Todd’s Tech Report: August 27, 2015

Todd Hansen
Seeing Around Corners
3 min readAug 26, 2015

Getting a hair cut on Friday…big day….BIG DAY.

Instabillions

What’s going on?

Oh yes, the quiet way to multiple billions of dollars is always best. Instagram sure can whisper. A couple weeks ago it softly opened up it’s ad API to a select group of ad sellers and agencies. Get pumped. I keep seeing this ad for @discoverboating in my feed. DaFuq? Why? Regardless, no big hoopla about this, even though it opens the app up to 300 million eyeballs. We knew it was coming, so who gives a shit. Echo, echo, echo…chamber.

Why does it matter?

Projections are for a about $2.7 billion in revenue by 2017. For ads. In an app. It’s amazing what not allowing links in posts can do for the bottom line. Along with 44% of users being in that tyte spot of 18–29 years old w/ oodles of student loan money to burn. Soon anyone will be able to fire up their own ads. Shhhhhh. RAINMAKER!

3D Printed Gang Bang

What’s going on?

Aaaaand ACTION! 10 at once! MIT is doing it right and providing the world with an affordable 3D printing fantasy. These wiz kidz have made a 3D printer that can print 10 materials at the same time. Way to push it! They’ve already used it to print everything from smartphone cases to light-emitting diode lenses. Sexy.

Why does it matter?

Similar machines that handle only 3 materials are about $200k, this pimp costs only $7k and is built from off-the-shelf parts. Low budget and amateur is always desirable. The climax here is users can embed complex components, such as circuits and sensors, directly onto the body of an object, meaning that it can produce a finished product, moving parts and all, in one take. CUT..and print!

Intergalactic Highways Of Light

What’s going on?

Little Steve (Hawking) keeps it coming. He’s had some thoughts on black holes and the world is listening. Perhaps they are not gravity crushing portals in doom after all. His revelations are as follows if one gets sucked in:

  1. You become permanently stuck in a 2 dimensional hologram on the black hole’s edge.
  2. If the hole is large and rotating it might have a passage to another universe, but you couldn’t come back to our universe.

End game.

Why does it matter?

A one way ticket to an alternate universe were different laws of physics interact with your atoms would render you shredded meat. Likewise being condensed in a microscopic 2D space hologram also isn’t ideal. At the end of the day Christopher Nolan is a liar and a cheat. McConaughey gets a pass though.

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Todd Hansen
Seeing Around Corners

Former Head of Conference Programming at SXSW. Fascinated by culture, tech, history and the human condition. Keen on collaborations between art and science.