into vast warehouses to store energy from renewable systems. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Elon Musk picks Berlin for Tesla’s Europe Gigafactory | Tesla's European gigafactory will be built in Berlin, near the new airport. The factory will build batteries, powertrains, and vehicles. Tesla will also create an engineering and design center in Berlin. According to Musk, Berlin has some of the best art in the world, and some of the best cars in the world are made in Germany. Part of the reason that Tesla's gigafactory will be in Germany is due to Germany's outstanding reputation for engineering. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Stories for Visual Studio Code (GitHub Repo) | Stories allows developers to share code snippets with each other. It is available for download via the VSCode Marketplace. A seven-minute video is available that demonstrates the features of the plugin and the story behind its development. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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I was at Amzn in 2000 when the internet bubble popped (Twitter Thread) | In 2000, the internet bubble popped. Capital markets dried up and Amazon was burning $1 billion a year, with expensive Sun servers at their data centers as their largest expense. The company spent a year replacing Sun servers with HP/Linux machines, which formed the foundation for AWS. Linux kernel had only been released in 1994, the same year Amazon started, so it was a novel and risky approach at the time. The transition made Amazon freeze all new features for over a year, causing a deceleration in revenue growth. Amazon came close to going bankrupt around that time. With the infrastructure completed, Amazon then decided to rent it out as the company only needed high capacities during peak retail seasons. | 4Miscellaneous
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How The U.S. Hacked ISIS (20 minute read) | When ISIS burst onto the scene, it had done something no other terrorist organization had done so far: it had turned the internet into a weapon. The organization used encrypted apps, social media, and online media to spread its message, find recruits, and launch attacks. In response, the NSA and US Cyber Command created a secret task force that ended up becoming one of the largest and longest offensive cyber operations in US military history. This article details some of the operations that the task force participated in. | 4Miscellaneous
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Dizzle - CSS Selector Library | Dizzle is a simple and fast CSS selector engine that turns CSS selectors into functions that test if elements match them. It features full implementation of CSS 3 and CSS 4 selectors and partial implementation of jQuery extensions. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Facebook is opening its experimental predictions app to all users | Forecast, Facebook's community for crowdsourced predictions and collective insights, is now available for people in the US and Canada to participate in. Anyone can view the website, but people in other countries are not able to participate yet. The platform presents questions that people can answer and provide short responses. Facebook's tests found that requiring people to explain how they arrived at their answers encouraged measured, respectful conversation. A link to the Forecast website is available in the article. It is also available as an iOS app. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Lockheed Martin partners with satellite start-up Omnispace to build a space-based 5G network | Lockheed Martin and Omnispace are partnering up to develop 5G capabilities from space. A global 5G network would enable users to seamlessly transition between satellite and terrestrial networks. Lockheed Martin has expertise in a variety of markets, with many customers from the Department of Defense. The project will be developing direct-to-device technology, so users will be able to connect to the network with any standard 5G device. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Apple Collaborating With LG to Develop iPads and MacBooks With Foldable OLED Displays and Ultra-Thin Cover Glass | Apple and LG are collaborating to develop a foldable OLED display panel with ultra-thin cover glass for future iPad and MacBook models. LG has growing expertise in foldable OLED displays and sells them to other manufacturers such as HP and Lenovo. Apple's display could be around 20-inches in size. It may be creating a new product category for the device. The device won't be launched until after 2025. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Watch the first six minutes of Tenet now, from home, on YouTube | Warner Bros. has posted Tenet's opening six minutes on YouTube ahead of its digital release next week. Christopher Nolan and other directors have been vocal about the importance of movies being seen on the big screen. Despite this, Warner Bros. will release all 17 of its 2021 films on HBO Max on the same day as theatres. Tenet performed poorly in the United States, and with coronavirus cases surging around the world, Warner Bros. decided to bet on its growing HBO Max service. Tenet will be available digitally and on Blu-ray on December 15. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Vine reboot Byte officially launches | Byte, a successor to the short-form video app Vine, is now available on iOS and Android. The app allows users to upload and share six-second videos. It comes with standard social features like a feed, an Explore page, notifications, and profiles. Byte currently lacks many features available in competitor apps like TikTok, such as augmented reality filters and transition effects. The app offers content creators a way to generate revenue early on, something that other micro-entertainment apps usually don't offer. Details for how content creators can generate income will be revealed soon. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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California-based game company Blizzard bans pro esports player and confiscates his prize money after he voices support for Hong Kong protesters | A Hong Kong-based player has been fined his prize money and given a year-long ban after he voiced support for Hong Kong's protestors during a postgame interview. Blizzard also announced that the two commentators who appeared on the stream will no longer work with the company. Blitzchung, whose real name is Chung Ng Wai, said it was his duty to speak out about the Hong Kong protests, even though it could affect his personal safety in real life. Blizzard is a US-based company, but it has a partnership with China-based company Tencent. Tencent is also a partner of the NBA, who has recently faced backlash in China when Houston Rockets' general manager, Daryl Morey, tweeted in support of Hong Kong protestors. Rockets games will no longer be broadcasted on China Central Television or Tencent's platforms. Blizzard stands behind their decision, saying that Chung violated rules of the competition by offending a portion or group of the public or damaged the company's image. The company has disabled comments on its blog post announcing the ban. