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There is no shortage of news at the moment. Both real and fake, interesting and boring, uplifting and
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November 28 · Issue #22 · View online
Technology, Startups & the Future. I'm lucky when it comes to finding amazing content written by others and want to share that luck with you. Find me at http://twitter.com/bryceadams đ
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There is no shortage of news at the moment. Both real and fake, interesting and boring, uplifting and depressing. Youâd think that would make putting together this newsletter easier - but some weeks its a real struggle to find enough material worthy of your inbox! This was not one of those weeks. A couple handfuls of amazing content is waiting for you just below :) Before I let you get reading, just a note that I almost certainly wonât be sending an issue next week, as Iâll be in Philadelphia for WordCamp US showing Metorik off to old and new friends, and in the air for 30% of the week because thatâs the price I pay for living in Australia.
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Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China
The social network, blocked in China since 2009, has developed software to keep posts from appearing in usersâ news feeds in specific geographic areas, current and former employees said. This was the big news of the week, but isnât awfully surprising. Facebook would be mad not to do whatever it takes to get into China. While this would make them one of the biggest foreign tech companies to have access to over a billion potential Chinese users, I question how successful they will be when it comes to competing against huge products like WeChat, which already has an abundance of features that most Chinese users simply canât live without (utility/in-store payments and more).
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This Is What Happens When Millions Of People Suddenly Get The Internet
Less than 1% of Myanmar had internet access until 2014. Now the country is getting online at an astonishing rate â but so is fake news and anti-Muslim sentiment. Sheera Frenkel finds out what happens when everyone you know joins Facebook at the same time. I loved this piece from BuzzFeed. Having visited Myanmar years ago and spent a lot of time in its neighbouring countries, it almost seems like a different place now. The Myanmar I visited had no data sim cards. Internet was available in just a few scatted internet cafes for a very high price (and at an alarming low speed). Itâs not just the fact that the entire country is getting online at the same time, but rather the time in history that theyâre getting access to the internet. âPeople donât talk about the normal news they see on Facebook. They talk about the crazy stuff. I never knew about Trump and then everyone was talking about him.â Itâs almost like being thrown into the future - ten, twenty years ahead - and having to quickly adapt to everything thatâs new and different and unfamiliar. But at the same time, itâs like getting a head start. A lot of the hoops that todayâs internet users have experienced over the years - from AIM to MSN to WhatsApp, MySpace to Facebook, dial-up to 4G - the people of Myanmar have jumped through in an instant.
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Inside a Moneymaking Machine Like No Other
Sixty miles east of Wall Street, a spit of land shaped like a whaleâs tail separates Long Island Sound and Conscience Bay. The mansions here, with their long, gated driveways and million-dollar views, are part of a hamlet called Old Field. Thatâs because the areaâs wealthiest residents, scientists all, work for the quantitative hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, based in nearby East Setauket. They are the creators and overseers of the Medallion Fundâperhaps the worldâs greatest moneymaking machine. Medallion is open only to Renaissanceâs roughly 300 employees, about 90 of whom are Ph.D.s, as well as a select few individuals with deep-rooted connections to the firm.
I happened upon this piece today while putting together this weekâs Pivoting and am truly excited to share it with you. Please stop whatever youâre doing and read this immediately!
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The untold story of Vergence, the startup focused on 'superpowers' that Snapchat is betting its future on
Hundreds of people lined up off Venice Beach boardwalk on a sunny November morning to buy Snapchatâs Spectacles from a bright yellow vending machine. It was the first day the $130 camera glasses had gone on sale, and many were there to see what all the buzz was about. Really interesting piece! I had no idea that Snapchatâs Spectacles came out of an acquisition a couple years ago (and it seems to have been left out of all the press the Spectacles have been getting over the past couple weeks). Back in early 2014, Snapchat secretly acquired Vergence for $15 million. Whats interesting here is that Vergenceâs goal wasnât just to make a pair of sunglasses with a camera in it - that was just the beginning. The real plan Miller and Rodriguez had for Vergence was much loftier than video glasses. The scrappy startup wanted to create a crop of futuristic gadgets, from AI-enabled helmets to gesture-controlled drones, that would effectively give people âsuperpowers.â And the company already had working, if rudimentary, prototypes when it was swallowed by Snap.
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Google's Travel Business Is Already Twice the Size of Expedia's
When is Google finally going to tie all of its travel products together and become an online travel agency to rival Expedia, the Priceline Group and, incre
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We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned
âThe whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right,â says Jestin Coler, whose company, Disinfomedia, is behind some fake news sites.
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Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: âThis Is All About Incomeâ
TBILISI, Georgia â Jobless and with graduation looming, a computer science student at the premier university in the nation of Georgia decided early this year that money could be made from Americaâs voracious appetite for passionately partisan political news.
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Shopify real-time orders
I wanted to share this as it was pretty awesome to see over the weekend as Black Friday took the internet by storm, with millions of dollars of transactions happening around the internet every minute. Shopify put together this site that shows both the $ spent and # of items purchased every minute on their network of stores. Iâd love to do something like this in the future with all the data being processed by Metorik! |
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Or maybe next week, but probably not, but maybe!
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