Delicious Digest #7: Harbingers, Sex Toys, and Cat Videos
A weekly newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: harbingers, sex toys, and cat videos.
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😳 Must reads of the week
◼ “Harbinger customers” are people that consistently buy products that get discontinued, buy real-estate that underperforms, and donate to losing political candidates. Fascinating. Link Here’s the PDF of the actual research paper: Link
◼ Yearly reviews are for losers. App Annie looks at the Top Apps & Games of the last decade. Candy is #2 in downloads. Can you guess #1? Link
◼ Christmas crazy-time is here – it’s also a good moment to think about giving back. If you are looking for great charities, look at Givewell.org. They provide independent, data-backed research and recommend few but highly effective charities. I’ve been donating to the Against Malaria Foundation for several years now, on their recommendation. Go do some good, people. Link
🗞 Tech News
◼ Great recap of the decade in tech from the NYT: “The Decade Tech Lost Its Way”. Better read this at home, it’s a rabbit hole. Link
◼ A Russian tech firm is suing Twitch for 180bn roubles (£2.1bn) for allegedly broadcasting pirated streams of premier league matches. The tricky thing about having a platform with user-generated content is controlling the content. It can be quite costly to take measures to prevent it in the first place or deal with consequences of illegal content. Link
◼ Intel buys Habana Labs, an Israeli artificial intelligence firm, for $2 Billion. AI is everywhere. Intel lost the mobile train completely, they surely do not want to miss the AI train. Link
◼ Speaking of platforms and AI: Instagram’s AI will now go through the contents of your caption and match it against its database of ‘problematic’ content. This isn’t really new. What’s new is that now you’ll be shown a prompt telling you that the caption is potentially harmful. “Free speech” ain’t “free reach”. Link
◼ The “Teslafication” of air travel? Bit soon to tell but stuff is happening. Link
◼ Apple, Google, Amazon, and an alliance of other smart-home manufacturers will work together on a Zigbee-based open-source protocol for communicating with smart-home devices via IP. Link
🕹 Games
◼ GamesIndustry.biz' “The Year In Numbers 2019” Infographic. Lots of cool stats and figures. Link
◼ Supercell’s Brawl Stars has generated $420 Million since hard launch. An interesting case: looking at it in the West, it’s only a portfolio game for Supercell that has generated less than their (old) stable horses Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Asia is a different story: Korea is their biggest market. Link
◼ The next generation of Xbox is called… wait for it… Xbox. Hold me. Link
◼ Call of Duty Mobile: 172 million downloads and $87 million gross bookings in the first two months. Link
◼ “Epic’s exclusivity push leads to ugliness.” Link
◼ Polygon’s “50 Best Games of 2019” list. Link
◼ “How accurate were 2009’s gaming predictions?” Link (Video)
◼ Facebook wants a piece of streaming, buys (Madrid-based) PlayGiga for $70m. Link
◼ Netease removes Arsenal footballer Mesut Özil from PES 2020 after an Instagram post criticizing China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims. Publishers and politics don’t mix. Link
◼ “How a sex toy company ended up making a creepy video game figurine.” Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ The oldest painting in the world: 44.000 years old. Link
◼ The ultimate usability test: a monkey can do it. Link (Video)
◼ Winner of the “Best optical illusion of the world 2019” award. My brain hurts. Link
◼ From toxoplasmosis virus to viral cat videos. Link (Video)
◼ Digital brushes created using AI. Just imagine what this will look like in just 2-3y from now. AI is everywhere. Link
◼ The trick that made animation realistic: a Rotoscope. Link (Video)
◼ Glædelig jul! Link (Video)
I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and it’s surely no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.