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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TikTok shopping plans for US abandoned after disastrous UK experiment | TikTok has canceled its plans to bring TikTok shopping to the US after a failed UK launch. The launch was hit with internal problems and the feature struggled to gain traction with consumers. TikTok Shop's lead executive was replaced after saying that he didn't believe in maternity leave. Staff complained about a toxic workplace with demanding expectations. Many TikTok Shop streams achieved poor sales despite subsidies and cash incentives. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Crypto Theses for 2022 (Book) | The Crypto Theses is a report that covers key trends, people, companies, and projects to watch across the crypto landscape, with predictions for 2022. It includes sections on Bitcoin, American crypto policy, market infrastructure, NFTs, Web 3, DeFi, DAOs, Ethereum, and more. The report was created by employees of Messari, a crypto market intelligence platform that provides data and research products and services. | 4Miscellaneous
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It’s time to ban cars from Manhattan (10 minute read) | New York's traffic problem seems worse now than it has ever been. Traffic has always been an issue in New York. Many people have tried to solve the city's traffic woes, but none have succeeded. Commercial use of the streets has caused most of the traffic in the past. As the number of residents grew, more people needed to use the same streets. Most residents do not own vehicles but use private transport services. Public transport systems and new roads have done little to alleviate the problem. While there are more plans being put into place to improve the roads, it may be better to create more traffic-free zones and reinvest more into public transport. | 4Miscellaneous
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China completes world’s first 5G remote surgery in test on animal (1 minute video) | Doctors in China have conducted remote surgery on a test animal, removing its liver by controlling robotic surgical arms over a 5G connection. This is possible because 5G is so fast that despite the 30 mile distance between the doctor and the patient, the lag time was only 0.1 seconds so surgery was still possible. The hope is that this technology could be used to help people in disaster areas, or for doctors at large hospitals to help colleagues in smaller institutions. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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First Hyperloop Passenger Capsule Unveiled | Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. unveiled its first passenger capsule, the Quintero One. It's essentially a super futuristic looking train type thing, it's 105 feet long, weighs 5 tons, and has no windows. It is designed to go up to 750 miles per hour. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Google.com dark mode is rolling out to everyone | Google.com is rolling out a dark mode to every user over the next few weeks. It can be switched on through the Google.com settings under a new 'Appearance' section if the feature has been enabled on the account. Screenshots of the new mode are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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WarGames for real: How one 1983 exercise nearly triggered WWIII (23 minute read) | 32 years ago, the world was the closest it had ever been to nuclear armageddon. The KGB had constructed software to forecast if the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike. A war game staged by the US over two weeks in November 1983 triggered the forecast. The procedures and tactics used in the war games were things that the Soviets had never seen, and to the Soviet leadership, it looked like a cover for a genuine surprise attack planned by the US. With many other factors in consideration, the Soviets had good reason to think that the US believed it would win a nuclear war. As the US military increasingly turns to machine learning, the lesson of what can happen when an algorithm gets it wrong should not be forgotten. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple Co-Founder Wozniak Announces a Cryptic Space Startup | Privateer Space is a new space startup founded by Steve Wozniak. The company has not revealed much about what it does, but a business partner hinted that it may be trying to address the issue of space junk. More details about its plans are likely to be revealed at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference this week. A short video from Privateer Space is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Live workshop: Build an IoT app in 2 hours (Sponsor) | Open source time series platform InfluxDB is running this free, hands-on virtual workshop on how to build an IoT application. It will go over data ingestion, collection, storage, and visualization. Learn more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online | Kids are growing up alongside social media, and some are just finding out how much of their lives are already on the internet. Parents have been sharing their kids lives on the internet since social media has existed, and the effects of that are now being revealed. Many teens are discovering that their entire lives have already been documented on the internet, without consent, when they google themselves. This has caused mixed reactions, with some teenagers feeling that it was a breach of trust with their parents, while others are pleased with the fact that they are ‘famous’ on the internet. | 4Miscellaneous
