CategoryTechnology

Even more on WeWork

I know I’ve linked to plenty on We in the past, but here’s another one, this time more of a profile of Adam Neumann. Some examples: When Mr. Neumann announced in July 2018 via video call from Israel that the company was banning meat, executives in New York were caught off guard. With little explanation from Mr. Neumann, a group huddled to determine a rationale—they settled on...

Group Chat Trends

Interesting insights from Andreessen Horowitz around the rise of Group Chats as a path to transactions. The article predominantly covers WeChat trends in China, but is applicable to many messenger apps including WhatsApp and FB Messenger, albeit with some privacy differences. In a nutshell, the Group Chat approach involves dedicated ‘concierge’ admins who help members with questions...

Chrome 76 blocks Flash by default

Well this was a surprise to me.

Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features.

I had no idea people were still using Flash.

YouTube channel research

Incredibly thorough investigation and research into YouTube channel creation and viewership by Pew Research Centre. Pew Research Center used its own custom mapping technique to assemble a list of popular YouTube channels (those with at least 250,000 subscribers) that existed as of late 2018, then conducted a large-scale analysis of the videos those channels produced in the first week of 2019...

What price privacy?

From Bloomberg: Millions of young people are turning their personal Instagram accounts into “business” profiles to learn more about how their posts are performing. The trend has an unintended privacy consequence. And further: “I’ll talk to parents and say, ‘Did you know that if your 13-year-old turns their Instagram account into a business account, more than 1 billion people have access...

Bye Bye Nacho

Very thorough analysis of the Nacho Analytics demise by Ars Technica (a reminder of what good investigative tech journalism looks like btw). If you’re not familiar with the whole situation, here’s the summary: Chrome Browser extensions (perhaps deceptively) get your permission to track everything you do (recording URLs you visit, content that is on the page etc) and then on-sell that...

Taxing automation

I love how thoughtful Bill Gates is – everything he says is considered and informed. His quick interview (via Quartz) is illuminating. Touted as: ‘The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates‘ at first glance it may sound extreme. But here’s the logic: Quartz: What do you think of a robot tax? This is the idea that in order to generate funds for training...

IoT and Watson

Think of two key trends and join them together. For example: 1. Artificial Intelligence 2. Internet of Things (IoT) Ta-da: IBM is working with VISA to enable it’s Watson AI technology to make purchases on your behalf. And in particular, by connecting with your devices. Here’s the vision: IBM’s Watson IoT unit is aiming to provide access to as many as 20 billion devices for Visa...

Machine learning hype

Is machine learning overhyped?
Not yet IMO – from a marketing perspective, it’s just getting started.
Tomasz Tunguz outlines why it’s possible to get fatigued by the constant references to ML being the next wonder of the world (hint: it’s been providing enormous value for decades already).
Useful reading – especially some of the examples he mentions.

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