TLDR 2021-10-22

Amazon in-store 🏪, Play Store fees reduced 💰, Sam Altman's Worldcoin

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Big Tech & Startups

Amazon rolls out in-store pickup for products ordered from local retailers (3 minute read)

Local Selling is a new set of services from Amazon that allows local and regional retailers to offer both in-store pickup and fast delivery to nearby customers. Items that are eligible for store pick-up will have a special tab on the item page. Customers will have five days to collect their orders. Delivery will be facilitated by the business itself. Amazon Local Selling is now available for many retailers, with more to be added later this year and during 2022.

Google lowers Play Store fees for subscriptions and music streaming apps (3 minute read)

Google has announced that more categories of apps will be eligible to pay significantly less than the usual 30 percent fee. Subscription-based apps will now pay a 15 percent fee. Ebooks and on-demand music streaming services are now eligible for fees as low as 10 percent. Google will determine at their discretion which music streaming apps will be eligible for lower fees. The new fee structure may encourage developers to switch over from one-time payments to subscriptions.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman wants to scan your eyes in exchange for free cryptocurrency (4 minute read)

Worldcoin is a company that wants to expand the reach of cryptocurrencies to the masses. The company is offering free cryptocurrency when people use its orb-shaped devices to scan their irises. The device uses the image to create a unique code that can be used for identification without requiring a big database of biometric data. The platform has more than 100,000 users already and it aims to hit 1 billion users by 2023. Worldcoin could potentially be used as the infrastructure to carry out universal basic income.

Watch this wooden knife cut effortlessly through juicy, medium-well-done steak (6 minute read)

Researchers from the University of Maryland have created wood materials 23 times harder than typical woods. They created a wooden knife and wooden nails using the material and found that the performance of both matched or exceeded that of their steel counterparts. The wooden nails were as sharp as commercial steel nails but with the added bonus of being rust-resistant. All of the main raw materials used to create the hardened wood are abundant and low cost. A short video showing a wooden knife cutting through a steak is available in the article.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

UseHooks.ts (GitHub Repo)

UseHooks.ts is a React hook library written in Typescript. It contains many useful code snippets that can be easily copied to the clipboard. A hosted version is available.

Olric (GitHub Repo)

Olric is a distributed cache and in-memory key/value data store. It can be used to instantly create a fast, scalable, shared pool of RAM across a cluster of computers. Olric can be used both as an embedded Go library and as a language-independent service.
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Miscellaneous

Google Stadia’s salvaged future as a back-end cloud service is here (3 minute read)

Google Stadia launched in 2019 and things haven't been great for the gaming service since. The company shut down its first-party studio before it could ever develop a game and several key executives have left the struggling division. A recent blog post hints that Google wants to pivot the service into a Google Cloud Gaming Platform. It will allow other companies to release games through Google's technology. AT&T recently released a Batman game powered by Stadia technology for its Wireless customers.

AP Taps Chainlink to Provide Untamperable News Data (2 minute read)

The Associated Press has announced a partnership with Chainlink Labs to provide news and data secured by blockchain technology. AP will start using Chainlink smart contracts to cryptographically sign data to verify that it comes from the company. Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network built on Ethereum that provides real-world data to smart contracts. AP is a collective of more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters. Its governing structure is similar to that of DAOs, despite being founded in 1846.
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