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Harvard breakthrough shows stem cells can be genetically edited in the body | Scientists at Harvard have successfully demonstrated that the DNA in stem cells can be edited while still in the body. Current procedures to edit stem cells required the cells to be removed from the body, which causes many complications. In the study, the scientists loaded different types of adeno-associated viruses to get CRISPR gene editing systems into different types of skin, blood, and muscle stem cells. To test whether the system worked, they used a ‘reporter’ gene, which made the edited cells glow red. Follow up research also found that the changes to these stem cells were being passed onto new stem cells down the line. This breakthrough could lead to new treatments for genetic diseases, particularly those like muscular dystrophy, which involve tissue regeneration. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Everything Apple just announced at its Mac and iPad Pro event | Apple unveiled a new 13.3-inch retina Macbook Air at $1,199 for a 128GB model and $1,399 for a 256GB model. Both models will have USB-C ports and fingerprint Touch ID. There is a new 11-inch iPad Pro starting at $799 as well as an updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro starting at $999. Both new iPads will have USB-C ports, liquid retina displays, Face ID, and will let you charge your iPhone through your iPad. The most expensive model has 1TB storage, cellular connectivity, and costs an insane $1,899. Apple also updated the Apple Pencil stylus which lets you write on your iPad, it will cost $129 (the previous generation cost $99). There is also a new Mac Mini with 4 USB-C ports. The base model starts at $799, whereas the previous generation base model was only $499. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Iowa caucus debacle is one of the most stunning tech failures ever | Iowa Democratic Party officials found irregularities in the data collected by its caucusing app during the recent elections, causing them to switch from the app to counting votes manually. The Iowa Democrats were using an app made by a startup named Shadow Inc, which is managed by a nonprofit investment company called Acronym. According to the party, the issue only affected reporting and did not affect how accurate the data was. The Iowa Democratic Party used an application made by Microsoft in 2016 and the reason they chose to switch to using the untested startup's app is unclear. In August, the Democratic National Committee had recommended Iowa stop using an app altogether. The fact that it has taken so much time for the party to recover from the coding issue shows how unprepared they would have been in the event of an actual cyberattack. | 4Miscellaneous
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Why ‘soft robots’ have NASA, doctors, and tech whizzes so excited | Soft robots could one day be used for a wide variety of applications, for example, space exploration, surgery, rescue operations, and much more. They are made of squishy materials that enable them to approximate biological functions. It is expected that the market for soft robots will reach $2.16 billion in 2024. Soft robots have flaws, such as being slow to power up, but researchers are developing workarounds to these issues. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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How the New York Times A/B tests their headlines | The New York Times is open about the A/B testing it does on its headlines. This article further investigates how exactly the Times tests its headlines using web scraping and data analysis. Roughly 29% of NYT articles have multiple headlines, with some having as many as eight. Most A/B tested articles have just two headlines. Many of the changes are minor. The headlines can change as a story evolves. Most headline swaps are clearly tests looking for more clicks. Headlines tend to get more dramatic as time passes. The A/B testing seems to work, with more headline testing correlating with more engagement. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Scientists Create the World’s Toughest Self-Healing Material | Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research have developed a transparent material that is hard and self-heals when cracked. It is based on a piezoelectric organic material that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy and vice versa. The arrangement of the material results in a strong attractive force that can heal fractures when they occur. It may still be some time before the material appears on any smartphones. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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elfshaker (GitHub Repo) | elfshaker is a version control system fine-tuned for binaries. It stores snapshots of directories into highly-compressed pack files and provides fast on-demand access to the stored files. elfshaker is good for storing lots of similar files and can achieve a compression ratio of close to 0.01%. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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The Rust CUDA Project (GitHub Repo) | The Rust CUDA Project is an ecosystem of libraries and tools for writing and executing GPU code in Rust. It aims to make Rust a tier-1 language for extremely fast GPU computing using the CUDA toolkit. This repository contains libraries and tools to make CUDA usable with Rust, with crates for all corners of the CUDA ecosystem. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Crazy Work Hours and Lots of Cameras: Silicon Valley Goes to China | A group of Silicon Valley investors and executives visited Shenzhen and Beijing, China. They were struck by how fast everything moves. The speed of development is faster, and startups will raise money every six months as opposed to every 18-24 months for US based startups. China's AI development is much faster due to lax privacy laws and robust government support. Chinese startups have a concept of 996, 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Chinese companies tend to be more top down, while US companies give smart employees more freedom to be creative. They are much less concerned about the social impact of technology and cooperate fully with governmental efforts to track citizens. Facial recognition software is everywhere. Lan Xuezhao of Basis Set Ventures says "I live in San Francisco, but I find it helpful to visit the other parallel universe from time to time. To some degree, it’s like looking into the future." | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Facebook will start putting ads in Oculus Quest apps | Facebook will start testing ads inside its Oculus Quest virtual reality system in the coming weeks. It will expand the system based on user feedback. The Oculus mobile app started displaying ads last month, but this is the first time ads will appear inside the VR platform. Facebook is not changing how it collects or analyzes user data. Some sensitive data, like images from the headset camera and information from Oculus Move fitness tracking, will remain only on users' devices. Facebook has no plans to use movement data or recordings from its voice assistant for ads. | 4Miscellaneous
