Delicious Digest #16 - Black Swans, Backdoors, and War Zones
A weekly newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Black Swans, Backdoors, and War Zones.
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🦠 Coronavirus Reading
Some hopefully useful links related to the current crisis:
◼ “How to Wash Your Hands Properly”. This is less to protect yourself but others. Link
◼ “How to Prevent Loneliness in a Time of Social Distancing”. Buy some chocolate too. Link
◼ “How to Avoid Shaking Hands”. In Spain, this includes no kisses for hello and goodbye. Accepting temporary awkwardness is much better than spreading the virus. Link
◼ The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and The Guardian are all providing free access to Coronavirus updates and reporting. Links: NYT | WP | WSJ | TA | TG
◼ Working from home means far less physical exercise for all of us. Try e.g. these apps for the “7 minute workout” for some easy ways to stay fit and nimble. Links: iPhone | Android
Stay safe everyone and be mindful of others!
🗞 News
◼ Great summary on the latest push to weaken end-to-end encryption in messaging. There just is no solution in sight that could satisfy the right for privacy and the need of law enforcement. “Backdoors” won’t cut it, but it’s where we are headed. Link
◼ “Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020” – a note from Sequoia Capital to it’s founders and CEOs. Translation: “Brace yourselves.” Link
◼ One for the data scientists: “Why you sometimes need to break the rules in data viz”. Sometimes Often pragmatism trumps pedantry. Link
◼ Apple Watch is eating up sales of <$500 watches. Just as Jony predicted. Link
◼ Top Grossing Apps Worldwide for February 2020. Swipe right if you liked this link. Link
◼ TikTok has been downloaded almost 2 billion times. I’ve held out this long, now I’ll wait till it hits at least 3 billion. Link
🕹 Games
◼ Sensor Tower gets at least part of its data by sniffing all phone traffic routed through at least 20 “free” VPN and ad blocking apps on iOS and Android. Link
◼ “Call of Duty: Warzone”, a new F2P battle royale contender, hits an impressive six million users in 24 hours and 15m after four days. Off to a good start. Link
◼ Overwatch and CoD Leagues cancel all live events due to the Coronavirus. But games will be played online-only. That’s one advantage of eSports. Link
◼ ActivisionBlizzard has a new COO. Link
◼ Unity has bought Irish AI company Artomatix to “help artists accelerate their creative workflows for material creation, enhancing their ability to achieve their artistic vision and produce photo-realistic content”. AI is everywhere. Link
◼ Super League Gaming is still losing quite a bit of money on esports. Link
◼ Epic buys UK facial mapping startup Cubic Motion, a platform for capturing more realistic facial animations with a complex camera rig and dedicated software. Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ The History of the URL. Grab some popcorn, nerds, this is a fun history ride. Link
◼ How do you visualize the number googol, i.e., 10^100? 100 gears. Beautifully simple and a bit mind-boggling. Link (Video)
◼ What does it cost to run a restaurant? A lot, even without Coronavirus closures. So the next time you get a good meal in a nice place, don’t be stingy on the tip. Link
◼ Ending on a high-note with this oldie-but-goldie: flashmob of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. 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.