Delicious Digest #14 - Empires, Toddlers, and Origami
A weekly newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Empires, Toddlers, and Origami.
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😳 Must reads of the week
◼ “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos”, a feature-length documentary into Amazon and its founder. Watch at home, it’s long. Link (Video)
🗞 News
◼ Top apps downloads for January 2020: TikTok, Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger. Kind of scary once you consider that 4 out of 5 belong to Facebook. Link
◼ Instagram says an iPad app won’t come since they “only have so many people and lots do”. This from a company that made $20 billion on ads last year. My guess: many images just wouldn’t look good on the larger, high-res iPad screen. Link
◼ Cocomelon, a YouTube channel for toddlers, gets 2.5 billion views every month. Strange new world. Link
◼ “Hackers” (what is this, 1997?) have used duct tape to trick Teslas into believing a 35 mph says 85 mph. AI is everywhere – and so will be more and more these adversarial attacks. Link
See also this fascinating adversarial attack tricking an AI into believing that a turtle is a rifle: Link
◼ The big mouse has a new boss. Link
◼ Remember the company that collected millions of facial data and sold it to law enforcement? Apple has revoked Clearview AI’s developer licence for bypassing the App Store. They also sell the service not only to law enforcement but anyone with money. Link
🕹 Games
◼ GDC has been officially “postponed”. MWC, F8, GDC, … is WWDC next? Link
◼ “Respawn Admits Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Could Have Used Extra Time in the Oven”. Things devs never say: “I really had enough time on this one…” Link
◼ Then again, Star Citizen just had a record-breaking year in crowd-founding. They raised $267m total so far. Here’s to another 7y of alpha development! Link
◼ But maybe Anthem did need more time in the oven as BioWare announces that they are officially “redesigning” Anthem. Link
◼ Google’s “GameSnacks” are fast loading HTML5 games for those with poor connections. I love the push to make things leaner. But how long will it take networks and handsets to improve to make this obsolete? Link
◼ Roblox has raised $150m in funding. This is very strange. They have 115 million monthly active users and are raking in $4-5m a day (AppaAnnie). Why on Earth would they need to raise $150m external cash? Link
◼ Epic says Superdata’s numbers are bollocks. That is not surprising. These services (Appannie too) are in the business of “Educated Guessing Games”. And it’s particularly hard to guess the top titles' performance. But it’s the best we got until Epic decides to publish real numbers. Link
◼ Bethesda has also pulled its games from GeForce Now. Content always trumps tech in the long run. Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ Self-assembling “Origami” furniture. Ikea, watch out! Link
◼ Pro-Tip: don’t ask sex-related questions from a brand social media account. Just. Don’t. Link
◼ Movie Spoiler of the Day: if the bad guy is using an iPhone, he’s not really a bad guy. Link
◼ Insta-Business: “Artist Flooded with Requests After Offering to ‘Remove Your Ex’ for $10 Per Photo”. So simple. Link
◼ Russian multiplication. Link
◼ A 1929 interview with a 103y old man. What a time-capsule. Link
◼ Painting with sand. Mind officially blown. Link (Video)
I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and it’s surely no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.