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Ground-Penetrating Radar Reveals Entire Ancient Roman City | Archaeologists were able to preliminarily map the entire underground city of Falerii Novi, an ancient Roman city, using ground-penetrating radar. The 28 billion data points collected in the project to generate the full map are still being processed. Researchers were able to document the locations of buildings, monuments, passageways, and even water pipes without having to dig. Falerii Novi is well documented in historical accounts. It has an unorthodox layout compared to other ancient Roman cities. Images of the city are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Murderer on the run in China turns himself in because he doesn’t have a health code | China has introduced a color-based QR code system to control where people can go. Chinese citizens are assigned a red, yellow, or green code to indicate their health status. People with a yellow status are asked to self-quarantine for seven days and those with red codes are asked to self-quarantine for 14 days. The codes are generated inside mini-programs within WeChat and Alipay. A man who committed a murder in 1996 turned himself in as he didn't have a smartphone, which meant that he didn't have access to a code, making it impossible for him to travel or find accommodation. | 4Miscellaneous
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Robinhood experienced a ‘system-wide outage’ as markets rebounded in heavy volume Monday | Robinhood experienced an outage on Monday that wasn’t fully fixed before the close of the day. This resulted in Robinhood customers missing out on one the biggest one-day point gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 1,300 points, the most ever in a single session. Robinhood has about 10 million users and its service allows customers to trade stocks without paying fees. Other financial service providers have also experienced technical difficulties as the stock market continues to be volatile. These systems are likely failing due to the recent higher-than-average trading volumes. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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First room-temperature superconductor reported | Scientists have discovered the first chemical that superconducts at room temperature. It is still unclear exactly what the chemical is, and the process only works at 2.5 million atmospheres of pressure. To create the chemical, the scientists put sulfur and carbon inside a high-pressure chamber with hydrogen and exposed the mixture to a green laser for several hours. The resulting chemical demonstrated superconductivity, which was confirmed by testing its magnetic properties. Studying the material would require equipment that can withstand the incredibly high pressures inside the chamber. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Starlink-for-vehicles plan has ruggedized terminal for extreme heat and cold | SpaceX's Starlink terminals for moving vehicles will be ruggedized to withstand harsh environments. The vehicle terminals will operate with higher gain and lower transmit power compared to standard Starlink terminals. They will communicate with satellites above a minimum elevation angle of 25 degrees. The terminals will be designed for aircraft, ships, large trucks, and RVs. SpaceX currently has about 90,000 users in 12 countries. Some users have been having trouble getting a line-of-sight connection in areas with tall trees or other obstacles due to the low elevation angle of the satellites. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Framework startup designed a thin, modular, repairable 13-inch laptop | Framework is a startup that will soon be launching its first product, a 13.5-inch laptop. The laptop will have a modular design, with components that can be easily configured, replaced, or upgraded. It features easily accessible sockets for RAM, storage, and Wi-Fi, and the company pledges to offer future motherboard swaps and CPU upgrades, without replacing the entire laptop. A marketplace will be created for third parties to design, build, and sell compatible modules for the laptop. The laptop is expected to become widely available this summer. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Facebook’s next hardware launch will be its Ray-Ban ‘smart glasses’ | Facebook's next product release will be its Ray-Ban smart glasses. The glasses will not have an integrated display and are not classified as an augmented reality device. Mark Zuckerberg said on a call that the glasses will be able to do some 'pretty neat things', but did not expand on what the glasses' capabilities will be. The glasses will likely have to be paired to a smartphone app. Ads continue to be an important part of Facebook's strategy. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Tour from Space: Inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Spacecraft on Its Way to the Space Station (8 minute video) | This video shows Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley giving a tour of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. It begins with Hurley naming the capsule 'Endeavour'. The spacecraft features touch panel interfaces and a button panel. There are two windows and an entry/exit hatch. The astronauts are in zero gravity and demonstrated a zero gravity maneuver. Tremor the plush dinosaur was selected to accompany the astronauts by the astronaut's sons. The astronauts attempted to show the view of the Atlantic ocean from the window, but it was obstructed by a reflection. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Loom Is Async Video For Work (Sponsor) | Loom Is Async Video For Work . Instead of spending your day in back-to-back meetings, try a new kind of face time where you never need to repeat yourself and it's easy to be yourself.A 3 minute recorded Loom video could replace your next 30 minute meeting.Get Loom For Free. | 0Sponsor
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Markdoc (GitHub Repo) | Markdoc is a Markdown-based syntax and toolchain for creating custom documentation sites and experiences. It was created to power Stripe's public docs. Examples are available on Markdoc's website. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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isomorphic-git (GitHub Repo) | isomorphic-git is a pure JavaScript implementation of git that can read and write to git repositories and fetch from and push to git remotes without any native C++ module dependencies. It is designed to be a complete solution and it features type definitions for static type-checking and intelligent code completion. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Floating Drone Captures First-Ever Footage From Inside A Hurricane At Sea | The Saildrone Explorer SD 1045 is an uncrewed surface vehicle developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the company Saildrone. It recently captured footage from inside a Category 4 hurricane from the ocean surface. The NOAA will use the collected data to improve forecast models and better predict when and how hurricanes undergo rapid intensification. The footage is available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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NASA Confirms Thousands of Massive, Ancient Volcanic Eruptions on Mars | NASA scientists have confirmed that a region of northern Mars called Arabia Terra experienced thousands of super-eruptions over a 500-million-year period about 4 billion years ago. Each eruption would have had a significant climate impact on the planet. While Mars has many types of volcanoes, the area has only one type of volcano. The discovery may lead to more knowledge about the geological processes that help shape planets and moons. | 4Miscellaneous
