Curated Commons // Edition 67

Dec 24, 2021

Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the 67th edition of Curated Commons.

If you are new, or if you received this newsletter as a forward, I send this once a week and each edition focuses on tech/business/science/algorithmic future/Internet weirdness/anything-else-that-catches-my-eye. Let’s dive right in ($ indicates potential paywall).

Bugs on your plate.

The EU has now formally certified as fit for human consumption three categories of bugs - Crickets, Mealworms, and Grasshoppers. Let the sustainable protein wars begin! - Read here ($)

Meet the material that ‘learns’ - Nickel Oxide

Fascinating research that shows Nickel Oxide might have learning behavior. Can it help advance AI? - Read here

UN fails to agree on ban on autonomous killer robots

A badly targeted weapon is likely far more dangerous than a badly targeted ad. But hey, there’s big investments in here. - Read here

Deepfakes, from a historical ‘spirit photography’ perspective

This is a very interesting read taking us back in time to when photographers made fake photographs, usually of spirits, and what that might mean for the deepfake world we live in - Read here

Mind = blown. A functioning 8-bit CPU inside Minecraft

Now waiting for a CPU powerful enough to play Minecraft inside Minecraft - Read here

Gaming in a spreadsheet

Lovely thread on games that can be played inside Excel or Google Sheets

Alexander King @LiterallyAKing

📈 SPREADSHEET GAMES 📉 Everyone knows game designers love working with spreadsheets, but there aren't enough games that run *in* spreadsheets. But my students are helping set things right. Check out some of their amazing games, all playable in Excel or Google Sheets: 👇📊👇📊👇

Meet the OG to beat all other OGs

Can’t make this up!

Daniel Pietersen @pietersender

Biquette the goat, sold to an abattoir after she stopped producing milk but was rescued by punks and then spent 10 years watching grindcore bands. She could come and go as she pleased and, in the words of her rescuers, “escaped death, lived punk”. Absolute legend.

Trust - the one item will be at a super premium in the future

Cristóbal Valenzuela @c_valenzuelab

Realtime content editing with some upcoming @runwayml magic 👀

AI for crime prediction - the names change, the outcomes don’t

Not a day passes without another report of some law enforcement agency falling prey to slick content marketing from some firm that suggests they can predict crime. - Read here

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Background checks and poor quality source data

More HR teams across the globe increasingly rely on criminal background checks. In many cases, there are several firms that have amassed databases that offer these services. The challenges of poor quality data in these situations is painful for the individual concerned. Good investigative deep-dive from the US. - Read here

YCombinator and how it has changed the tech world

This is a good read on YC and how it has significantly impacted the tech world with all of the startups that have come out of it. - Read here

The ‘smart’ store is coming,

Amazon Go is not the only player when it comes to autonomous stores. There are several parallel attempts. Like in this instance, how this startup has AI-powered shopping carts. Also amused at how some of these startups think - plonking down a screen and some software to create a mobile POS of sorts where the consumer scans each item! - Read here

Jobs for the nose

#TIL There’s a profession where people sniff pork! - Read here ($)

Organized spam, but for labor rights

Organized online communities leveraging Reddit, Github, Google Docs and more to fight against big companies and their practices - a slice of our future, in the present! - Read here ($)

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