TLDR 2019-10-14

Google bans payday loan apps, Grams sale halted

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Big Tech & Startups

Google bans predatory payday loan apps from the Play Store (1 minute read)

Google has banned apps on its Play Store which offer deceptive or harmful personal loans. Some of these apps offered loans where the annual percentage rate was 36 percent or higher. The new policy, which was implemented in August, is meant to protect users against exploitative terms. Apple does not have a similar policy.

U.S. SEC halts Telegram's $1.7 billion digital token offering (1 minute read)

The Securities and Exchange Commission has received a temporary restraining order against the entities that were selling Grams, Telegram's digital token. Telegram was set to sell 2.9 billion digital tokens, of which 1 billion was to be sold in the US. The SEC claims that the digital tokens were securities offerings, which meant that they were subject to the SEC's offering rules which require firms to file registration and disclosure documents. Telegram was set to launch its tokens on October 31.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Getting scanned for a pint: How facial recognition technology is being used in a London pub (2 minute read)

A pub in England is using facial recognition technology to form a digital queue to prevent people from cutting in line. A display in the pub shows the crowd and a virtual number showing their place in the queue. Bartenders control the queue with tablets. The bar claims that the data never leaves the building and is deleted once it has been used, but some people are concerned that hackers may be able to access the data. Facial recognition technology is not regulated, so people need to be careful sometimes. The technology is also able to detect if someone is underage.

Humans Can Regrow Cartilage in Joints Just Like Salamanders (2 minute read)

Scientists have discovered that humans have the ability to regenerate cartilage in their joints, similar to how salamanders and zebrafish are able to regrow limbs. The discovery could lead to new methods of repairing joint tissues as well as the possibility of growing new limbs. In order to make the discovery, scientists developed a method of measuring the age of proteins and found that cartilage was older as it moved up the human body. Cartilage is young in the ankles, middle-aged in the knees, and oldest in the hips. The position of the cartilage are correlated with how animals regenerate limbs. Limb repair is moderated by microRNA in animals. MicroRNA is also found in humans, and the scientists believe that they can use it to create medicines for treating joints.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

Uber Go Style Guide (GitHub Repo)

This is the style guide for writing Go code at Uber. All code should be error free when run through golint and go vet. More information on Go tools is available.

DEEP LEARNING WITH PYTORCH: A 60 MINUTE BLITZ (Website)

This tutorial aims to give the student an understanding of Pytorch's Tensor library and neural networks at a high level. The student will train a small neural network to classify images. A two-minute video is available to preview the course.
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Miscellaneous

Ask HN: How did your startup change after an exit? (Hacker News Thread)

An engineer at a startup that is planning an exit asks others for experiences for how their workplaces changed after other startups either sold via IPOs or changed ownership in other ways. In general, employees saw productivity in the company drop as people focused less on working and more on the potential money coming in. They planned more for their futures and had less urgency in developing products. Some companies had slower transitions, but eventually, they all saw a similar drop in productivity until the sale and transitions were complete and new management was installed.
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