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Flying Electric 'Seaglider' Ferry May Be the Best Way To Travel Between Coastal Cities | Regent's Seaglider is an all-electric flying ferry that has a top speed of 180 mph and a range of 180 miles. The ferry can dock and leave from existing dock infrastructure. It can carry 10 passengers. Regent plans to have one of its Seagliders transporting people as early as 2025. Concept designs of the Seaglider are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Apple CEO Tim Cook in Leaked Memo: 'We Are Doing Everything in Our Power' to Identify Leakers | A recently leaked memo from Apple CEO Tim Cook warned employees about leaking company information. It states that the company is doing everything in its power to identify the leakers and that people who leak confidential information don't belong in the company. Apple has served various leakers with stern warnings from lawyers in recent months. A copy of the leaked memo is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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In the Search to Stall Aging, Biotech Startups Are Out for Blood (12 minute read) | In the last few decades, the idea of using blood as an elixir of youth has come closer to reality. Some high-profile studies have demonstrated the regenerative abilities of young blood in aged mice. Several startups have launched with the aim to combat aging through our blood. This article explores some of these companies and their approaches to using blood to fight aging and age-related diseases. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Thammasat University – the largest urban rooftop farm in Asia | Thammasat University, situated a short trip away from Bangkok, features the largest rooftop farm in Asia. It incorporates modern landscape architecture with agricultural ingenuity, a green roof, urban farming, solar roof, and green public space. The roof of the building mimics traditional rice terraces, forming cascading farm levels that absorb and store rainwater while using it to grow food. This article talks about the rooftop farm at Thammasat University and describes the technologies used in the project. It includes many photos of the farm and diagrams explaining how parts of the farm function. | 4Miscellaneous
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Researcher Arrested for Allegedly Teaching North Korea About Ethereum | A cryptocurrency researcher was arrested for allegedly violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by giving a presentation on Ethereum in North Korea. Virgil Griffith allegedly attended a blockchain conference in North Korea and presented on how blockchain technology could benefit the country. Griffith also participated in a discussion on how cryptocurrencies could be used to evade economic sanctions. He claims that his presentation only contained basic concepts that can be looked up online. The complaint against Griffith alleges that he received his North Korean visa on a separate document other than his US passport in order to avoid creating physical proof that he traveled to the DPRK. The Ethereum Foundation describes Griffith's travel to North Korea as a personal matter and that the Foundation was not represented in any capacity in the events outlined by the Justice Department's filing. | 4Miscellaneous
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Apple AR Headset Coming in Late 2022 With Mac-Level Computing Power | Apple's augmented reality headset project is set to launch its first device next year. The device will be able to operate independently and will have a comprehensive range of applications. It will have two processors, a higher-end main processor similar to the M1 chip and a lower-end processor for managing sensor-related aspects of the device. The device will support virtual reality and Wi-Fi 6E technology. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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First Patient Injected With Experimental Cancer-Killing Virus in New Clinical Trial | Human trials for an experimental cancer-killing virus have begun. Vaxinia is a genetically modified virus designed to selectively infect and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. It works by entering cells and duplicating itself until the cell bursts, which results in the immune system being stimulated to attack nearby cancer cells. Vaxinia was effective in preclinical trials and could be a game-changer if it is proven to work in humans. The trial is expected to take two years, so it will be some time before the results are released. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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This Robot Will Look For Signs Of Life On Jupiter’s Satellite Europa | The Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration (BRUIE) is a robot that was designed to explore Europa's glaciers. It successfully passed tests in the cold waters of Antarctica and will look for evidence of life under the frozen ice on Jupiter's satellite. The Europa Clipper is scheduled for launch in 2025, and it will scan Europa from different angles to map the satellite. Europa is one of the best candidates for extraterrestrial life in our solar system. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Airbnb says it plans to temporarily house 20,000 Afghan refugees | Airbnb will house 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world in the properties listed on its platform. The stays will be funded by Airbnb, but the company has not specified how much it plans to spend or how long the refugees will be housed. The US has evacuated roughly 48,000 people from Afghanistan in recent days. The Taliban has set an airlift deadline of August 31, and thousands are still trying to escape. Brian Chesky, Airbnb's CEO, hopes that his company's actions will inspire other business leaders to help the refugees. Airbnb has hosted 75,000 people in times of crisis since 2012. