TLDR 2019-01-17

GSuite raises prices 💰, WeWork corruption 🕵, China's Mars mission 🚀

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Big Tech & Startups

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has reportedly made millions of dollars by leasing office space to his own company (2 minute read)

WeWork has been renting buildings that its CEO Adam Neumann partially owns, paying $12 million between 2016 and 2017 and on the hook for $110 million over the lifetime of the leases. There is an internal review process for related party transactions, but Neumann has majority voting rights over the board. A spokesperson says that only 4 of the 400 properties rented by WeWork are partially owned by Neumann.

Google raises its GSuite Prices (1 minute read)

Google is raising the prices for GSuite from $5 and $10 per user per month for its basic and business plans to $6 and $12 per user per month respectively. The Enterprise plan will stay at $25 per user per month. The new pricing will go into effect on April 2. There are now 4 million businesses on GSuite.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

With Facial Recognition Technology at 'Crossroads', 90 Groups Urge Amazon, Google, and Microsoft Not to Collude With Big Brother (2 minute read)

90 civil and human rights groups have sent letters to executives at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to ask them to refuse to sell facial recognition technology to governments around the world. The FBI is already piloting Amazon's Rekognition technology, while Google and Microsoft have been more cautious. ACLU lawyer Nicole Ozer says "History has clearly taught us that the government will exploit technologies like face surveillance to target communities of color, religious minorities, and immigrants."

China wants to launch to Mars next year (4 minute read)

China will launch its first mission to Mars in 2020. The rover will be used to probe Mars' geological features, internal structure, and atmosphere. The solar-powered, six-wheeled rover will have a ground-penetrating radar and will search for pockets of ice. It is part of a long term effort to be bring back samples of Martian soil by 2030. The HX-1 spacecraft is scheduled to launch in July or August of next year.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Shiny (GitHub Repo)

This is a cool Javascript library that lets you simulate reflections on mobile websites (there's a gif in this repo that shows the library simulating glare on a credit card as you turn an iPhone). This is pretty sweet, I had no idea this was possible with Javascript.

Culr (Web Tool)

I'm a big fan of this color picker, it has a bunch of color palette presets that are sort of bright and happy looking. There are options for monochromatic, triad, and tetradic color palettes.
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Miscellaneous

How To Find Hidden Cameras & Spy Gear Like a Professional: The Definitive Guide (5 minute read)

A surprisingly serious and comprehensive guide for sweeping a room for bugs and hidden cameras. Some beginner common sense stuff like checking sockets and turning off the lights to check for indicator lights on recording devices, and some advanced stuff about checking mirrors, thermal detection, and radio frequency detectors.
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