TLDR 2019-07-04

Another Facebook outage, a possible mirror universe

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Big Tech & Startups

YouTube no longer allows ‘instructional hacking and phishing’ videos (2 minute read)

YouTube updated its list of ‘harmful or dangerous content’ banned from the platform, adding instructional hacking and phishing videos to the list. Other items on the list include ‘extremely dangerous challenges’, ‘violent events’, and ‘eating disorders’. A major channel that creates videos on computer security had its videos removed and was banned from uploading new content. However, the ban was quickly removed and the videos were restored after complaints from the community. An exception to the dangerous content rules exists for videos that are primarily educational, documentaries, scientific, or artistic. These rules are usually enforced by machine learning algorithms, and these algorithms have performed poorly at distinguishing between genuine content and targeted videos in the past.

Facebook resolves day-long outages across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger (2 minute read)

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users had difficulty loading images, videos, and other data on their apps today due to a system outage. In an official statement, Facebook said that the outage was caused by an error that was triggered during routine maintenance. Services slowly started to resume just a couple of hours after the outage started. Major outages from these platforms are becoming increasingly disruptive as more and more people depend on the services for communication and business.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

A third CRISPR baby may have already been born in China (4 minute read)

At the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong last November, it was revealed that a scientist in China had edited the genes of a pair of twins using CRISPR technology. It was also revealed that he had performed the procedure on another embryo and that the pregnancy was only recently confirmed at the time of the summit. After the summit, the scientist and his studies were hidden from the public as China sought to cover up the news. It is unknown what happened to the second pregnancy. However, if the pregnancy was carried out to full term, the baby will be born around this time. All of the babies had the same CCR5 gene removed.

Scientists are searching for a mirror universe. It could be sitting right in front of you (5 minute read)

An experiment conducted in Tennessee will attempt to open a portal to a parallel universe. In studies that examined how neutrons break down into protons, it was found that neutrons created in particle beams lasted 10 seconds longer than neutrons stored in laboratory bottle before breaking down. One possible explanation for the discrepancy was that the normal neutrons were crossing over into a ‘mirror world’, which meant that they were no longer detectable. In the experiment, scientists will shoot a beam of neutrons onto an impenetrable surface and see whether neutrons could be detected on the opposite side of the surface. If the mirror universe exists, some neutrons should be detected as they would be able to move past the surface by switching between universes.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

I'm Making AlgoDaily Free (1 minute read)

AlgoDaily’s premium course is now completely free. Jake Z, the creator of the course, felt that the course tackled the wrong problems and that he wanted to contribute back to the community. There is currently a lot of content on the internet regarding coding interview preparation. However, this information is lacking guidance on how to get programmers to the point of being comfortable in doing an interview, consistency in getting programmers to complete exercises, and full immersive interview experiences. The AlgoDaily course will be ad-supported until Jake brainstorms a new solution to tackle these problems.

Lazydocker (GitHub Repo)

Lazydocker is a terminal UI for docker and docker-compose, written in Go. Instead of memorizing commands and aliases while keeping track of multiple terminal windows, Lazydocker has all the information you need in one terminal with a macro for every common command. Users can also add custom commands as required.
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Miscellaneous

Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State (7 minute read)

Schools are adopting more and more technologies to monitor students in an effort to improve safety. Software programs, such as Gaggle, scan student activity across different platforms including email, computer files, and online assignments. Gaggle claims to have prevented at least 542 suicides. However, these claims are difficult, if not impossible, to prove. Facial recognition technology can be used to recreate a map of movements for students and teachers. Iris scanners have been installed in some playgrounds. The rise in the use of technology could be due to technology vendors taking advantage of school budgets. Constant monitoring of students results in a lot of data that is collected without the student’s consent. As the technology is relatively new, the laws behind data collection and sharing have not caught up yet, so parents need to be vigilant about what systems the schools may be installing to monitor their children with.
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