Welcome to the seventh issue of Tech Tuesdays!
Here’s what I found interesting this week:
Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend
When Uber turned off $120 million of their digital ad spending meant to drive more app installs, they saw NO CHANGE in the rate of app installs
A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The Alphabet Workers Union will be open to all employees and contractors at Google’s parent company. Its goal will be to tackle ongoing issues like pay disparity, retaliation, and controversial government contracts.
A Boston Dynamics video. They were recently acquired by Hyundai.
Slack was down this week again
Notion was down on the 4th too due to a AWS failure.
“The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every
last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping.”
EU Signs €145B Declaration to Develop Next Gen Processors and 2nm Technology
In a major push to give Europe pride of place in the global semiconductor design and fabrication ecosystem, 17 EU member states this week signed a joint declaration to commit to work together in developing next generation, trusted low-power embedded processors and advanced process technologies down to 2nm.
How to overcome Phone Addiction
Phone addiction is one of the biggest non-drug addiction in human history. Studies show that excessive phone use is linked to procrastination, suicide, spoilt sleep, food and water neglect, headaches, lower productivity, unstable relationships, poor physical health, and poor mental health.
Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores'
Many firms are resistant to the idea of a four-day week but the think tank Autonomy, which looks at work-related issues, reckons it would work well. It claims a reduction in hours would be entirely offset by increases in productivity and price increases, in the best-cases.
MF DOOM, the British-born rapper and producer known for his masked “super villain” persona, expert rhyming abilities, and fondness for obscure pop culture samples, has died at the age of 49.
My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero
Google is finally eradicating thin, “made for affiliate” websites.
Julian Assange extradition to US blocked by UK court
The judge blocked the request because of concerns over Mr Assange's mental health and risk of suicide in the US.
Anesthesia works on plants too, and we don’t know why
Humans have been using anesthesia for almost 175 years, but we’re still not sure how it works. Researchers have come at the problem from dozens of directions and posited many hypotheses, but no one has yet explained the mechanism. Enter the botanists. Who else would think of sealing a Venus flytrap in a glass case, gassing it with ether, then tickling it a bit?
Top Python libraries of 2020 you should know about
“The spirit of this post is to give some visibility to these libraries, as well as generate discussion (in the comments or elsewhere) around some other great picks we may have missed — which we are sure there are. “
Openstreetmap’s product fails to compete with Google Maps
The product of OpenStreetMap is poorly marketed, lacks developed user interfaces and experience, and remains in many ways a raw material—a database as we say—waiting to be refined.
Why do we dream? A new theory on how it protects our brains
Since the dawn of communication, dreams have perplexed philosophers, priests, and poets. What do dreams mean? Do they portend the future? In recent decades, dreams have come under the gaze of neuroscientists as one of the field’s central unsolved mysteries.
Thanks for reading!
If you got any comments or just want to brainstorm, email me at jacob@unhype.com.