Curated Commons // Edition 13
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the Thirteenth edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
Netflix, but as a cultural beacon
Reed Hastings has famously said that Netflix is competing with sleep. Before he conquers that, he might as well get into branded products based on Netflix originals. Their new series “The Queen’s Gambit” has sent sales of chess sets soaring!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/arts/television/chess-set-board-sales.html
Can you enforce your standards on others?
That was click-baity, but that’s pretty much what Swiss citizens will be voting to decide on the 29th of November.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/27/switzerlands-crucial-vote-corporate-accountability
On November 29, Swiss citizens will decide whether Swiss companies should be required to introduce human rights and environmental safeguards to their global business practices. Voting in favor of the proposal brought by the Responsible Business Initiative could help improve the lives of many workers and communities around the world.
Supporting local book stores, through an Amazon by a different name?
The UK has an ‘alternative’ to Amazon for books - where you can opt to ‘buy’ through your local book store when you checkout, and they get 30% of the cover price. It got off to a good start apparently, but not necessarily a sustainable model,
Algorithmic music meets bot lawyers
What happens when you let an AI tool run amuck? A bot made Frank Sinatra ‘sing’ Britney Spears. YouTube’s bot took it down for copyright violation. Likely flagged by a law-firm’s bot.
An AI tool made Frank Sinatra sing Britney Spears' "Toxic." What followed was a battle over who owns the rights when AI gets creative.
https://futurism.com/bot-frank-sinatra-britney-spears-youtube-copyright
The story of a concerned scammer
This is a fascinating story that has hacking, Glenn Greenwald, Brazilian politics, corruption, Telegram and more, with a dash of the crazy.
https://www.wired.com/story/brazil-hacker-bolsonaro-car-wash-leaks/
The mRNA magic:
As we see multiple potentially successful vaccine candidates, there have been lots of good stories on their backgrounds and what’s likely next.
STAT has a very good read on the history of mRNA and how Moderna and BioNtech/Pfizer went about developing the vaccine. As always, breakthroughs are not overnight. It’s about perseverance - https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/
This was news to me, but says a lot about how vaccine development is also akin, in a way, to tech. Moderna took apparently all of two days to develop the vaccine!
While on the topic of vaccine, desi jugaad late-stage capitalists appear to have come swinging in the game already!
Meet the Disney Metaverse
The pandemic has been particularly harsh on entertainment companies. At the same time, the pandemic is also forcing companies to push the envelop of their thinking on how the future should look like. Looks like Disney has been actively thinking of its future in this context. Here, the company’s CTO Tilak Mandadi talks of a “theme park metaverse , where the physical and digital worlds converge.”
There’s a market for low-tech
I am as much a technophile as any of you. But that said, there’s a certain joy in seeing that certain old-time tech still has a thriving market. Why? Because it intimately solves its core market’s key needs! Good read on how CB Radio continues to be the comms device of choice for truckers.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/in-a-high-tech-world-cb-radio-lives-on-in-the-world-of-trucking/
The pandemic is a shot-in-the-arm for Amazon
Amazon, this year:
hired 400,000 workers.
leased 12 Boeing 767-300 cargo aircraft, bringing its air fleet above 80 jets
added 220 package facilities
boosted its fulfillment capacity by 50%
Very good read on the in-house shipping network that Amazon has built which rivals UPS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/27/amazon-shipping-competitive-threat/
Amazon, but as a lean, mean hiring machine - Good read on the Amazon hiring spree that has no parallel anywhere else - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/pushed-by-pandemic-amazon-goes-on-a-hiring-spree-without-equal.html
Along with such tearing growth, also comes the transition of Amazon from that 'cute little ‘disruptor’ to a big, fat incumbent that won’t hesitate in using a range of tactics to get its way. Worrying read.
