Gooooooood morning, Readers!!! Hey, this is not a test, this is a tech roundup. Time to rock it from the Delta to the DMZ.
AI, bots and robots
- Learning higher order programs through abstraction and invention
- Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?
Idealism can eventually bow to financial pressure and artificial intelligence companies, big and small, can change course. - Case Study: Npm uses Rust for its CPU-bound bottlenecks
- Drone Control via Alexa
- Best of Machine Learning
- Neural MMO – A Multiagent Game Environment
- Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists find
- Implementing a Neural Network from Scratch in Python
A simple explanation of how they work and how to implement one from scratch in Python. - Exploring Neural Networks with Activation Atlases
- Neuroactive potential of the human gut microbiota in quality of life/depression
- Jibo the social robot announces that its VC overlords have killswitched it
- Automatic Differentiation in Machine Learning
- Kaiser Doctor tells patient he is dying — via a hospital robot’s video screen
When Ernest Quintana went into Kaiser Permanente Medical Center's emergency department in Fremont on Sunday, his wife of 58 years, his son, daughter Catherine, and granddaughter Annalisia all worried about the 79-year-old man. They say it was hard enough to learn that his lungs were failing, but they couldn't believe it when a hospital robot entered his room and they got the news… - Fremont family upset that Kaiser let ‘robot’ deliver bad news
Blockchain and decentralization
- Jepsen’s distsys-class: An introduction to distributed systems
Class materials for a distributed systems lecture series – aphyr/distsys-class - We built a distributed DB capable of running across 100s of global locations
- Keeping CALM: when distributed consistency is easy
Keeping CALM: when distributed consistency is easy Hellerstein & Alvaro, arXiv 2019 The CALM conjecture (and later theorem) was first introduced to the world in a 2010 keynote talk at PODS. Beh… - Microsoft Releases Open Source ML Library for Distributed Search Engine Creation
- Jack Dorsey has been buying $10k worth of Bitcoin a week
- A generalised solution to distributed consensus
A generalised solution to distributed consensus Howard & Mortier, arXiv’19 This is a draft paper that Heidi Howard recently shared with the world via Twitter, and here’s the accompanying …
Woman computer scientist of the week
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
Cloud and architecture
- Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws
- Documenting my journey growing my SaaS to a $100.000 a year
- Status as a Service (StaaS)
- Leaked Documents Reveal Facebook’s Global War on Data Privacy Laws
- Serverless collaborative editor using CRDT
- Gun laws where guns take the most lives
- Google Maps Dark Pattern: Enable Web Activity to Set a Home Address
- English and Spanish news articles summarizer algorithm with word clouds
- Cloudflare enables TLS 1.3 communication with origin back ends
Cloudflare Enables HTTPS TLS 1.3 Backend Origin Communication
Cloudflare just announced they have officially enabled HTTPS TLS v1.3 backend origin…
- Diving into Technical SEO Using Cloudflare Workers
With this post we illustrate the potential applications of Cloudflare Workers in relation to search engine optimization, which is more commonly referred to as âSEOâ using our research and testing over the past year making Sloth. - Is It a Duck or a Rabbit? For Google Cloud Vision, Depends on Image Rotation
26,919 votes and 553 comments so far on Reddit - Landing Page Secrets to Converting High Ticket SaaS Customers
- ForwardCom: Proposal for a forward-compatible instruction set architecture
Development and languages
- Is C# a low-level language?
