Delicious Digest #18 - Zoombombing, IKEA, and Hell

A tasty newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Zoombombing, IKEA, and Hell.

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😳 Must reads of the week

◼ Apple is considering letting users change the default email, browser, music apps in iOS. In other news: hell is freezing over. Link

◼ Luxury brands are preparing for spending collapse as most people plan to cut back on nonessential purchases. This might seem insignificant but it is just one tip of one large iceberg as these effects of Coronavirus ripple through the supply chain from Italy to Bangladesh, affecting tens of thousands of people. Link

🗞 News

◼ Apparently, “Zoombombing” is a thing: trolls party-crashing into public Zoom calls and sharing… guess-what. Link

◼ Snapchat-owned location app Zenly added a leaderboard comparing who stays home the most. Link

◼ Spotify is opening its podcast catalog via API to third-party apps. The de-facto standard podcast catalog is Apple’s iTunes and this is clearly meant to try and change that. Link

◼ Fascinating Twitter thread from Slack’s CEO Stewart Butterfield on how the company has experienced these last weeks of Coronavirus – including rapid new customer growth. Link

◼ Air pollution keeps dropping dramatically due to Coronavirus measures. This should lead to interesting discussions once the crisis is over. Link

◼ Microsoft will no longer invest in third-party facial recognition companies following a controversy around its funding of Israeli startup AnyVision, which powered a surveillance program in the West Bank. Link

🕹 Games

◼ “ASCII art + permadeath: The history of roguelike games”. Brilliant deep-dive. Link

◼ Roblox' “Bloxy” awards brings together 4m concurrent users on the platform. Link

◼ A number of pre-recorded talks from the delayed GDC 2020 conference are now available for free on GDC vault and Twitch. Link

◼ What happens when you let physicists analyze Candy Crush? Read this article to find out and get your daily dose of math fun – and who wouldn’t want that? (Full disclosure: yours truly is a co-author.) Link

◼ Epic now has its own publishing arm, promising to leave 100% of intellectual property and full creative control to the creators and fairly generous profit share. Epic’s playing the long game. Link

◼ Unity is offering three months of free access to Unity Learn Premium. Link

◼ 78% of Top 20 downloads on app stores are hyper casual games. Link

◼ Angry Birds is going to Netflix. Somebody please give me StarCraft next. Link

◼ Rumor has it that a remastered “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” might be released next week. Link

😋 Tasty Tidbits

◼ Thaicarving. It’s a thing. Pretty too! Link

◼ “Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.” Some great thoughts on opportunities while coping with Corona from coach Tobias Rodrigues. Link (Video)

◼ “What, you haven’t been weathering self-quarantine by feeding carrots to your mini-horse and mini-donkey or smoking cigars in your hot tub?” Link

◼ Ikea Instructions for COVID-19 quarantine. Link

◼ “Acoustic Uprising” is a feature-length documentary exploring the truly innovative world of modern acoustic fingerstyle guitar – now free on YouTube. Link (Video)
See also: “How Fans Can Support Artists And Music-Industry Workers During The Outbreak”. 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 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.