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Axiom (GitHub Repo) | Axiom can set up a cloud hacking box with just a single command. It is designed so hackers can quickly set up multiple instances for short-term use. Users just need to run axiom-init and it will create a new DigitalOcean instance in under two minutes containing reconnaissance tools, an OpenVPN server, and more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Gates Foundation-backed program will soon be issuing home testing kits for COVID-19 in Seattle | The Gates Foundation is planning to release at-home testing kits for COVID-19. People will be able to complete a nose swab and receive results in up to two days, after which action can be taken if the individual is infected. The Foundation is still finalizing details and a clear timeline for distribution has yet to be released. So far, the Foundation has spent $20 million on the effort, and an additional $5 million on local response efforts. The Foundation estimates that it will be able to test up to 400 samples per day. Seattle currently has the largest outbreak of coronavirus in the US, with 71 cases and 15 deaths as of Saturday. Identification of infected persons is key to combating the spread of coronavirus as people can be safely identified, isolated, and cared for before they infect others. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Britain funds research into drones that decide who they kill, says report | Since 2015, the UK has declined to support UN proposals to ban fully autonomous weapons. Reporters have now discovered that the British military and defense contractors have been funding dozens of AI defense initiatives, including Taramis, an experimental supersonic stealth drone that can "hold an adversary at continuous risk of attack...penetrate deep inside hostile territory, find a target, facilitate either kinetic or non-kinetic influence upon it, assess the effect achieved, and provide intelligence back to commanders." The Ministry of Defence claims that unmanned aircraft probably won't be able to "independently locate and attack mobile targets" until close to 2030, and that there is currently no intent to develop weapons systems that "operate entirely without human input." | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Dell’s new UltraSharp 4K monitors are “IPS Black”—what does that mean? | Dell recently announced two new UltraSharp monitors that feature IPS Black, a new type of IPS panel. IPS, or in-plane switching, is a type of LED panel that is known for its exceptional color reproduction. IPS Black is a new type of IPS that provides better contrast, with a black level that is 35% deeper than existing IPS products. It allows screens to be created with a nearly borderless design. The new displays have a contrast ratio of 2,000:1, twice what most IPS monitors offer. Many more details about this new display technology are available in the article. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Facebook’s TransCoder AI converts code from one programming language into another | Facebook researchers have developed a neural transcompiler that can convert code from one high-level programming language into another, unsupervised. Migrating a codebase takes expertise in both languages, a lot of time, and is often expensive. Transcoder can translate between C++, Java, and Python. It was trained on over 2.8 million open source repositories on GitHub. Many of the mistakes generated by the model were minor. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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Google Earth is now a 3D time machine | Google Earth just had its biggest update since 2017, with a new 3D time-lapse feature that lets users fly around the virtual globe and view satellite imagery from the past 37 years. Google gathered more than 24 million satellite images from 1984 to 2020 to create Timelapse. It took more than two million processing hours to compile the 20 petabytes of data. Not all places are ready yet. Google is pitching the feature as a teaching tool for climate change. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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NASA calls Voyager 2, and the spacecraft answers from interstellar space | Voyager 2 has been in space for 43 years and it is now 125 astronomical units away from Earth. In 1989, scientists ordered Voyager 2 to fly in a trajectory that resulted in it only being able to communicate with a radio antenna facility in Canberra, Australia. The facility had to be refurbished in March, with work completing in February next year. To test the new hardware at the facility, Voyager mission managers sent a series of signals to Voyager 2, which it responded to. It was the first time since March that NASA has been able to communicate with the spacecraft. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again | The popular encrypted chat service Telegram has been hit with a Distributed Denial of Service attack again. Citizens of Hong Kong have recently taken to the streets to protest an unpopular law that would expand the power that China has in Hong Kong over its judicial system. A DDoS attack is when a server is overrun with nonsense requests so that legitimate users are unable to use the service. This is not the first time Telegram has been attacked by China during times of civil unrest. Four years ago, China attempted to shut down Telegram during a crackdown on human rights lawyers in the country. Citizens have admitted that they use Telegram specifically to avoid surveillance by the government. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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CES 2019 Liveblog | The Consumer Electronics Show started today, Hyundai debuted a concept car that "walks" like an insect, the wheels are attached to legs so it can get through extremely rocky terrain (there's a video in the article), Samsung debuted a 98-inch 8k TV available for pre-order for $15,000, Bell Helicopter debuted a prototype for a flying taxi that can fly at 150 mph for 150 miles. HTC debuted the Vive Pro Eye, a high end VR headset with built in eye tracking so you don't have to move your head as much. There was also an underwater drone, micro-LED screens (brighter and longer lasting than OLED TVs), LG's foldable TV, and even a bread-baking robot. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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New Patent For Apple Glass Can Detect Sound And Automatically Clean The Lens | Two new Apple Glass patents were recently revealed. One patent shows multiple microphones located at different positions on the Apple Glass that can capture and process sounds from different directions. The purpose of the design is not mentioned in the patent, but it could be used to pinpoint the locations of sounds. The other patent features an automatic cleaning function that removes dust and other particles from the lens and glasses frame through vibration. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Pig to human heart transplants 'possible within three years' | On the 40th anniversary of the first successful heart transplant, the surgeon who pioneered heart transplantation in the UK announced that his protege will try to replace a human kidney with a pig's this year. If the operation is successful, the techniques used should be applicable to heart transplants as well. In May, a genetic therapy for treating heart attacks showed promise in pigs, regenerating areas that had been damaged. Millions of people in the UK live with high blood pressure, with an estimated 900,000 people living with heart disease. The pigs who received the genetic treatment showed almost complete recovery of cardiac function after a month. However, many of the pigs died in the experiments as the genes in the treatment expressed in an uncontrolled way. