TLDR 2019-02-07

Samsung's smartwatch leaked ⌚, Instacart steals tips 💸, predictive policing 👮

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Big Tech & Startups

After Uproar, Instacart Backs Off Controversial Tipping Policy (4 minute read)

Instacart, an app that allows users to have groceries and other household items delivered, has changed it’s tipping policy. The previous tipping policy included tip amounts in it’s minimum payouts, which resulted in delivery drivers missing a large portion of their pay. Delivery drivers will now receive their tips on top of the expected payouts and Instacart has promised to implement the new policy retroactively so delivery drivers will be paid fairly for their previous work.

New Samsung Galaxy Sport renders give us a big hint at a 20 February unveiling (1 minute read)

A new render of Samsung’s new Galaxy Sport Smartwatch (which may also be named the Galaxy Watch Active) has been leaked. The renders show the watch in 3 new colors - black, teal blue, and pink gold. The watch faces all display the same date, February 20, which is the date of Samsung’s Unpacked event. It is likely that the new smartwatch will be officially announced at the event.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Dozens of Cities Have Secretly Experimented With Predictive Policing Software (8 minute read)

PredPol is a software that claims to use an algorithm to predict crime in specific sections of a city. Several police departments in the US have been quietly experimenting with the software. While the idea of using computers to identify potential crime hot-spots may be appealing, the data is based on past crime events - this may mean that if police departments rely on such technology, other areas may be overlooked. Whether it’s ethical to use this technology is also an important question, as it may increase prejudice towards civilians by police in certain areas.

Controversial ‘Gene Drives’ Just Worked in Mammals for the First Time (3 minute read)

Gene Drives are customized snippets of genetic code that can be inserted into an organism in order to create a certain trait. It had previously only been used in insects, such as mosquitoes, due to ethical and technological issues. However, a team of scientists in California has successfully inserted a gene drive into mice, opening up new possibilities with the technology.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Flickr-Faces-HQ Dataset (GitHub Repo)

Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ) is a high-quality image data set of human faces. It contains 70,000 PNG files at 1024x1024 resolution with a large variation in age, ethnicity, and image backgrounds. Photos also have people wearing glasses, hats, or other accessories. The images are able to be used under a Creative Commons license by NVIDIA Corporation. All files contain original metadata to acknowledge the original content creators.

Notion (GitHub Repo)

Notion is a tool to manage JavaScript packages to ensure that everyone on the project is using an identical development environment. It is operated through the command line and allows packages to be managed by project. Notion’s tool-chain allows developers to enjoy the convenience of installing global packages without having to worry about the dependencies on their machines.
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Miscellaneous

The Rise of the Robot Reporter (5 minute read)

Artificial intelligence is being used to generate content for news websites. The technology, which was first used in financial reporting, is being used to quickly generate articles which can then be edited and published by human reporters. The tool allows journalists to focus on more substantive work rather than having to worry about reporting on statistics and numbers. AI may also help journalists by identifying patterns and anomalies in data for further investigation.

Call for retraction of 400 scientific papers amid fears organs came from Chinese prisoners (2 minute read)

An investigation into organ studies from China has resulted in over 400 scientific papers identified as non-compliant with the ethical standards required by medical journals. Organ transplants used in these studies may not have been consented to by the donors. There are large discrepancies in the rate of transplants between official government statistics (10,000 transplants per year) and hospital statistics (60,000-100,000 transplants a year). These discrepancies may be due to organ harvesting from executed prisoners.
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