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I miss blind, dumb enthusiasm for new tech

May28
by on May 28, 2019 at 7:00 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Podium


Today marks 10 years since Google stoked great excitement in the tech community by unveiling a new product called Wave. I remember it clearly, because that day I sat down on my sofa 5,000 miles away from Google’s developer conference and wrote my first ever post as a paid tech journalist, trying to make sense of what exactly Wave was. To this day, it’s difficult to explain Wave. Essentially, it let you collaborate with others in real-time  —  a first for the web of a decade ago. But when users got their hands on it, they were left confused about…

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Cryptopia needs $2M to keep a database alive – or users might never recover their tokens

May27
by on May 27, 2019 at 2:29 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Defunct cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia warned it will take “some months at least” to figure out how to return tokens owed to its users. Cryptopia administrators have also requested “urgent interim relief,” which they say is critical to maintain a single SQL database that stores all of its users’ individual account holdings and contact details. “Without this information, reconciling individual holdings with the currencies held by Cryptopia will be impossible,” reads a statement posted early Monday. Hackers forced Cryptopia offline in January after they drained $16 million in digital assets from its operational wallets. Following a failed relaunch, the exchange finally commenced the liquidation…

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Slimy fish mucus can help chemists develop new antibiotics — here’s how

May27
by on May 27, 2019 at 2:13 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, syndication, world


One day in the future, you may take a pill to treat an illness – and owe your recovery to the tiny microbes that flourish in the slippery layer of mucus that coats fishes. It is critically important to find the next generation of antibiotics. The incidence of bacterial infections resistant to current antibiotics continues to climb. The World Health Organization has warned that this issue will only become more serious, and a recent study anticipates that by 2050 drug-resistant infections will affect more people than cancer. But how do you find a new antibiotic? Perhaps surprisingly, over 70 percent…

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