Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the 53rd edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in ($ indicates potential paywall).
Subscription fatigue is around the corner
There’s a subscription for Tacos - Read here ($)
A subscription for beans, with a free membership to a fb group - Read here ($)
Financial industry anecdotes are the best!
Can’t make this up! - Read here
To teach children about the banking system, a U.S. primary school walked its students to a local bank where each opened a savings account into which each deposited $5. Implicit in this activity is the message that the bank is trustworthy. Another bank then acquired that bank and charged all low balance accountholders a monthly maintenance fee that wiped out the children’s savings. The children may have learned a more important lesson about the financial sector than the school intended.
Buildings, Lights and Birds
#TIL - In New York City, between 90,000 and 230,000 birds are killed each year when they collide with building glass! Across the US, it is estimated that it could be as high as a billion bird deaths every year caused by building collisions - Read here
The Facebook Files
This is a bad week for Facebook. WSJ is publishing a series of stories based on several Facebook internal files - Read here ($)
On a related note, the replies to this tweet (if you navigate Twitter’s horrendous nested replies) offer a fascinating peek into organizational design and how bad incentive structures can prioritize individual priorities over societal impact of at-scale platforms.
Privacy is reshaping the Internet
Greater privacy for individuals does not bear good news for the model that made services on the Internet possible for past couple of decades - advertising. - Read here ($)
A related story on how Apple’s new rules likely impacted Casper forcing it resort to layoffs. - Read here
Our need for online endorsement
This is a very good read on how our need for attention online, ably helped by our quantified lives, is driving us crazy! - Read here
What does AI=driven policing mean for citizens?
With growing adoption of algorithmic systems, facial recognition tools and other new-age tools by law enforcement authorities, what does it mean for citizens? Researchers are digging to it. - Read here
Global supply chains are going out of whack. Due to Demand.
Good thread on what’s happening with supply chains and why we are likely to head into more shortages in coming weeks and months.
Do you want to rent your face for deepfake videos?
The future is well and truly here. People are renting out their faces to companies that are then using them to train deepfake models for usage in various situations. - Read here
On topic of deepfakes, apps with no morals, breaching every ethical line, continue to surge. There are now apps that swap women into porn videos with a click! (app taken down after story came up). - Read here
Synthetic biology is now here
Advances in computing, engineering, automation, AI and other areas are now heralding growth in synthetic biology. - Read here ($)
The promise of Decentralized Finance
The Economist looks into the growing adoption of DeFi and why we should pay more attention to it. - Read here ($)
DeFi has the potential to rewire how the financial system works, with all the promise and perils that entails. The proliferation of innovation in DeFi is akin to the frenzy of invention in the early phase of the web. At a time when people live ever more of their lives online, the crypto-revolution could even remake the architecture of the digital economy.
There’s always a market
China has a new hot rental service - men who actually listen. - Read here
China, CBDC and the end game
What is China aiming to achieve with the eCNY? One perspective. - Read here
Autonomous cars continue to inch forward, and backward
Walmart is starting an autonomous delivery service in three cities. - Read here
Japan is betting on autonomous cars for its aging population
Our insecure world is getting more insecure
In case you missed it, go update your iOS devices.
“Project Zero, a Google team devoted to identifying and cataloging zero days, has tallied 44 this year alone where hackers had likely discovered them before researchers did. That’s already a sharp rise from last year, which saw 25” - Read here.
On a related note, Moody’s is investing $250 Mn to start measuring risk of companies getting hacked. - Read here
More interesting reads:
Vaccine inequity. - Read here
Anime is now the third most-in-demand TV subgenre globally. - Read here
Teen artists are making millions off NFTs. Are you? - Read here
Saladbots are a reality now. - Read here
It is, apparently, possible to make Steve Bannon sound reasonable - Read here ($)
“Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election” - Read here
“Wellness Influencers” are the new vaccine disinformation spreaders. - Read here ($)
Ten years of Tim Cook, by Jean-Louis Gassee - Read here
No pressure! “Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years if geneticist's new start-up succeeds”. - Read here
The automotive industry in America might finally be moving from B2B2C to B2C, marking the beginning of the end of the dealership. - Read here ($)
#TIL - Chesterton’s Fence. Fascinating. - Read here
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, please do share on your social networks. My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.