🍔 Half-Price Hamburgers
I'll take muffin for $500.
Inspiration for this month's title came from this oddly intense Twitter debate. Hamburgers are clearly very hot right now.
Have an awesome November, friend!
MAJOR KEY ALERT
Amazon wants to walk through your front door
You might have seen this awesome Onion article mocking the latest Amazon product, Amazon Key. Understandably, it sparked heated debates online when they announced direct access to people's homes by way of a smart door lock.
Although, it's not really that surprising. Amazon has been spending the last few years getting devices into every inch of your home. An Echo Plus speaker in the living room, Echo Show in the kitchen, Echo Spot beside your bed, Echo Look on your dresser, Echo Dots everywhere else, and Prime deliveries on your doorstep. The next obvious step? Letting them in your front door. First it will be for packages, then for Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries.
Would you give them a key?
• Popular New Amazon Service Just Comes To Your House And Kills You (The Onion, 02:00 read)
• Amazon Key (Amazon, 01:37 watch + 07:00 read)
• Amazon Key is a new service that lets couriers unlock your front door (The Verge, 02:44 watch + 06:00 read)
PUMP UP THE SEARCHES
Search faster with this Chrome tip
Sure, you can always type the name of a website (like Amazon) into the address bar, have Chrome search that in Google, click the first result, then type what you're looking for into the website's own search bar.
Or, you could use this Chrome trick to do that all at once by typing az lava lamps. Once you've set it up in your Chrome, that would take you right to Amazon and search for lava lamps. Cool.
• How to customize your Google Chrome and Chromebook searches (The Verge, 06:00 read)
SOUNDS EASY ENOUGH
Beat jet lag with this fast
I usually call bullshit on cleanses, fasts, or body hacking in general, but the potential benefits of this fast sound too good not to try.
• The Empty Stomach: Fasting to Beat Jet Lag (Harper's Magazine, 06:00 read)
LOOK CLOSELY
We've passed the point of realism in CGI
The 'uncanny valley' was the place computer graphics were in for a long time—almost, but not entirely believable as real. Now computers are more powerful than ever, and so are the tools to generate lifelike imagery. So what lies beyond completely real graphics? Give this a watch.
• Goodbye Uncanny Valley (Vimeo, 14:38 watch)
• #HyperRealCG (Tumblr)
OVER A DECADE LATER
Sony Aibo is back
Sony just relaunched the Aibo robot dog. While it looks a bit less Terminator than the original, it's still creepy as hell. Oh, and you can also buy it an "Aibone," but that costs extra.
• New story with aibo (YouTube, 00:56 watch)
LENS OR ALL-SEEING EYE?
Google's new phone is smart… really smart
Sure, Apple makes prettier phones, but Google phones have brains. Brains that are able to tell you about anything you put in front of the camera lens.
It's called Google Lens, and in addition to Google's already-super-smart Assistant, it's a software feature of the new Pixel 2 phones they just shipped. It leverages Google's massive amounts of search data as well as everyone's favourite buzzword, machine learning, to deduce what it's looking at and serve up relevant information. It's like instant visual search of anything and everything.
Expect to see this embedded in a contact lens within five years.
• Google Lens' future could be discovery, maps and AR glasses (CNET, 06:00 read)
I'LL TAKE MUFFIN FOR $500
Chihuahua or muffin?
Speaking of computer vision and machine learning (see Google Lens, above), sometimes artificial intelligence systems make unfortunate (or amazing) mistakes. That's what prompted a researcher to do a head-to-head comparison of the top APIs using the chihuahuas and chocolate chip muffins meme.
This tech is only in its infancy, but it's already popping up everywhere. Even on HBO's Silicon Valley, when they hilariously built an app that could tell the difference between a hot dog and, well, not a hot dog. Turns out it's not so straightforward after all.
• Chihuahua or muffin? (freeCodeCamp, 08:00 read)
• Hot dog or not hot dog? (YouTube, 03:01 watch)
FUNGUS FASHION
Choose mushroom over leather
The search for alternative, sustainable materials has created some interesting results. MycoWorks is one example: they're creating products with mushroom tissue instead of traditional animal leathers.
It makes you wonder what clothing will look like over the next 50 years as we shift to new materials and processes like these.
• MycoWorks Materials (YouTube, 00:45 watch)
• The Fungi in Your Future (YouTube, 05:22 watch)
MO' BETTA MO-CAP
The history of motion capture, as told by Gollum
A cool rundown on the tech that has powered the biggest movies of the past two decades.
• Andy Serkis Explains How Motion Capture Has Changed (YouTube, 05:31 watch)