Keen is an app that is similar to Pinterest, allowing users to create collections based on topics. Created by Google's Area 120 internal incubator for experimental efforts, Keen uses machine learning and Search to help users find helpful content related to their interests. The more users save and organize, the better the recommendations become. A 37-second video showing Keen in action, as well as links to the app, is available in the article.
Facebook Gaming has been rejected again from the iOS App Store. App Store rules do not allow third-party apps to distribute games as a separate platform. Facebook Gaming is a gaming platform, offering its own games inside the app, with a dedicated social network and the ability to live stream gameplay. Apple has been accused of anti-competitive behavior due to the App Store's restrictive business model. Other apps have been banned for offering external subscription services, bypassing Apple's 30% fee.
Space Perspective is a company that can take you up to the stratosphere in a balloon. Customers will be sent up to 100,000 feet high to see the Earth from above without having to strap into a rocket. Other companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are aiming to send space tourists much higher, between 50 to 62 miles above the Earth, but development has been slow. Space Perspective's Neptune is propelled by a hydrogen-filled balloon. It ascends at 12 miles per hour and can carry eight passengers plus a pilot. The experience will last six hours, with two hours spent hovering above the Earth. Wi-Fi will be available.
The world's largest liquid air battery has begun construction near Manchester, UK. It will use spare green energy to compress air into a liquid and store it, releasing it back into a gas to power a turbine when required. The battery will be operational in 2022 and will be able to power up to 200,000 homes for five hours. It will store 250MWh of energy and cost £85m. The project will create 200 jobs, mainly in construction.
Lens is a cross-platform user interface for managing Kubernetes clusters. It has support for multi-cluster management, real-time cluster state visualization, terminal access to nodes and containers, and more. A three-minute video is available that explores the Lens UI.
The GitHub Super Linter can lint code from any language and report any errors, the location of the error, and details about the error automatically any time a pull request is opened. It is highly customizable and comes with default rule templates. A link to the repository is available.
MIT CSAIL researchers have released Timecraft, a machine learning system that can deduce how a painting was produced and then attempt to recreate the process. It was trained on timelapse videos of digital and watercolor paintings. The source code is linked and a three-minute video that explains Timecraft and shows how it works is available in the article.
Link To Text Fragment is a new Chrome Extension that can generate URLs to specific text on a webpage. Users simply need to highlight and right click text and the 'Copy Link to Selected Text' option will be available. A new feature in Chromium called Text Fragments allows extra linking information in a URL after a #. The extension simplifies the creation process as some URLs can become long and difficult to manually create. Text Fragments are not yet supported in all browsers.
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