The founder of Wikipedia wants to be your mobile operator. Really interesting bootstrapping of business models. The People’s Operator (TPO) is also a social network (“similar to Twitter”). It’s free marketing for the operator that leverages the network effect. It also puts the operator’s billing relationship (and infrastructure) to use to power frictionless — and commission-free — payments to make it easy to raise money for charities.
July 2015
July 28, 2015
July 27, 2015
- Raise the bar on how we talk about diversity. Do check out Stripe’s “what to expect from our interviews” guide. #
July 24, 2015
- Four-legged ‘hugging snake’ could be a missing link. #
- Gigster: Uber for app development. “If the project is behind schedule, Gigster just assigns more developers to it or fires under-performing ones so it gets done on time.” LOL. #
July 22, 2015
- Wired: Hackers remotely kill a Jeep on the highway — with me in it. #
- Alex Jegtnes: On the word ‘guys’. #
- Up in the air: meet the man who flies around the world for free. #
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“We’re always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it’s a little raw and nervy.”
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—EL Doctorow (source) - Fast Company’s Art of Creative Evolution profiles Hackaball. #
July 21, 2015
The myth of the ethical shopper
The myth of the ethical shopper. Pressuring Western big brands doesn’t work (any more, at least), the improvement of working conditions needs to come from the ground up.
“Foxconn has a factory in Indiana. It is not a sweatshop. That isn’t because Foxconn carries out such great audits or offers entrepreneurship classes. It’s because it is located in a country with functioning institutions.”
There’s some interesting and encouraging stories of how Brazil has tackled these issues (“Brazilian inspectors act more like McKinsey consultants than cops”).
- The founder of Wikipedia wants to be your mobile operator. Really interesting bootstrapping of business models. The People’s Operator (TPO) is also a social network (“similar to Twitter”). It’s free marketing for the operator that leverages the network effect. It also puts the operator’s billing relationship (and infrastructure) to use to power frictionless — and commission-free — payments to make it easy to raise money for charities. #
July 20, 2015
- Tree of 40 fruits. “A few years ago, Professor Sam Van Aken began creating a series of unique hybridized fruit trees, each of which is capable of growing over 40 different varieties of fruit. Equal parts research project, art form, and conservation effort, through the process of grafting, each tree grows a unique mix of stone fruit (fruit with a pit) like nectarines, peaches, cherries, plums, apricots, and almonds.” #
- National Geographic: Ant-Man’s real-life rivals. Ant super-strength, mantis shrimp smash, clingfish suction discs and froghopper jump acceleration. #
July 14, 2015
July 13, 2015
July 10, 2015
- Smithsonian: To stop mosquito bites, silence your skin’s bacteria. Modifying the quorum sensing of bacteria can prevent mosquitos from using their chemoreceptors on their antennae to evaluate the quality of the blood host. #
July 9, 2015
- Icebergs, speedboats and oil tankers: The design behind the design of the new lostmy.name. #
- One-Minute Time Machine. A cute short film. #
- The Stranger: Camming is not like any other kind of sex work. “There’s another couple I wound up getting really close to,” Eevie tells me after I meet Boggers and Sarah. “They were a younger couple, they had a 2-year-old boy at the time, and they'd been trying to get pregnant again for like a year, and it wasn’t working. They watched me, sometimes together and sometimes separate.” When the couple finally got pregnant and received the results of the gender test, “They made a video of them opening the envelope together and sent it to me that day, and they named their little girl Eevie Juliet.” #
July 8, 2015
- League of Legends prodigy Faker carries his country on his shoulders. Fascinating long-read about eSports. #
- Six things I wish I knew before using Optimizely. #
- Crew: How a side project saved our startup. #
July 6, 2015
July 1, 2015
- Spotify Labs: How to shuffle songs? A great example of the difference between expectation and definition. #
- Pando: “The poor, the young, the black and the stupid”. Inside Big Tobacco’s plans to kill a billion people. #
- Pacific Standard: Who, what, where, when, weird. How oddball items came to dominate the news business, and became normal in the process. #
