Delicious Digest #21 - Fraggles, Teens, and Swimming Naked
A tasty newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Fraggles, Teens, and Swimming Naked.
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😳 Must reads of the week
◼ “COVID and forced experiments”. Very insightful post by Ben Evans. Many things we usually do offline, we are now forced to do online. What will stick? What will revert? Link
🗞 News
◼ So, who of you is watching Quibi? Anyone? Link
◼ Useful key take-aways from Piper Jaffrays semi-annual survey of teens: brands, entertainment, social networks, media consumption and more. Link
◼ A closer look at the LIDAR sensor that Apple ships in the latest iPad Pro models (and very likely will ship in the next iPhone generation). It’s pretty insane that this technology is now ready to be shipped in a phone/tablet. Link
◼ The Covid crisis might expose a decade’s worth of corporate fraud: “In the bull market startups became masters of conjuring up novel metrics that flatter performance.” Or, as Warren Buffet put it: “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” Link ($)
◼ Infographics: “How COVID-19 Has Impacted Media Consumption, by Generation”. Link
◼ “New Jersey needs volunteers who know COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language”. Most of my PhD involved simulations written in Fortran 77 - this feels positively progressive now. Link
🕹 Games
◼ Now that is an interesting turn of events: Fortnite is available on the Google Play Store rather than just through side-loading directly from Epic. Link
◼ Nintendo Switch sales in March more than doubled from last year. PS4 and Xbox One sales were up more than 25 percent. Link
◼ Game sales are also up 35% in the US, with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing taking a huge chunk. Link
◼ The flip side of Nintendo’s surge: more people trying to hijack accounts. Link
◼ Facebook is launching “Facebook Games” as a stand-alone app to compete with Twitch and YouTube Games. Link
◼ Riot has bought Hypixel Studios, including Hytale, a Minecraft-esque game in closed beta. Link
◼ According to Sensor Tower, March was the best-ever month for game downloads. New installs across Europe were up 19% and user spending was also up 12%. Link
◼ This is amazing: Finland recognizes its demo scene as part of its cultural heritage. Link (via Andreas Risberg)
◼ The good news: GTA6 “may be half-way done”. The bad news: the full production cycles may be 7-8 years. Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ The 8-bit arcade font, deconstructed. Link (Video)
◼ RIP John Conway. Link
◼ The Fraggles are back! This brings a happy sentimental childhood tear to my eye. Link
◼ “Why Michael Jordan was the best”. A feast for stats nerds. Not that anyone needed stats to know that of course. Link
◼ “Concatenation”. Link (Video)
◼ “Humans as Circulatory Systems in Day-to-Day Scenes”. Eerie. Link
◼ Retailer Target required “Cards Against Humanity” to submit videos of their product. They complied. In style. 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.