Hey, hope this email finds you well today. Let me know if you pick up on the theme of the articles I'm sharing today 😉

Accessories for the Paranoid
This project is part art and part practical. The creator has made some devices intended to protect the user's privacy by essentially generating fake or misleading data. My favorite is "Object B" which connects to an Amazon Echo or similarly-shaped voice assistant device and plays it dialogues from random movie scenes!

This Is How You're Being Manipulated
This provocatively-titled piece on Gizmodo does a great job of explaining the various techniques that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others apply to get us hooked on the Social Media Dopamine Drip.

It starts with techniques like ‘pull to refresh’, so you pull to refresh your newsfeed. That operates like a slot machine. It has the same kind of addictive qualities that keep people in Las Vegas hooked. Other examples are removing stopping cues. So if I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking. That’s what happens with infinitely scrolling feeds.

It's enlightening to read this article. There are a few things that I didn't even realize have the effects that they do, like pull-to-refresh above. Anyway, if you don't, you'll continue to be manipulated.

Who is Florida Man?
Many people, myself included, have enjoyed the schadenfreude of a strange mugshot.

On Facebook, this man was dubbed the “Olive Garden Jesus” after news headlines read “Drunk, shirtless Florida man arrested after shoveling spaghetti in his mouth at Olive Garden.”

It turns out that Florida has strong public records laws that make obtaining mugshots and arrest reports easier than in many other states (including California and New York). That allows news sites to get mugshots like the above and run headlines like this. Unfortunately this results in articles and mugshots like the above coming up when future employers look up this man's name on Google, and these records can be notoriously difficult to purge. It may be time to kill "Florida Man" as a headline. Read the piece for more on this phenomenon.

The Death of Jibo, The Social Robot
Sad times for fans of the "social robot" Jibo, as the company supporting it has gone broke. People seemed to really appreciate some simple features of this stationary home robot, like facial recognition, eventually feeling like it was a member of their families.

Some people are trying to reverse engineer the protocol that the robot uses to be able to keep them alive in the future, but so far, there's not much hope. This piece has a lot of great photos and puts a surprisingly human touch on this robot. I'm hoping the hackers succeed in building a compatible server, but until then, RIP Jibo. This underscores an ongoing trend where people invest in a product or ecosystem, only to see it snuffed out at some point in the future — Google is notorious for doing this. It's an unfortunate trend that looks set to continue.

Hand Dryers Are Too Loud For Children, Proves 13-Year-Old Researcher
A relatively nice piece of news here showing the effect that one teenager and a decibel-meter can have on children's safety. Hearing is one of those things that recuperates very slowly when damaged, if at all. I applaud this young woman for her work, which seems likely to have a measurable positive impact on children's safety (in Canada, at least!)

Chinese Counterfeit Peppa Pig Couture
Let's end this with an amusing trend: high-end fashion mashups with Peppa Pig.

Unfortunately, these items are all unlicensed. I find it amusing that these shirts are being created at all, essentially an illegal mashup of two very different brands. Furthermore, part of their popularity with young adults in China is because Peppa Pig is seen as an anti-establishment icon!

Well, that's all for this time. Hope you enjoyed reading! As usual, let me know if you liked anything in particular. Talk to you soon.
Best,
Alex