Curated Commons // Edition 71
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the 71st 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. Do share/subscribe if you find it interesting. Let’s dive right in ($ indicates potential paywall).
A story about…nuclear pacemakers
You have a plutonium-powered pacemaker inside you. The hospital that put it inside you has gone bankrupt. What now? Fascinating story. - Read here ($)
Nerds with memes
Modern-day pirates. - Read here
Pirates hijacked an infamous short-wave radio station, which dates from the Soviet era but is still online today, and used it to broadcast everything from Gangnam Style to audio that draws memes when inspected under a spectrum analyzer.
Will the metaverse be a throwback to web 1.0, with pop-ups?
Interesting FT piece that highlights a whole bunch of patents that Meta has accumulated. A fair bit on biometrics and advertising. - Read here ($)
Remote work, for playing havoc with small companies’ hiring strategies
The pandemic forced remote work. Remote work opened up opportunities for smart developers to work for global companies. And that is playing havoc with smaller tech companies regionally. Good story with a LatAm focus. But pretty similar picture across Asia too. - Read here
Is vertical integration back in fashion?
In the past few years, big conglomerates have been slowly relegated to the background with companies like GE/Siemens slowly selling off businesses not deemed to be core (or pushed by activist investors). Now, some companies are rethinking about vertical integration in the wake of the pandemic. - Read here ($)
When facebook is a must-have
Across many emerging markets, facebook is not just a nice-to-have medium. It is vital to life. - Read here
Subsidies can achieve amazing things
Slowly. And then suddenly. "European sales of electric cars overtake diesel models for first time...More than a fifth of new cars sold across 18 European markets, including the UK, were powered exclusively by batteries..." - Read here ($)
The permafrost challenge
What happens when permafrost in Siberia starts to melt? tl;dr - not good things. - Read here
Robinhood army no more ‘dumb money’
Fund managers are now carefully looking at those they dismissed till recently - small-time day traders. - Read here ($)
“Climategate”. Or something like it
Cop infiltrates climate movement, embeds himself for years, becomes leading activist, then manages to kill the movement. Worth a Netflix series! - Read here
Copyright lawyers as enemy of history
Academics want to preserve video games. Copyright laws make it complicated. - Read here ($)
There’s an app for…mimicking postal mail
Notification abuse is a rampant problem. Is the answer to the mad engagement racing slowing down? Do we need to go back to a ‘slow Internet’? Reminded me of a piece of software called RocketTalk from the late 90s which converted email to voice messages that are delivered asynchronously. A thoughtful read - Read here ($)
Reading the doomsday clock
This is a very good introduction to humanity’s risk and how the doomsday clock measures it. The story of the doomsday clock - Read here
There’s a retirement age for…admins of stolen credit card sites!
The world’s most popular stolen credit card site is shutting down, because their admins think they are getting old. And that disappoints many frauds. A story on one such fraud. - Read here
More interesting reads:
An AI system has been granted a patent in South Africa - Read here
This is an instructive case on over-policing. A small town of ~1,200 people, without even a traffic light more than doubled its revenue from fines. After it dramatically increased policing. - Read here
After pig heart, now pig kidneys have been successfully transplanted in humans. One way to fight the chronic organ shortage - Read here
Google likely ‘stole’ money from publishers - Read here ($)
Meet, Facebook & Google, the new ‘telcos’ - big tech companies now own significant chunk of under-sea fiber connections. - Read here ($)
How French artists in 1900 imagined the year 2000 would be. A thread - Read here
Can girls and women break into Sumo in Japan? - Read here
Cop infiltrates climate movement, embeds himself for years, then manages to kill the movement. Worth a Netflix series! - Read here
Interesting read on how the FBI art crimes team operates - Read here
THE version of Wordle that you must play - Head here
Long read on how chocolate went from exotic curiosity to worldwide commodity - Read here
Can’t make this up - Research suggests the wage gap between genders narrows after a company falls into the hands of a buyout group…because they reduce salaries or fire higher-paid folks (usually men) and hire cheaper employees. - Read here ($)
And finally, my hero of the week!
And while at it, a bonus icymi
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, thank you, and maybe consider sharing it? My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.