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Xiaomi unveils a ridiculous see-through TV | Xiaomi's Mi TV Lux OLED Transparent Edition is a TV that looks like a piece of glass when it is turned off. The 55-inch TV will cost 49,999 yuan and will go on sale in China on August 16th. It is unlikely that the TV will be sold outside of Asia. Images of the device are available in the article. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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The sky is on fire in San Francisco, and we flew a drone through it | Wildfires have already burned a record 2.3 million acres across California this year. The strong winds that followed record-breaking heat over Labor Day weekend have caused the fire situation to get even worse. There is so much smoke over San Francisco that its sky has turned an eerie orange color. The Bay Area's National Weather Service has asked locals to help report on the weather as the event is beyond the scope of its models. Images taken by a drone above the city are available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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DeepMind develops AI that can forecast the weather | DeepMind and the Met Office have collaborated to develop an AI system capable of forecasting rainfall up to two hours ahead of time. Most weather algorithms can make predictions several days into the future but struggle to make shorter-term forecasts as the algorithms take too long to calculate results. DeepMind's AI system was trained with a machine learning algorithm known as a generative adversarial network. The system outperforms traditional weather forecasting methods and newer machine learning-based approaches. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Twitter CEO sets aside $1 billion in Square equity for charity, coronavirus relief | Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter, has set aside $1 billion of his Square equity to support relief efforts for COVID-19 and other causes once the pandemic is over. Dorsey will cash the shares over time and fund causes such as Universal Basic Income and girls' health and education. The money can be tracked by anyone through a public Google Doc that is linked in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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New York Adopts Nation's First Pay Floor for Uber, Lyft, and Other Rideshare Drivers | New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission has approved a $17.22 minimum wage for ride-share drivers. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance says the bill is "the first real attempt anywhere to stop app driver pay cuts, which is an Uber and Lyft business practice at the heart of poverty wages." Uber and Lyft warned that the bill will lead to higher fares, and disincentivize drivers from giving rides in and around Manhattan. | 4Miscellaneous
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Facebook plans to launch 'GlobalCoin' currency in 2020 | Facebook will start testing on its new cryptocurrency 'GlobalCoin' by the end of this year. It plans to fully roll out the stablecoin by the first quarter of 2020. Facebook plans to partner with banks and brokers in order to create places where people can exchange their currency into GlobalCoin. A number of online merchants are in talks with Facebook to accept the currency as payment. In order to combat fluctuations in the price of the currency, Facebook will peg the value of the currency to several existing currencies, including the US dollar, euro, and Japanese yen. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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usernames (GitHub Repo) | GitHub prohibits account name squatting. Inactive accounts can be removed or renamed without notice. This script generates a list of inactive accounts on GitHub with rare usernames so people can try to claim what they like. Pre-scraped lists are available. Not all GitHub activity is publicly available, so the usernames generated might still be technically active even if they appear to be inactive. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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'This is revolutionary’: new online bookshop unites indies to rival Amazon | Bookshop is an online bookseller that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller. Independent bookshops can create their own shopfront on the site and they receive the full profit margin from each sale. Bookshop handles all customer service and shipping, delivering titles to customers within two to three days. More than 900 stores have now signed up in the US, and it is now open in the UK. As Bookshop is a B Corporation, it can never be sold to a major US retailer. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google Flights Offering Price Guarantee | Google Flights is offering a price guarantee for a limited time, between August 13 and September 2, 2019. Some flights will start showing a price guarantee badge, and if a booking is made and the price drops, Google will refund the difference in price if it's between $5 and $500. Using price estimating algorithms, Google is offering the guarantee on flights where it is confident that the prices shown are the lowest available before the flight departs. If prices drop, Google will alert the customer and deposit the difference back into their bank account. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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80% of new day traders lose money. The reason: human emotions (Sponsor) | 80% of new day traders lose money. The reason: human emotions . Smart investors let algorithms invest for them:“Buy Tesla when Ford drops 10%”,“Sell AAPL when Bitcoin hits $50,000.”But unless you can code, algo-trading has been out of reach — until now. Composer lets you build algo-strategies in a snap - no code or spreadsheets required. Composer gives you the financial firepower that quantitative hedge funds hire armies of computer scientists to build internally. Try Composer for free today.**Investing in securities involves risks, including the risk of loss. | 0Sponsor
