TLDR 2019-01-16

Netflix is raising its US prices from $8, $11, and $14 dollars/month for its three plans to $9, $13, and $16 dollars/month respectively. The price increases take effect immediately for new signups and will be rolling out over the next three months for existing users. Netflix has 58 million US subscribers and 79 million non-US subscribers.

Privacy-conscious search engine DuckDuckGo is now partnering with Apple Maps for map and address related searches for DuckDuckGo on mobile and desktop. Apple Maps does not require DuckDuckGo to send any IP address information to Apple, and DuckDuckGo immediately discards approximate location information necessary for local searches immediately after the search.

A small cotton plant has germinated inside China's lunar lander. Lead researcher Xie Genxin says "This is the first time humans have done biological growth experiments on the lunar surface." Growing plants on the moon will be crucial for long-term space missions. The plant is growing inside a "mini lunar biosphere", an 18cm bucket with air, water, and soil. The other plants in the bucket, mustard and potato seeds, haven't sprouted yet.

A new paper-thin stamp-sized Bluetooth chip is able to operate without a battery by harvesting energy from radio frequencies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular signals, powering a Bluetooth-equipped ARM processor. Because it doesn't need a battery, it can be produced cheaply and mounted on almost anything. The company behind the chip, Wiliot, raised $30 million from investors including Amazon and Samsung. They hope to have a limited release in 2019 and a wide release in 2020.

This is a handy collection of 1-page cheatsheets for Modern HTML/CSS, CLI (Bash & Git), Python, Javascript for people who know Python, Python for people who know Javascript, and React/Redux/React Router.

This is a huge set of deep learning resources for all kinds of learners (there are sections for academic papers, courses, blogs, tutorials, and frameworks so you can choose how you want to learn). Especially good for people who like to read academic papers, because there are a ton of them and they seem well organized.

China has greenlighted a technology-driven economic zone called the Greater Bay Area that will link Hong Kong, Macau, and nine other cities including Shenzhen and Guangzhou into a giant science and IT hub about the size of San Francisco and Tokyo combined. It's part of China's plan to integrate expertise in finance, manufacturing and technology, and to grow Hong Kong. Hong Kong's chief executive says "Our Bay Area has been described by some as combining Silicon Valley with New York City."