Here’s your weekly dose of treats 💌
A weekly list of goodies curated by Robert.
Follow the white rabbit 🐇
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🎶 Something to listen to while reading
Complex, fiery and divisive stuff I’ve been ingesting
see a satellite tonight
🛰️ are visible in the night sky, no telescope required if you know where to look. Find out here.End of an ad-era? Google suddenly cares about our privacy
Google has a wave of new map features powered by AI.
"I, Pencil" an essay that was originally published in 1958. This essay beautifully describes the amount of human coordination, cooperation, and trade that needs to happen for a seemingly simple lead pencil to be made.
The Michelangelo of Microsoft Excel (video)
When Tatsuo Horiuchi retired, he decided to try his hand at art. But instead of spending money on paints and brushes, Horiuchi used what he already had pre-installed on his computer—Microsoft Excel. Now, the 77-year-old artist is creating remarkably intricate digital masterpieces of the Japanese landscape, all on the free graphing software.
How an MS Paint artist made this picture (video)
Pat Hines used MS Paint for all the illustrations in his book. Here's how.Awesome websites. Friking awesome websites.
https://iuri.is/
https://prashantsani.com/
https://albinotonnina.com/
http://riccardozanutta.com/
http://driesvanbroeck.be/In the past, IBM, Oracle or Microsoft sold technology to other companies, as a tool. They sold computers and software to GE, P&G and Citibank. Now there’s a generation of companies that both create software and use it themselves to enter another industry, and often to change it. Uber and Airbnb don’t sell software to taxi companies and hotel companies, Instacart doesn’t sell software to grocery companies, and Transferwise doesn’t sell software to banks.
A number of small but notable stories:
The UK competition authority is digging into Facebook's acquisition of Giphy (meme market power, but also access to underlying user data)
Apple's app store in China contains apps made by government groups that have been sanctioned due to involvement in Uighur oppression (yes, but are they supposed to block apps from the Chinese state, in China?)
The Russian requirement for new iPhones to suggest some approved apps for download when you set them up has gone live
The Brazilian central bank has approved WhatsApp payments (launch was delayed over this)
And - perhaps not so small - the US is discussing trade sanctions on the UK in response to the UK imposing turnover taxes on US internet businesses that have big offices in London but book all the revenue and profit in Luxembourg or Ireland. This last one has been building for a long time, and there is an OECD solution in the works, but expect lots of bargaining.
Links: Giphy, Apple/China, iPhone in Russia ($), Facebook Brazil, US tariffs
Augmented Reality has been Almost Here for a long time now, but people keep working at it. Microsoft just signed a $22bn, 10 year deal with the US military for Hololens-based headsets, Snapchat is apparently working on a new version of its Spectacles that includes some kind of display, and of course Apple's device is still in the lab but getting a lot of investment.
Everyone wants to make a product that looks like a pair of normal glasses but that can put things into the world that look like they're really there, but there are hard optics problems to solve, and then hard sensor, hardware miniaturisation and AI problems. And then, like VR today, how broad are the use cases? Meanwhile, smartphone AR started very niche (wave your phone in your room to see the chair) but has quietly expanded to a bunch of interesting commerce use cases. Links: Microsoft, Snapchat, Apple rumours
Lessons from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan Turing’s Debate on Mathematical Ontology
What is literature? Sartre — life is about telling stories!?
👽 My latest YouTube video
🐦 Tweets for thought
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Thank you for reading 🤜🤛
If you enjoyed this, maybe I can tempt you with my YouTube channel.
My website is here.
💌 My Favorite Links: articles I've enjoyed, podcasts, tech, software, ideas, and personal philosophies.
I do share some thoughts on 📰 Instagram & on 🐦 Twitter.
✍️ Medium at some point.
🔴 Discord server for the community.
Again, you can also reach out via Instagram, Twitter, or using gravitational waves.
That said, how’re you and yours doing this week? Any major changes to your status quo, or are things fairly locked-in and predictable at the moment?
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Have a great day ahead!
With 💛