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Go watch this stunning FPV drone short film inside a bustling bowling alley | A new video by YouTuber jaybyrdfilms shows an astonishing display of camerawork and drone piloting skills. It was shot at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis with an FPV drone. The video is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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Google's balloon internet is coming to Kenya in 2019 | Google's Project Loon is a project designed to launch balloons into the stratosphere to bring internet to remote or rural areas where cell towers aren't economical. A Loon spokesperson says "It's easiest to think of them as floating cellphone towers. Loon works with mobile network operators to extend their networks to unconnected or under-connected communities." Loon will be launching balloons in Kenya in 2019 to provide service to Kenyans in rural and mountainous regions. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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How fast are Linux pipes anyway? (23 minute read) | This article explores how Unix pipes are implemented by Linux. It begins by using a program with a throughput of around 3.5GiB/s and optimizes it until its performance is improved twentyfold. A basic knowledge of C is required. A GitHub repository that contains the code for the article is linked. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Scientists Gene-Edited Tomatoes to Make Them Grow Like Grapes | Tomato plants take up a lot of space. Scientists have modified cherry tomatoes so they grow in tighter bunches and take up less space. CRISPR gene-editing technology was used to tweak three key genes within the plant's DNA. Two of the genes control when the plant stops growing and starts flowering and fruiting. The third gene controls the length of the plant's stems. One of the other benefits of the modified tomato plans is that they only take 40 days to grow. Creating new crops using this method could help feed more people using a reduced carbon footprint. NASA has been working to grow plants in space, as well as on the Moon and Mars. Martian soil is challenging to cultivate as it contains compounds that are harmful to humans. | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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YouTube TV raises monthly price to $50, but adds Discovery channels | As of today, YouTube TV will now have Discovery’s lineup of networks. The cost of a subscription has also risen to $50 a month. Existing customers will not see a price increase in their subscriptions until May 13th. The extra channels will be added to every subscription automatically and there are no plans to create different subscription tiers to choose from. YouTube claims that Discovery’s channels were a frequent request by customers and that the addition of these channels, and the subsequent price increase, would be accepted by most customers. | 1Big Tech & Startups
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This Startup Wants You To Eat All Your Food In Cube Form | SquarEat is a company that sells cubes of food made from 100 percent natural ingredients. The cubes have all the features of regular food but with a longer shelf life, better preservation of nutrients, and more convenience. SquarEat offers meal plans with different meal sizes, flavors, and combinations of nutrients. The company wants to revolutionize meal planning with its new concept of food. It has algorithms for recommending meals for customers. A link to SquarEat's pitch deck is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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New “Glowworm attack” recovers audio from devices’ power LEDs | Glowworm is a passive attack that converts the fluctuations in LED signal strength into audio signals. The fluctuations aren't perceptible to the naked eye, but they can be read with a photodiode coupled to a simple optical telescope up to 35 meters away. Glowworm can only decode audio signals from electronic systems, so it can't be used to spy on real-world conversations. The attack requires a clean line of sight to the target system's LEDs. It won't work with a recording of the LEDs as even a high-definition close-up video would barely be able to capture the fluctuations. A link to the full research paper is available in the article. | 4Miscellaneous
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The Online Library and Learning Platform for Professional Developers (Sponsor) | Packt's Spring Sale is on and for a limited period, all eBooks and Videos are only $10. Our Products are available as PDF, ePub, and MP4 files for you to download and keep forever. All the practical content you need - by developers for developers. Learn more. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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How We Build a Design System (16 minute read) | Bit is a platform that helps developers build, share, and collaborate on components. It uses a design system driven by components. This article explains the process of how Bit created its design system. It discusses the development of tools and components with examples along the way. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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10 JavaScript Hacks Every Web Developer Should Know | JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. This article contains 10 JavaScript hacks for writing cleaner code, saving resources, and optimizing efficiency. Each tip includes example code snippets. | 3Programming, Design & Data Science
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Harvard Converts Millions of Documents into Open Data | Harvard Law School is digitizing and making 6.5 million state and federal cases dating from the 1600s to 2018 publicly available. They can be downloaded as zip files or accessed through an API. The cases are mostly from Supreme Court and appellate decisions, and has many federal trial opinions and opinions from the state of New York, but fewer from some other states. Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab director Adam Ziegler says "Building businesses around artificial scarcity of public information should not be much of a viable business in this day and age with the Internet. But building search capabilities, building analytical insights, building applications using that data is where all the action is in the future and should be." | 2Science and Futuristic Technology
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Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years | Microsoft sank a data center off the coast of Orkney two years ago in an experiment to assess its performance and energy efficiency underwater. The data center had a lower failure rate than conventional data centers, with only eight out of 855 servers on board having failed after two years out on the bottom of the sea. This result may be because nitrogen was used in the capsule rather than oxygen as there were no humans on board. The cost of cooling data centers would be lower if they were underwater. Underwater locations are also more secure without having the large infrastructure costs of constructing a building. | 4Miscellaneous
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