- The Kernel Programming Language
- A Kernel of Failure
- ‘You can track everything’: the parents who digitise their babies’ lives
- D6tflow: Python library for building data science workflows
Python library for building highly effective data science workflows – d6t/d6tflow - Getting started with Git and GitHub: the complete beginner’s guide
- Functional Programming in OCaml
- NIST 800-63B Digital Identity Guidelines
- France Plans 5% Digital Tax as Governments Chase Internet Giants
- Florida prisons sued after inmates lost $11M worth of digital music
- Python Data Science Handbook: Full Text in Jupyter Notebooks
Python Data Science Handbook: full text in Jupyter Notebooks – jakevdp/PythonDataScienceHandbook - Google reveals “high severity” flaw in MacOS kernel
Google’s Project Zero has exposed a «high severity» flaw in macOS’ kernel XNU – which apparently has issues in its implementation of copy-on-write behavior – after Apple failed to fix it in 90 days. - An Easy Programming Language – Built with WebAssembly
- Programming Books You Wish You Read Earlier
- Researchers uncover ring of GitHub accounts promoting 300 backdoored apps
- WebRTC Load Testing in 5 Minutes
- Digitally preview incoming USPS mail and packages
- DigitalOcean Marketplace
- How’s that sprint going? ZenHub reporting and GitHub data will tell you
- Delete Never: The Digital Hoarders Who Collect Terabytes
- Open Sourcing Windows Calculator
- Announcing the Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator
Today, weâre excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal⦠- Rebuilding a Piece of the First Digital Voice Scrambler
- GitLab Vulnerability PoC: Exfiltrate and mutate repository via injected template
- Chrome and Windows Exploit: Security Beyond Bug Fixes
- A framework for creating Python/C++ polyglots
A framework for creating Python/C++ polyglots, programs valid in both programming languages – wmww/Python-plus-plus - RemedyBG: Replacing the Visual Studio Debugger
Quote of the week
cat came back from Berkeley waving flags
— Rob Pike
Enterprises
- Twitter’s Micro-Slavery
- NTSB sending investigators to fatal Tesla-semitrailer crash
- Google declines to pull controversial Saudi government app
- Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks
Identifying ways of thinking that shut down the possibility of progress - Tesla Model Y will be unveiled March 14th
- Amazon stops selling Dash buttons
Amazon stops selling its Dash buttons because shoppers are using other methods to buy products. - De-Google-Ify Internet
- Tesla owners literally protest over price cuts
- Amazon to give power to brands to remove fakes from website
- Holdout Jeff Bezos Confronted by Amazon Moms Demanding Day Care
- Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
After a recent study, the company gave raises to thousands of men after determining they were earning less than women in similar jobs. - Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search
- Google Wants $15M in Tax Breaks to Build a Data Center in Minnesota
- Google may not have canceled its censored, spying Chinese search tool
- Google open sourced GPipe, a library for training large ML models
- A backyard mechanic who is taking on Tesla
Rich Benoit just wanted to fix his Tesla. He ended up becoming a YouTube star. - Intel CPUs afflicted with simple data-spewing spec-exec vulnerability
- Google finds it underpaid men
- The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
- Gen Studio – An experimental collaboration across The Met, Microsoft, and MIT
- China Is Currently Holding 1,600 Teslas at Customs
- Spoiler: Intel CPUs afflicted with simple data-spewing spec-exec vulnerability
- With USB 4, Intel is finally making good on the promise of royalty-free 40 Gbps
- Updated Microsoft Store App Developer Agreement: New Revenue Share
As of March 5th, the Microsoft Store team has updated the Microsoft Store App Developer Agreement (ADA). The next time you log into your Partner Center dashboard, you or someone with an administrat⦠- Serious Chrome zero-day
When a security expert on the Chrome team says, “update your Chrome installs… like right this minute” – well, here’s how to check! - Amazon to Shut All U.S. Pop-Up Stores as It Rethinks Physical Retail Strategy
The retail giant is shutting down all 87 Amazon pop-up stores in the U.S., ending a yearslong experiment with these small shops as the company tinkers with its evolving bricks-and-mortar strategy. - Boeing acquires app maker ForeFlight
- Tesla – Introducing V3 Supercharging
Tesla has more than 12,000 Superchargers across North America, Europe, and Asia and our network continues to grow daily: more than 99% of the U.S. population is covered by the network, and we anticipate similar coverage in Europe by the end of 2019. Recently, we passed 90% population coverage in China and are growing that number quickly. However, in order to drive continued electric vehicle adoption and further accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, charging needs to be even faster, and the number of vehicles able to charge at a location in a day needs to be significantly higher. Today, we’re unveiling V3 Supercharging, the next step in the growth of Tesla’s Supercharger network. V3, which is born from our experience building the - Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows
- Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto prompts civil liberties warning
If Sidewalk Labs is allowed to proceed with plans for a high-tech neighbourhood on Toronto’s waterfront, the area will become a «constitution-free zone,» says the executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. - Titania McGrath: ‘Queen of woke Twitter culture’ sheds his online mask
