Happy Monday everyone! âď¸ Here's a few good reads to help you get through the day (or more likely, we
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February 13 · Issue #29 · 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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Happy Monday everyone! âď¸ Hereâs a few good reads to help you get through the day (or more likely, week). There are also a few products at the bottom that are pretty cool and worth checking out.
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This is what secretive billion-dollar startup Magic Leap has been working on
Magic Leap, the $4.5 billion startup backed by Google building technology that âaugmentsâ human vision with digital imagery, is scrambling to finish a working prototype before an important board meeting next week. Here is the first public photo of a working prototype of Magic Leapâs portable augmented reality device, which was given to Business Insider by a source. I donât agree with a lot of the criticism Magic Leap has been getting over the leaked image. New products take time to develop, especially hardware ones with the potential to have as great of an impact as Magic Leap (and other AR products). Close your eyes (well, donât really, since you need to read this) and imagine weâre 10 years into the future. Itâs 2027 and Magic Leap has just hit stores. Itâs consumer-ready, tiny, groundbreaking, and all too real. Later that day, the leaked image from back in 2017 of what Magic Leap looked like during its development surfaces. âIt used to be that big? No way. Iâm not buying this crap.â Said no one ever. You see, how things are today is what people remember, not the path they took over the years to become something tangible and usable. I canât wait to see what Magic Leap becomes, and Iâll gladly be watching its development.
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The Next Big Blue-Collar Job Is Coding
WHEN I ASK people to picture a coder, they usually imagine someone like Mark Zuckerberg: a hoodied college dropout who builds an app in a feverish 72-hour programming jagâwith the goal of getting insanely rich and, as they say, âchanging the world.â But this Silicon Valley stereotype isnât even geographically accurate. The Valley employs only 8 percent of the nationâs coders. All the other millions? Theyâre more like Devon, a programmer I met who helps maintain a Âsecurity-software service in Portland, Oregon. He isnât going to get fabulously rich, but his job is stable and rewarding: Itâs 40 hours a week, well paid, and intellectually challenging. âMy dad was a blue-Âcollar guy,â he tells meâand in many ways, Devon is too.
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Amazon's Jeff Bezos & Steve Boom on Starting a New 'Golden Age' for Music
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would make almost any list of the worldâs most powerful people. In retail, heâs clearly on top, and in tech, heâs close to it. In book publishing, he would be the undisputed No. 1 for 10 years running. In addition to a $65 billion stake in Amazon, Bezos owns the Blue Origin rocket company, The Washington Post, his own venture capital firm and a founderâs stake in Google. He might be the most powerful businessman alive, and his company is a credible contender to be the stock marketâs first trillion-dollar corporation.
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How an idealistic Silicon Valley founder raised $134 million to change journalism, then crashed into reality -- Inside Medium's meltdown
Ad sales are hard, but Medium had some early success. One of the sponsored ad series had generated over six digits in revenue all told, in part because Medium could run these ads on multiple publisherâs sites, one person said. It gave the business side hope. But that didnât last. When the year ended, revenue fell short of projections, multiple people confirmed. âWe were making money with publishers. We also made money with advertising. But the business we could have built, if we were to go all in, was not going to justify Mediumâs valuation. Thatâs a trap of venture funding. If it turns out the market you find isnât big enough, you are in trouble,â one person told us.
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A Russian Slot Machine Hack Is Costing Casinos Big Time
Fun read about how Russia outlawing slot machines (and virtually all forms of gambling) in 2009 has lead to hundreds (if not thousands) of casinos around the world being taken advantage of by a sophisticated âhackâ. But itâs not really cheating in my opinion, since theyâve discovered vulnerabilities in the source code of the machines, rather than actually hacking the machines themselves. How did they do it? Well, you should read the article to really understand it, but theyâve discovered that what the slot machine outputs isnât really random. Thereâs a pattern to it (like most things in life), which theyâve been able to take advantage of for years now.
But as the âpseudoâ in the name suggests, the numbers arenât truly random. Because human beings create them using coded instructions, PRNGs canât help but be a bit deterministic. (A true random number generator must be rooted in a phenomenon that is not manmade, such as radioactive decay.)
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Asking the wrong questions
Great article (as always) from Benedict Evans. With fundamental technology change, we donât so much get our predictions
wrong as make predictions about the wrong things.
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Anthony Bourdainâs Moveable Feast
When the President of the United States travels outside the country, he brings his own car with him. Moments after Air Force One landed at the Hanoi airport last May, President Barack Obama ducked into an eighteen-foot, armor-plated limousineâa bomb shelter masquerading as a Cadillacâthat was equipped with a secure link to the Pentagon and with emergency supplies of blood, and was known as the Beast. Hanoiâs broad avenues are crowded with honking cars, storefront venders, street peddlers, and some five million scooters and motorbikes, which rush in and out of the intersections like floodwaters. It was Obamaâs first trip to Vietnam, but he encountered this pageant mostly through a five-inch pane of bulletproof glass. He might as well have watched it on TV.
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21: Earn Money by Answering Messages & Completing Tasks
Iâve been watching 21.co and its CEO, Balaji, for quite some time now. Its primary application up until now seemed to be facilitating small jobs and services with bitcoin as the payment method. This seems to be the main product theyâre pushing now, which lets you âsellâ access to your email inbox. You set an amount, eg. $20, which people have to pay if you open the email they send to you. Thereâs also the option to donate your payment to a charity, which is what most individuals on the platform seem to be doing at the moment. I opened up a profile to try it out, so feel free to send me a message there! :)Â https://21.co/bryce
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Milanote: The notes app for creative work.
Not an especially new idea but very well executed. Almost like a digital pinboard where you can add various components, like images, text, checklists, and then tie them all together. I foresee this having applications for so many different industries. Developers could use it to map out the work and elements of a certain project, while someone else could use it to plan out their family vacation. I think Iâll be giving it a try.
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Startup Button
If youâre still wanting to discover some more products and startups, give this app a try!
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