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The Remote work opportunity, for travelling, and getting back to work
More Europeans and Americans are using the pandemic as an opportunity to work from abroad, writes the WSJ. In India as well, work from home has meant, for many people, work from hometown. Lest we forget, this is a huge pandemic-induced privilege - to be able to work remotely, and on top of that, work from low-cost locations while drawing salaries benchmarked to expensive cities. And not to mention, the risk of gentrification of small towns.
In India, the pandemic is having a differentiated impact on women in the workforce. Thanks to changes in regulations by the Government, and companies becoming more open to the idea of remote employees, the opportunities for women to enter/re-enter the workforce appear to be on the rise.
So which social network would you like to use today?
Differentiating social network by features is passé. Every network has more or less the same features now. This is great for passive consumers - there is an explosion in content to consume. But is terrible for creators. How do you pick & stick a network? It it the one which gives you most social capital, or that which offers you the most tools for maximizing impact of your content? No easy answers.
Ransomware on the rise
Russian cyber criminals typically work for profit through ransomware. But who knew, even they apparently have some ethics. They apparently agreed among themselves to not attack hospitals during the pandemic. Ahead of the US elections, Feds and authorities cracked down by taking down nearly all of the network of infected computers that they controlled. And now, they appear to back with a vengeance - targeting hospitals. Our insecure future is here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/hospital-cyber-attack.html
Will my joke fail to carry if AWS goes down?
This is 2020, so that’s likely a legit question. AWS going down took down everything from vacuum cleaners to door bells. Our Internet of hyper-connected things that will go down when someone at AWS sneezes hard (sorry, Telugu joke) is here - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55087054
Conspiracy theorists are going low-tech
So what if large tech companies are clamping down (or trying to at the least) on conspiracy theorists? They can use these very platforms to pull together…their own print paper! The times we live in!
While on conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaxxers, this is a fun satirical video.
Replacing trust with surveillance malware
The pandemic has been terrible on kids who now have to be stuck in front of a computer screen. To add insult to injury, a whole crop of companies have brought solutions that, during normal times, should ideally qualify to be called malware or tools of active discrimination!
Best of the Rest:
Have you been a sincere couch potato during the lockdowns the past few months? A here? The German govt would like to thank you- https://www.dw.com/en/germany-hails-couch-potatoes-as-heroes-of-coronavirus-pandemic/a-55604506
It may indeed be possible to reverse aging. Whether it is desirable is an open question - https://www.fastcompany.com/40491939/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-sleep-is-our-competition
Not sure if you have been reading the FT’s Izza Kaminska’s posts on Bitcoin for a few years, but if you have, this is a must-read piece on how she’s now come around to seeing a rationale for Bitcoin - https://www.ft.com/content/d4fc86df-a1df-4b4c-9684-c6e8abfb018e
Ikea has barely entered India - it has just one functional store in Hyderabad. When the pandemic struck. Now it is changing tack to open smaller stores and focusing on ecommerce - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retail/change-in-strategy-ikea-to-now-open-more-smaller-stores-in-india/articleshow/79406815.cms
Stuff companies do for money - this is a terrible look for McKinsey on their role in the Oxycontin Opioid crisis. Some of the material from this story is beyond disgusting. - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/business/mckinsey-purdue-oxycontin-opioids.html
If machine learning and animals and GIFs interest you, do check this thread out.
Can you buy faster than a bot? There is a Twitch stream …that is running a bot that's checking the new Playstation and Xbox stock at retailers - https://www.npr.org/2020/11/27/939449893/bots-are-depleting-stocks-of-the-new-playstation-and-xbox-consoles
Want to ‘protect’ your identity, yet share a picture? Try this - https://generated.photos/anonymizer
Researchers can now detect ‘silent speech’ using AI and a bunch of electrodes by converting muscle activity. Great implications for people with speech challenges - https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/24/uc-berkeley-researchers-detect-silent-speech-with-electrodes-and-ai/
I leave you with this wonderful video of a transformation from a makeup artist…
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