Curated Commons // Edition 175
Welcome to the 175th edition of Curated Commons! Thank you for subscribing, reading and sharing. Apologies for radio silence in recent months. Wish I had a great excuse!
Feel free to share if you like the newsletter and want to motivate me to be regular! ;-)
Even whales have no privacy now!
On the brighter side, we might soon, eventually, hopefully, be able to listen in to (and maybe even communicate with) Whales. A successful first step has been taken though! - Read here
Science, FTW
Fabulous news on stem cells and type 1 diabetes coming out! - Read here
Talk about China getting embedded inside your economy
Fascinating story from the FT on how Chinese money made its way into Pakistan’s energy sector with the Government borrowing and guaranteeing to pay even for unused electricity. And now cheap Chinese panels are flooding Pakistan and businesses and individuals are moving to solar, making the grid unaffordable and potentially economically unviable, massively impacting low-income consumers! - Read here ($)
When you confuse search results with gen AI output
One can understand if a less-informed user does that, but for Google to combine gen AI-generated content along with regular web pages marks an important gradient in the ever-slippery slope of losing trust in anything on a screen - Read here
Bow down to our future masters - cameras and AI
Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle, thinks AI and cameras will make sure “citizens will be on their best behavior”. - Read here
AI boom is doing strange things to the energy industry
It’s extending the runway of fossil fuels - New gas plants are rapidly coming up to meet the needs of data centers. - Read here($)
It’s giving a boost to the nuclear industry - Three Mile Island (yes, that one, if you know your nuclear history) is reopening for Microsoft - Read here
Paraguay and intellectual property protection
Interesting piece where I learnt about Harvard University Paraguay that is giving out bogus medical degress. And a family-owned company called Mickey that has as its mascot “Mickey”. And any resemblance to the Walt Disney version of Mickey Mouse is just purely coincidental! - Read here($)
Don’t try to ask an AI model how it thinks
At least, for those from OpenAI. The company is apparently sending warning mails out to users who attempted to trace how their newest model reasons. Not sure if the AI can catch the irony of a company called OpenAI doing this. The humans running the company sure don’t! - Read here
Intern CEOs exist, and a new one just made it to the top
Lovely piece on incoming Nike CEO Elliott Hill who is now taking the top job at Nike after joining some three decades ago as an intern. - Read here ($)
Brain-Computer Interfaces are amazing inventions
A startup competitor of Neuralink now allows for people with paralysis to control Amazon Alexa with just their thoughts! - Read here
Neuralink’s vision-restoring BCI is moving forward too! - Read here
AI:1; Human: 2
This genius created fake bands with AI, then made millions by making bots listen to their music. He’s been arrested apparently, but hey, he sure has a great future consulting media companies! - Read here
Influencers be influencing us into wild ‘social experiments’
This influencer pre-recorded content for two full years, while undergoing a personal transformation. Hid a 250-pound/113Kg weight reduction in the process! - Read here
Robots are taking over, well almost, factory shopfloors
Industrial robot count is increasing globally. China has seen a 13x increase in the past decade. India has had a 59% increase the past year. Your guess is as good as mine on what it means for human employment in manufacturing. - Read here ($)
More interesting reads:
South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates among rich countries. It’s now seeing skyrocketing sales of…dog strollers - Read here ($)
Researchers have come up with a new material that can create electricity from ambient air! - Read here
The humans that make Shein’s scale work - Read here
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