Samsung's Metaverse popup 🏪, ants heal trees 🐜, how JPEGs work 🖼️

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Big Tech & Startups

Samsung takes a stab at its own immersive metaverse store (3 minute read)

Samsung 837X is an immersive metaverse experience that will be open in Decentraland for a limited time. It will allow guests to experience the physical Samsung 837 building in New York. Guests can complete quests with rewards like NFT badges and limited-supply wearables. There will be a mixed reality live dance party with Gamma Vibes. Samsung plans to bring Samsung 837X to more metaverses, with different experiences.

Twitter wants you to retweet with TikTok-like reaction videos (1 minute read)

Twitter is testing a new feature that allows people to post video reactions to tweets, similar to TikTok's video reply feature. The test is limited to iOS for now. Users with the feature will see an option to react with a Tweet Take in the retweet menu. Instagram also added its own version of TikTok's video replies last month.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Qubits Can Be as Safe as Bits, Researchers Show (6 minute read)

Storing information in qubits is difficult as quantum computers are subject to all sorts of atomic-scale errors. A new preprint posted by researchers from Moscow State University details a theoretical method to protect quantum information from errors just as well as classical information is protected. Quantum computers still have a long way to go before they will become truly useful, but the new method will maintain performance even as the number of qubits scales up. This article discusses the history of the research leading to the development of the new method.

These Ants Can 'Heal' Wounded Trees in a Fascinating Symbiotic Relationship (3 minute read)

An accidental slingshot hit on a Cecropia tree in Panama led to the discovery that the ants that live inside these trees often fix damage to their living homes. Azteca alfari ants have a well-known mutually beneficial relationship with the trees. The ants use material found within the plant stem to make the repairs. It appears that the ants mostly repair areas where the damage might put the brood at risk, but more research is needed to clarify this.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

How JPEG Compression Works (6 minute read)

JPEG, created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992, is the most used digital image format in the world. It uses lossy compression, so information is lost in the process, while maintaining good image quality. This article breaks down how JPEGs work, explaining in detail the maths and algorithms behind the image format.

How to Write Better Git Commit Messages – A Step-By-Step Guide (8 minute read)

Writing good Git commits can save you and your coworkers hours of digging around while troubleshooting. Collaboration and communication are of utmost importance within engineering teams, and the Git commit message is a prime example of this. This article teaches developers how to write better commit messages with improved grammar, content, conventional commits, and more.

Project Management for Software Engineering Teams (Sponsor)

Imagine how much more you could get done if your project management tools didn't make you sigh. Shortcut is the ideal solution for task management, bug tracking, iteration planning, and reporting. Delight the scrum gods and give us a try.

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Miscellaneous

China's digital currency comes to its biggest messaging app WeChat, which has over a billion users (2 minute read)

WeChat plans to roll out China's e-CNY digital currency for use in its app. WeChat is used everywhere in China, with the super app offering many functions such as messaging, payments, taxi-hailing, and food orders. WeChat Pay has over 800 million monthly users. Alipay has also started trialing digital yuan payments. The People's Bank of China has expanded the rollout of its e-CNY app to certain regions and cities, allowing anyone in those areas to use the service.

This Keyboard Lets People Type So Fast It’s Banned From Typing Competitions (3 minute read)

The CharaChorder is a typing peripheral that lets people type at superhuman speeds. It has 18 finger-sized joysticks that move in every direction and can hit every button on a regular keyboard. The CharaChorder uses chorded typing, an input method similar to stenography. The CEO of CharaChorder has won several online gaming competitions using the device. A video of the CEO hitting 500 words per minute using the CharaChorder is available in the article.

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Samsung's Metaverse popup 🏪, ants heal trees 🐜, how JPEGs work 🖼️

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