0.0 Excellent Bitcoin primer that also includes some interesting reminders on the history of money… 

“as recently as the 1860s the United States had eight thousand private currencies in circulation, issued by ‘banks, railroad companies, retail stores and other entities’.​”

…along with some interesting thoughts on Bitcoin’s longevity.

“January marked seven years since the launch of Satoshi’s original code. In seven years, Google, Facebook and Twitter had all become not just big companies, but fundamental parts of everyday life for hundreds of millions of people. They had become verbs. M-Pesa is about the same age as bitcoin, and handles half Kenya’s GDP. Bitcoin is nowhere near that. It’s time for the cryptocurrency to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.”

1.0 How to make a better bot. 

“There’s something deeply, irrationally frustrating about not being understood by a piece of technology whose first and most important job is to parse what you’re saying.” 

2.0 Well done us! The average web page is now the size of an install of Doom.

3.0 Uber is rolling out facial recognition in China to prevent fraud, as drivers have been caught doing everything from spoofing their locations to faking rides to cash in on subsidies.

(Will be interesting to see if Uber’s countermeasures will simply be met with yet another means of creatively gaming this new constraint :-) 

4.0 We often worry that the world is homogenising at the hands of big Western-led tech and media companies. A few anecdotes that show otherwise:

5.0 The internet’s impact on one small, remote, snow-swept American town…as seen through the eyes of a reporter who grew up there. An engaging piece with beautiful (if incredibly frigid) photography.

6.0 Even small doses of boredom can generate stress says an article on the danger of boring buildings “…researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones”.

7.0 The Tesla Model X SUV‘s assorted smart/autonomous bits and pieces are glitching! Another promised smart thing that’s letting us down…?

8.0 …or maybe these are just growing pains and we’re projecting the usual fear, uncertainty and doubt when faced with novel interfaces.

9.0 Not bad for a human: a short animated primer on AI in video games (…and also from same author, an excellent series of video introductions to AI).

10.0 Long but excellent investigation of the present and future of China’s 500 million strong Diaosi (屌丝) or ‘loser’ generation. 

“For Diaosi like Hu, the rallying cry of his generation came not from the heroes of Chinese history, but from a video game.”

11.0 Hail the maintainers! A conference and conversation about the past, present and future value (and creativity) in maintenance.

“Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations.”

…to which you may want to watch this:

From the past: In one of the first examples of computer vision, it took University of Edinburgh robot Freddy 10 minutes in 1969 to detect a cup. Now you can ‘rent’ an API that will do it in milliseconds! (image source) 

From the future: Autodesk has created a system that mixes 3-D printing and AI to customise everyday objects (…and make them more interesting, more usable by people with disabilities, more child-proof).

“RetroFab, takes in a 3D scan of an appliance … and then automatically suggests different shapes and layouts for the appliance’s buttons, dials, switches, levers or LEDs.”

Our best wishes for a productive week.

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