Curated Commons // Edition 95
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the 95th edition of Curated Commons. Happy reading, and do pass on the newsletter and share it on your social networks if you find it interesting! It’s free!
Let’s dive right in ($ indicates potential paywall).
10 years of CRISPR
It’s 10 years since the advent of CRISPR from two brilliant scientists. And we are still nowhere near answering the thorny ethical questions that it threw up. Good read in the NYT - Read here ($)
A world of words
We are immersed in the written word, far more than we realize. Interesting perspective. - Read here
…each day the average Internet user now sees as many as 490,000 words — more than War and Peace. If an alien landed on Earth today, it might assume that reading and writing are our species’ main function, second only to sleeping and well ahead of eating and reproducing
Business is booming for military AI startups
War is good for business. - Read here
Even data leaks are massive in China
Your friendly reminder that the bigger the centralized database, the bigger the leak. - Read here ($)
The gap between AI’s capabilities and reality
It’s widening, argues this WSJ story - Read here($)
A new organ donor in town
Pigs. Clinical trials are getting closer for pig-to-human organ transplants. - Read here
The new benchmark for stealing money
This is a crazy story on how a fake job offer took out $540 Mn from crypto game Axie Infinity - Read here
Death in tech is slow
The world still runs on COBOL/Fortran/Mainframes. - Read here($)
Reminded of this older story
Also, on a similar note, South Korea apparently loves Internet Explorer! - Read here ($)
More CEOs now talking of restructuring supply chains
China manufacturing is still at risk with strict lockdowns and no wonder more companies are thinking of alternate locations. - Read here ($)
The construction of new manufacturing facilities in the US has soared 116% over the past year, dwarfing the 10% gain on all building projects combined
Training doctors with tech
Interesting use case of training doctors with holograms instead of actors (and yea, another situation where machines slowly take over some human jobs).
Another very interesting read on how advances in robot surgery are turning surgical trainees into spectators - Read here
Insurance scams are growing bigtime in Assam
Some pretty wild examples in this story on growing insurance frauds, a challenge exacerbated with the pandemic. - Read here ($)
Twitter is the go-to network for journalists, not public
Interesting stats from the US showing that most journalists use Twitter for their jobs, but most users prefer Facebook to get their news. Replace Facebook with Whatsapp for several emerging countries. - Read here
More Interesting Reads:
Scientists at CERN observe three "exotic" particles for first time - Read here
Is it time to finally write a eulogy for the CAPTCHA? - Read here
“The NFT dream isn't dead, but it's taken a big non-fungible beating.” - Read here
“This year, the number of new petroleum-engineering graduates in the US is expected to total about 400 -- an 83% decline from 2017, when they peaked at more than 2,300” - Read here ($)
How will the Metaverse evolve? By 2040? - Read here
Disney will lose copyright protection for Mickey Mouse by 2024. What does this mean? - Read here
Not everything that scales in China works elsewhere. TikTok abandons live commerce effort in US/Europe. - Read here ($)
Penguins with attitude!
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