- Tesla’s Troubles Mount: Shuttered Showrooms and Sinking Shares
- Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight
To advance our mission, we are reimagining travel by building an end-to-end travel platform. Today, we are building on this work by signing an agreement to acquire HotelTonight. - Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums
Google purchased Picasa, a super efficient photo editor that offered seamless integration with online publishing (e.g., you add a photo to an album on your desktop computer and it automatically get⦠- Google Images: error when you search for anything that starts with a dash
- Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon
The Massachusetts senator, who is running for president, announced a regulatory plan aimed at breaking up large tech companies and “unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition.” - Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago
- Lyft’s IPO disclosure shows it’s not close to profitability
Lyftâs IPO registration paints a dismal picture of its prospects â will investors bite anyway? - Elizabeth Warren Wants to Break Up Google, Amazon and Facebook
The influential Massachusetts senator and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has been a longtime critic of the consolidation of economic power by Amazon, Google and Facebook. Now she’s making their break-up a key component of her presidential platform. Warren has just released her plan for⦠- Google Debuts TensorFlow 2.0 Alpha
- The Intellectual Death of Conservatism
- Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks, Part 2
Other news
- Neurosexism: The myth that men and women have different brains
The hunt for male and female distinctions inside the skull is a lesson in bad research practice, writes Lise Eliot. - Acute high intensity interval exercise reduces colon cancer cell growth
- Google siding with Saudi Arabia, refuses to remove government app tracking women
- Teen Becomes First Hacker to Earn $1M Through Bug Bounties
Teen hacker Santiago Lopez has made hacker history by becomming the first white-hat hacker to earn $1 million in bug bounties via website HackerOne. - What I Learned at Activision
- Scientists brew cannabis using hacked beer yeast
Researchers modify microbe to manufacture cannabis compounds including the psychoactive chemical THC. - Gender pay gap shrinks when companies disclose wages
A new study suggests companies that disclose their wages can shrink the gap between what men and women earn by 7 percent. And it makes the workplace more equitable in other ways as well. - Linux 5.0
- Generative Deep Learning
- Unable to Post Bail? You Will Pay for That for Many Years
- Living up to our values and the Neutrino acquisition
- Mozilla fears DarkMatter ‘misuse’ of browser for hacking
Firefox browser-maker Mozilla is considering whether to block cybersecurity comp… - Widening Russia Money Laundering Scandal Hits European Banks
- What’s the purpose of humanity if machines can learn ingenuity?
- Google found it paid men less than women for the same job
The story we’re used to hearing is that women get paid less than men. In Google’s case, according to its own internal pay audit, it turned out male-identified Level 4 Software Engineers received less money than women in that same role. That led to Google paying $9.7 million to adjust pa⦠- The sad state of font rendering on Linux
- Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
The multiverse may be an artifact of a deeper reality that is comprehensible and unique - Paris’s Rue Cremieux Has an Instagram Problem
The people of Rue Crémieux say they need gates to lock out Instagrammers. - ‘I Want to Expose Google’s Mistakes’: Hacker Blamed for Big Android Fraud
Meet Maza-In, a Russian hacker blamed for an outbreak of Android banking malware that’s highlighted flaws in Google Play security. - The Universe’s Ultimate Complexity Revealed by Simple Quantum Games
- Prototype iPhones That Hackers Use to Research Apple’s Most Sensitive Code
Very few people have heard of them, but «dev-fused» iPhones sold on the grey market are one of the most important tools for the best iOS hackers in the world. - Chinese Hackers Target Universities in Pursuit of Maritime Military Secrets
Chinese hackers have targeted more than two dozen universities in the U.S. and around the globe as part of an elaborate scheme to steal research about maritime technology being developed for military use. - Leaked Documents Show the U.S. Tracking Journalists Through a Secret Database
The documents detail an intelligence-gathering effort by the United States and Mexican authorities, targeting more than 50 people including journalists, an attorney, and immigration advocates. - ZFS On Linux 0.7.13 Released, now supports Linux 5.0
ZFS on Linux – the official OpenZFS implementation for Linux. – zfsonlinux/zfs - Move to Pull Consumer Protection Rule Heightens Debate over Payday Lending
- Learning to Learn
- US Government Tracking Journalists and Immigration Advocates
The documents detail an intelligence-gathering effort by the United States and Mexican authorities, targeting more than 50 people including journalists, an attorney, and immigration advocates. - Chickens Are Bullies – Can Their Bad Behavior Teach Us About Our Own?
- Uber Not Criminally Liable in Death of Woman Hit by Self-Driving Car
- Equal pay in 1896: The trail-blazing women of Kew Gardens
- Japan’s tax laws get in way of more women working full time
- Putin Thanks Women for Taking Care of the Home and Staying Beautiful
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