Delicious Digest #10 - Austria, Axes, and Africa

A weekly newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Austria, axes, and Africa.

😳 Must reads of the week

◼ Fascinating insights on influencer marketing economy in China. Brave new world. Link

◼ More Deconstructor of Fun predictions: “What Happens When the Hypercasual Party Ends?” It’s a hypercompetitive, hypersaturated hypercasual beyond-hypergrowth market. Also, hyper. Link

🗞 Tech News

◼ Facebook has shelved plans to monetize Whatsapp through ads. Interesting in many ways: first, both founders left Facebook in 2017 over severe disagreement on ads; second, Whatsapp was a $22 billion acquisition that yet has to make money; third, will we actually see new non-ads business models from Facebook? Link

◼ Apple has acquired Xnor.ai, a Seattle startup specializing in low-power, on-chip/device artificial intelligence. Link

◼ Why are companies sitting on over $4 trillion (!) dollars in cash? Guess. I give you a hint. It starts with “T” and rhymes with “axes”. Link

◼ Clearview AI has scraped over 3 billion photos from Facebook, YouTube etc., indexes them with face recognition, and then sells this to law enforcement. Have a photo of suspect? Upload to Clearview AI and get their name, public images, locations. Creepy. But also inevitable. Tech and data is simply there. AI is everywhere. Link
See also: EU considers temporary ban on facial recognition in public spaces. Link

◼ Analyzing 15y of Y Combinator startups. Tough times for consumer start-ups. Link

◼ Alexa devices more than double in just one year. Link

🕹 Games

◼ Know your top-spenders: former Vice Chancellor of Austria apparently loved Clash of Clans a lot and spent €3000/month - and then expensed it to his party. Link

◼ Cyberpunk 2077 delayed from April to September. More competition for Call of Duty this autumn? Link (via Etienne Badia)

◼ Predictions on the shooter market and the interesting question of who might be benefit the most from Fortnite’s decline. Link

◼ Niantic drove $249 million in tourism revenue with its walking events in 2019. Link

◼ 2020 African Games Industry Trends. Hands up if you knew anything about gaming industry in Africa! Link

◼ The Coronavirus spreads in China – and Plague Inc. becomes the top paid game… Link ($)

◼ The 20 best-selling games of 2019 in the U.S. – I call to your sense of duty to read this article. Link

😋 Tasty Tidbits

◼ What really killed the dinosaurs? Spoiler: a very large rock. Link

◼ Do they close? Emoji scissors. Link

◼ Really digging these official posters for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo. Link

◼ Instagram for Windows 95. Enough said. Link

◼ Every Noise at Once. Link

◼ The math of brewing a better espresso. I am sure Italians will love this. Link

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.