Curated Commons // Edition 15
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the Fifteenth edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
Too much data for too little takeaway?
That’s the summary of this good review of the Amazon Halo - a wearable health band.
Amazon’s new health band is the most invasive tech we’ve ever tested.
The Halo Band asks you to strip down and strap on a microphone so that it can make 3-D scans of your body fat and monitor your tone of voice. After all that, it still isn’t very helpful.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/10/amazon-halo-band-review/
Jason Bourne, at scale
The augmented human has been coming up before our eyes for the past few years. But now, countries are taking the next big leap - coming up with bionic soldiers. As always, reel beat reality in imagining this situation.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a34945348/france-approves-bionic-soldiers/
Understanding the importance of AlphaFold
This is a long, technical piece on AlphaFold by a reflective researcher. This bit though, drives it home on the scale of the achievement.
https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what-just-happened/
How do you go about starting a company?
A brilliant thread for any aspiring entrepreneur!
How Pfizer-BioNtech did it
Good read on how the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine got delivered in record time. Interesting also to see that large publications are focused more on highlighting the role of Pfizer, the manufacturing partner in this case, and not the innovator, BioNtech.
The indoor spread risk is real
Worrying study from South Korea that shows how a 5-minute exposure, 20--feet away was enough to infect someone!
The Digital Transformation question of our age faces Disney
Companies across sectors have faced this challenge - tech is upending their traditional business, their initiatives using tech are on a growth curve, but they are not sufficiently profitable yet. How do they stem the decline in the core, while make the tech-focused business profitable? The Disney version. Good read.
https://www.ft.com/content/cf22ac6b-c065-4657-bbe6-6689c625461d
Tech will impact…home design
Well, it has, for a while, with houses being custom-designed for private screening rooms and what not. However, we are now entering a different phase, that of outdoor design. With drone delivery getting closer to reality with each passing day, the question of where can the drones land, deliver, and take-off safely is one that architects and designers need to start focusing on.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/drones-are-poised-to-reshape-home-design-11607194801
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Tailoring in a pandemic, with a little help from robots
Very interesting read on how some of the most elite men’s tailors are coping with a pandemic where touch is shunned. Tech to the rescue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/business/savile-row-covid.html
A wayward iceberg is coming crashing
An iceberg, larger than the size of Singapore or Hong Kong, is heading straight for an island and potentially devastating marine life around the island. Some fascinating pictures and graphics in this Reuters story.
https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-CHANGE/ICEBERG/yzdvxjrbzvx/index.html
Can you cross-examine an algorithm?
Who’s responsible when an algorithm throws out a decision, and the human employees who are using the software have no clue how the decision parameters are weighed? And the impact disproportionately hits the weaker economic sections? These are no more hypothetical questions. We are living thro’ these, in one form or the other, across countries. Good read.
Zooming our way out of a pandemic
This is a good read on how our tech tools can do with a dash of empathy and creativity. Picking up lessons from gaming, or eventually headed to a VR headset, our conferencing lifestyle isn’t likely to go away soon, so our tools better adapt quickly.
https://aeon.co/essays/how-empathy-and-creativity-can-re-humanise-videoconferencing
Life is being squeezed through the low-bandwidth channel of webcam frames, text-chat streams, emojis and scheduled meeting time-slots. The simplifying effect of that compression acts only to increase anxiety, to make us all feel under pressure. This is not calm.
The road to a purposeful organization is long, but companies are getting on it!
Fascinating to see that Airbnb has started an endowment fund for its hosts. One way definitely for the sharing economy front-end to partake in the outsized gains they get from the supplier back-end.
Pandemic driving interest in medicine
The pandemic is driving up an interest in medicine. That’s definitely positive news! Would love to see it expand to biology and across the world!
Stanford University School of Medicine reports a 50% jump in the number of applications, or 11,000 applications for 90 seats. Boston University School of Medicine says applications are up 27%, to 12,024 for about 110 seats.
Never let emotions come in way of investments
In 2020 things, an Israeli soccer team which is famous for its anti-arab fans has a new co-owner: a Sheikh.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/world/middleeast/israel-soccer-uae-beitar-jerusalem.html
Can we CRISPR our way out of the next pandemic?
This is a fascinating ongoing experiment on pigs to use CRISPR to make them immune to a deadly virus. Far from human applications though, but the possibilities are massive!
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/11/1013176/crispr-pigs-prrs-cd163-genus/
And then, there were more:
India is seeing the rise of mental health influencers. Make what you will - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-bytes/the-rise-of-mental-health-influencers/articleshow/79604272.cms
When regular cops in America purchase military-grade weaponry for policing, I guess it’s not weird that some schools apparently purchase digital forensic and phone-hacking tools to keep a tab on students on teachers - https://gizmodo.com/u-s-schools-are-buying-phone-hacking-tech-that-the-fbi-1845862393
Not all good news on the vaccine front. In, what I thought, was not widely reported news, the Sanofi-GSK vaccine candidate suffers a setback. Unfortunate, given Sanofi’s extensive experience in vaccines - https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/11/sanofi-suffers-major-setback-in-development-of-a-covid-19-vaccine/
Who says predicting the future is hard? Check the date on this tweet!
Is voice experiencing its breakout moment when it comes to new services? Interesting read - https://www.bvp.com/atlas/the-state-of-sound-in-2020-and-beyond
The aspiration to be a vendor to a big, fat incumbent is real. Axios wants to try - https://digiday.com/media/axios-is-entering-into-the-software-licensing-business/
Michael Jordan has a golf course. Drones deliver beer there - https://www.tmz.com/2020/12/08/michael-jordan-golf-course-drone-food-drinks-caroline-wozniacki/
WarnerMedia’s decision to release all of its 2021 movies simultaneously online and in theaters is causing ripples in the industry. Good interview by Kara Swisher with Jason Kilar, the CEO of WarnerMedia - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-jason-kilar.html
Branches of retailer Co-op are using facial surveillance to reduce the risk of shoplifting. How long before consumers decide online tracking is the lesser evil? - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coop-facial-recognition
Some AI tools have no business existing. Ethnicity-identifying facial recognition systems are here. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/
Love such GIFs
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