Curated Commons // Edition 111
Thank you for subscribing (if you have already, and if you haven’t, subscribe now!). Welcome to the 111th edition of Curated Commons. Happy reading, and do pass on the newsletter and share it on your social networks if you find it interesting! It’s free! Both dollar-free and ad-free.
Let’s dive right in ($ indicates potential paywall).
Apple’s love affair with China is ending
And India/Vietnam appear to be the winners. In 2017 Apple listed 18 large suppliers in India and Vietnam; last year it had 37 - Read here ($)
The definitive crypto story
Who better than Matt Levine to write it. Be warned though, it is the entire issue of BusinessWeek’s latest edition. Coming in at over 40,000+ words. - Read here ($)
Also, I did the in-thing on Twitter ;-)
Twitter is losing active tweeters
Less than 10% of monthly Twitter users apparently generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. And they are now leaving Twitter, says Twitter’s internal report. - Read here
Holiday packages to…beat inflation
We live in strange times. A vacation that promised to save £200 sold out double quick. - Read here
We work less, even though it might not feel like it.
Fascinating chart (full disclosure - yet to read the paper)
The economic war between US & China over semiconductor tech is here
Very good interview elaborating on the recent sanctions that the US Govt imposed on several Chinese companies. - Read here
The backstory to how U2’s album was pushed by Apple to everyone
Still a headscratcher after so many years! - Read here
Merck finds vaccines that can help end the Ugandan outbreak of Ebola
In strange, but good news, Merck has apparently found 100,000 doses of an investigational vaccine against the species of Ebola that Uganda is fighting now. Strange that it took questioning by a media house for Merck to ‘discover’ it had these dosages! - Read here
First vinyl, and now cassette tapes might be experiencing a revival
Not sure why, perhaps nostalgia, but cassettes are experiencing a revival. Dust out your iconic Sony Walkman! - Read here
Sales of the format have jumped in the last few years, from 173,000 in 2020 to 343,000 last year, according to Luminate. As of this writing, 306,384 cassettes have been sold in 2022
On a related note, streaming music took over dramatically in the next ten years. What about the next ten? - Read here ($)
Generative AI is the buzz of Silicon Valley now
Generative AI, which creates new pieces of content, is all the rage now. And Stable Diffusion is growing in popularity. We don’t know the full consequences yet. Or maybe we do, and don’t want to acknowledge it - Read here ($)
Surveillance, with a twist
Interesting thread full of nuance on the surveillance state that is China
More interesting reads:
Many products by the largest food firms are considered unhealthy, research shows - Read here
Is AI in medicine overhyped? - Read here
A fake conference helped over a 100 Russians escape from the war - Read here ($)
Scientists in Australia say some Cockatoos have figured out how to defeat efforts to keep them out of garbage bins, and now they appear to be teaching the others - Read here ($)
How one Mumbai woman ran a multi-crore crypto scam for Chinese mafia - Read here
Fascinating piece on the amount of control Nielsen has over the US TV industry. - Read here
As cars go high-tech, repairing becomes that more trickier - Read here
And finally, I think this is an important story. Shutterstock is going to sell AI-generated stock imagery. Created by OpenAI. That has likely been trained on images from various artists and models from all over the web, including Shutterstock. Who pays whom, and for what, is a very interesting question to ponder in our algorithmic future.
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, thank you, and maybe consider sharing it? My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.