Epic wrongness in Brick Lane

31 Things Fluxx Learned in March 2016

Between working with the Parliamentary Digital Service, Atkins and the Royal Society of Arts, we’ve been thinking and doodling about smart homes and also learning things along the way…

1. If you took China’s total population and subtracted out the entire population of the United States, you would still have a billion people left. [Connie Chan]
2. Shiritori is a game where you take turns saying words that start with the last letter of the previous word; apple, elephant, trumpet. It’s also a fantastic way to come up with new ideas. [Shimpei Takahashi]
3. 020 = Offline to Online = Uber, Groupon, Deliveroo = Possibly a $Trillion market. [Alex Rampell]
4. We managed to crack the password on an old laptop in 30 mins with nothing more than YouTube, a memory stick and an 11 year-old boy. [Richard Poole]
5. Only 16% of journeys in London are commuting (over 30% are ‘leisure’) [TFL]
6. In a mixed-gender group, when women talk 25% of the time or less, it’s seen as being “equally balanced”. If women talk 25–50% of the time, they’re seen as “dominating the conversation” [Caitlin Moran]
7. An Indian company planning to sell the world’s cheapest smartphone for £2.50 received 60 million registrations in two days. [Press Trust]
8. Farmers in rural Myanmar use Facebook all the time, but in ways that are completely different from us. They rarely have email addresses, use their real names or even know their own passwords. [Craig Mod]
9. Before smartphones and the App Store, the average price of a mobile phone app was $20.90. [Benedict Evans]
10. The population of London could reach 12 million by 2050. Engineering group Atkins, who we’re working with at the moment, look at how to make that work in their Future Proofing London report. [Janet Miller]
11. Eating at a larger table makes you consume fewer calories. [Davis, Payne & co]
12. The opposite of innovation might be “incumbation” or “bureausclerosis” [Andrew Hill]
13. In the UK, 25% of peer to peer loans were actually funded by traditional institutions. [Stian Westlake]
14. Microwave popcorn factory employees suffer from a condition called “popcorn worker’s lung.” [Beth Mole]
15. University-educated nurses reduce hospital deaths: Every 10% increase in the number of degree educated nurses within a hospital is associated with a 7% decline in patient mortality. [Kings College]
16. A group of pirate hackers stole data about ships before boarding them: “They’d board a vessel, locate by bar code specific sought-after crates containing valuables, steal the contents of that crate — and that crate only — and then depart the vessel without further incident.” [Sean Gallagher]
17. Less than 20% of Tencent’s (the creator of WeChat) revenues come from advertising compared to over 95% for Facebook’s revenue. [Connie Chan]
18. PornHub used 1,892 petabytes of bandwidth in 2015, equivalent to filling all the storage on all of the iPhones sold in 2015 with porn. [Yana Tallon-Hicks]
19. Wavey Garms is a Facebook group about vintage sportswear, with 40k followers, 11k items for sale and a bricks & mortar store in Peckham [Clive Martin]
20. Liverpool and Manchester United both have an official rewards credit card for fans that offer a replica shirt if you spend £200 in the first 90 days. [Paul Hayward]
21. Facebook posts without hashtags get more interaction than posts with hashtags. [Steve Rayson]
22. Amazon‘s top three factors affecting loyalty: 1: Logistics 2: Customer support 3: Price and selection. [Dan Barker]
23. Teenagers really really love Snapchat: “There’s not a time when I’m not on it. I do it while I watch Netflix, I do it at dinner, and I do it when people around me are being awkward. That app is my life.” [Ben Rosen]
24. MailOnline employs 800 staff and loses money [Henry Mance]
25. Lyft recruit drivers and manages new recruits almost entirely via text messages from disposable Twilio VOIP phone numbers. [The Driver]
26. Electric cars are ditching terrestrial AM radio because electromagnetic noise from the electric motor interferes with the broadcast reception, causing static. [Meghan Neal]
27. Binge watching changes the way viewers react to the plot of a TV series: “Who cared if some of the smaller moments didn’t entirely work? For binge viewers, the big picture was still a success.” [Todd VanDerWerff]
28. Every year, 700 grams of pure whiteness are made for every human alive. [Del Quentin Wilbur]
29. The Department of Work and Pensions recently tried to digitise the Funeral Payments system. When they realised users didn’t want or need a digital tool, they stopped. [Michala Hare]
30. 90% of aeroplane crashes are caused by ‘mode confusion’ — when pilots are unsure what a particular control is doing at that moment. [Cliff Kuang]
31. Wearable translators almost exist: “The product’s first commercial features a young British guy walking around Tokyo trying to get a Japanese girl to kiss him using the device. The video has received significant criticism for being sexist, creepy, and outright weird” [David Grasso]

If you enjoyed this list, and you’re in London, and you’re reading this before 14th April 2016, you might enjoy the Experiments In Design event at our offices on 14th April 2016.