TLDR 2019-09-06

Facebook Dating, YouTube /Fashion

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Big Tech & Startups

YouTube launches optimized /Fashion page with curated videos, original content (2 minute read)

YouTube's new /Fashion is a single destination for style content on YouTube, featuring a unique homepage and video watching experience on mobile. It has a carousel with large cover images of recent videos on the top of the screen. There is original content that includes behind-the-scenes videos and live streams of the latest collections straight from the runway. YouTube has partnered with fashion brands to generate content from fashion professionals, publishers, and brands across the industry. In the next few months, YouTube will start localizing the page for global markets and add more international voices.

Facebook Dating launches in the United States today (3 minute read)

Facebook Dating has launched in the US, a year after it started testing in other countries. Users 18 and over will start seeing a new tab within the Facebook mobile app where they can create a separate profile and meet people who share similar interests according to their main Facebook profiles. The app will make sure users don't match with friends unless they choose to use the 'secret crush' feature, which matches users if they both select each other. Facebook Dating is free and there are no ads or in-app purchases. There is Instagram integration and a feature where users can alert others to the location of their dates for safety. It will be launched in Europe later in the year and is currently available in 20 countries.
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Science & Futuristic Technology

A Breakthrough for A.I. Technology: Passing an 8th-Grade Science Test (7 minute read)

Four years ago in San Francisco, more than 700 engineers competed in a competition to build an AI system that could pass an 8th-grade test. $80,000 in prize money was up for grabs. The engineers were unable to match the language and logic capabilities of 8th graders, with only one team being able to score near the 60 percent mark. A new system called Aristo was recently unveiled at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle with the ability to score over 90 percent on an 8th-grade science test and more than 80 percent on a 12th-grade exam. The Allen Institute was founded in 2013 by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, who has recently passed after a long battle with lymphoma. The exams were all multiple-choice questions, and there were some limits in problem-solving abilities. Researchers are working on being able to create an AI that passes tests for graduate school admission.

Alphabet and other giants are betting that the future of real estate is robotic (3 minute read)

An MIT project called CityHome, started in 2014, aimed to build robotic furniture that could appear as needed, allowing people to utilize the space in smaller apartments more effectively. The project eventually became a company called Ori, which has now made a deal with Ikea to create customizable furnishings for customers. Ori is now raising funds and working with investors in city planning, retail, and hospitality to change the way buildings are made in order to integrate the technology directly into the building, rather than installing separate furnishings. The furniture Ori creates can change the way people live at scale, but only if the buildings are designed to house these robotics in the first place.
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Programming, Design & Data Science

DeepFaceLab (GitHub Repo)

DeepFaceLab is a tool that uses machine learning to replace faces in videos. It includes a working standalone Windows binary. A gallery of examples is available, as well as a series of links with materials and examples of deepfakes, both SFW and NSFW.

How to learn D3.js (Website)

D3.js is a collection of small modules that allows developers to create amazing data visualizations on the web. This introduction explains how to use D3 to grab and manipulate data, manipulate the DOM, draw SVG shapes, convert data to the physical domain, and deal with formatting and visualizations. It contains additional resources for further education.
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Miscellaneous

The race to create a perfect lie detector – and the dangers of succeeding (21 minute read)

Brain scanning technologies, merged with advancements in artificial intelligence, are expected to make lie-detection systems that are much more accurate than conventional polygraphs. People are only able to separate facts from fiction around 54 percent of the time, which is not much better than flipping a coin. Advancements in recent years include the rise in affordable computing power, brain scanning techniques, and AI. Some startups, wishing to gain investments or operate at a commercial level, want us to believe that an almost infallible lie detector is on the brink of discovery. The main technological advantage when working with AI is the ability to utilize vast amounts of data to make inferences which humans would miss. In this era of mass surveillance, with people’s personal lives existing online, it is scary to consider that entities such as governments or corporations would want to peer into one's innermost thoughts. No matter how good the technologies get, the liar that believes his/her own lies will still be protected from the technology.
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