Found This Week #5
Each Friday I share some of the best things I encounter, from the internet mostly but also from real life! Hopefully what I find interesting will also be interesting to you :-)
Photo Of The Week
Summer is here! This is a photo of Swansea Bay Beach with The Mumbles in the background. Enjoy the weather while it lasts :-)
Well That Escalated Quickly!
Photos of a post-it war between two office buildings which goes from a “Hi” to the most impressive piece of post-it art probably ever created! :-p
Taipei 101’s Tuned Mass Damper
Taipei 101 is a 508 meter tall skyscraper with 101 floors in Taipei, hence the name. It held the title of world’s tallest building for a few years and is built to withstand the many hurricanes and earthquakes that Taiwan is at risk from. To do this, the building needs to be supple enough to shake with an earthquake but strong enough to not sway too much in wind. The compromise comes with the second requirement, the building can sway in wind but needs to reduce the effect of motion sickness for the people within. This is achieved using a Tuned Mass Damper. The Damper in Taipei 101 has become a prime attraction in the building and they even created toy characters around it. This 99% invisible podcast has a good story about how the building and damper came about.
VR Is The Future
This is a great short film about a VR filled dystopian future that wouldn’t be out of place as an episode of The Outer Limits.
Action is almost always cheaper now than it is later.
Wise words from Seth Godin on building slack into your process to allow you the space to head a problem off at the pass, before it becomes a real problem. Easy to say, hard to do unfortunately.
Elephant Goes Full Jurassic Park on Arnie
This video posted by Arnold Schwarzenegger is a disaster-pants scenario.
Speaking of the Arnold, if you haven’t heard his Tim Ferriss interview, check it out here, the man is an inspiration.
Snapchat Now More Popular Than Twitter?
According to the DAU (Daily Active User) numbers it is. Snapchat now has 150 million DAU versus Twitter’s 140 million.
AI On Tap Now, AI Overlords Later
This week I stumbled across numerous interesting things on the topic of AI. First of which is this great 30 Days of Genius interview with Kevin Kelly. He is the founder of Wired magazine and in this interview talks about his new book that forecasts the upcoming major trends in technology, one of which is AI. He describes how we now have AI on tap which we can buy from the big providers and integrate into our products, such as the Microsoft Cognitive Services API. He postulates that this will fuel the next wave of tech startups similar to how the smartphone platform has done so for the last decade.
An example of this AI on tap is now available from IBM also, whereby advertisers can use IBM Watson to embed AI powered ads in websites that users can interact with and ask questions of. I think this will be a huge shift in online advertising. Imagine being able to ask an ad about the product that it is selling, like “Does it come in my size and in black?”, “What is the MPG on the diesel model?” or even “Order that for John and post it to him for his birthday next week”. IBM are trialling these smart ads using The Weather Company at the moment.
The possibilities for AI improving our lives are exciting but at some point, the “Skynet” question starts to come up. It just so happens Wait But Why have done two huge pieces on the evolution of AI and how the progress to AI General Intelligence (AGI) and AI Super Intelligence (ASI) can possibly lead to utopia or extinction.
I put my hands up and admit I’ve only scan-read these two long posts, but that’s enough to get the gist of their argument, which is, if we don’t invent ASI we’ll eventually become extinct, and if/when we do, we may achieve immortality because of it or all be killed by it. A sobering but very interesting thought. Oh yeah, and this is predicted to happen in 20 to 60 years from now.
Cool Thing Of The Week
Before the AI robot overlords come to destroy us (see above), let’s admire how cool this puny human light trickery is :-p
(HT to Kevin Rose’s Journal email newsletter for this video and the Wait But Why articles mentioned above.)
See you next week :-)
About Me
I’m a web consultant, contract web developer and technical project manager originally from Cork and now based in Swansea, South Wales. A lot of my work is done with clients in Ireland & the UK, where I offer strategy, planning and technical delivery services. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com.
