TLDR 2022-02-17

Google has announced the start of a multi-year process to overhaul ad tracking on Android phones. Each Android device is currently assigned a unique advertising ID that is used to build user profiles for ad targeting. Google will phase out advertising IDs and use Privacy Sandbox, a method that will limit the sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers. The company is working with app developers to finalize details on how Privacy Sandbox will work.

Storyliving by Disney is a new part of the company's theme park division that plans to develop a series of communities for residential living. Its first location will be a community of 1,900 housing units in California's Coachella Valley. Disney is partnering with third-party developers on the project and will not own, build, or sell the homes. It will only manage the branding and marketing of the communities. A video with concept art of the communities is available in the article.

Google's DeepMind AI team has successfully trained its software to control a tokamak. Small reactors like tokamaks use software to monitor the state of the plasma they contain and respond to any changes. Control software tends to be fairly specialized. A rewrite is usually required if scientists want to experiment with different plasma configurations. DeepMind's software can produce different plasma configurations in real hardware. The model could be used to find ways to optimize existing hardware.

The wait for a heart or lung transplant takes an average of four months. Kidneys can take up to five years. Blood types can affect whether organs are accepted by a body's immune system. This can cause some patients to miss out on transplants if they have the wrong blood type. A large group of scientists have converted type-A lungs into type-O lungs using a combination of technologies. The technology also allows surgeons to use lungs that couldn't have been used otherwise due to injury or infection.

hue.tools is a toolbox for working with colors. It features color mixing, blending, conversion, modification, detailed information, and more. hue.tools was built with TypeScript, Svelte, SvelteKit, and Tailwind. The tool can output in multiple formats, including HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, HSI, and LAB.

Melody is a language that compiles to regular expressions. It converts readable code into regex. Melody supports the JavaScript implementation of regular expressions. Examples are available.

Uber is allowing its customers to see what ratings they have received from drivers. Customers will be able to see their ratings in the app's new privacy menu. Uber uses the rating system to police its users. A low rating can result in both drivers and riders being kicked off the platform. Uber released a list of cities with the highest and lowest ratings. New York City came in first for the lowest average rider rating among large US cities.

Twitter is now letting developers add labels to their bot accounts. The feature has been in testing since September and was meant to be rolled out by the end of 2022. Automated account owners can now opt in to have the label applied to their account. Twitter won't be auditing the accounts that apply for the new label. The company is also working on implementing a label to memorialize people who have died.