Which art project have we spent the largest amount of cumulative time on? The one thing we can look at or experience and think: "wow, nothing else has taken as much effort as this to make me feel this way". Let's define "art project" broadly as anything that is designed to make people feel rather … Continue reading Humanity’s Largest Art Project
Category: Blog
Can we save the open internet by moving it to space?
The Internet is being split into very large private networks. The beautiful vision of 1 global network in which any 2 computers can communicate in the lingua franca of TCP/IP, enabling anyone to publish content to anyone else in the world, is dying. China has had the Great Firewall for 20 years, deciding which communication … Continue reading Can we save the open internet by moving it to space?
Who to ignore (3 bullshit filters)
By Gabriel and Ernest Oppetit Unforseen shit happens. 9/11, the 2008 crash, Brexit, Trump, COVID-19... you know the story. These events surprised us because our information diets are dominated by people who didn’t see them coming. Many of these people are paid for sounding good (or protecting a certain interest), not for being right, so … Continue reading Who to ignore (3 bullshit filters)
My first podcast appearance (on Product Squad)
I spoke with my friend and ex-colleague Axel Sooriah on his podcast Product Squad. I listen to a sh*t ton of podcasts (around 4 hours per week), so it was fun to be a guest on one for the first time. We did the recording over Zoom a couple of months ago, then Axel worked … Continue reading My first podcast appearance (on Product Squad)
Smilebot: Transform Amazon Links to AmazonSmile on Twitter
TL;DR: Smilebot is a Twitter bot which, when mentioned, will transform amazon.com links in the mention (or original tweet if it’s a reply) and reply with the smile.amazon.com links. If you shop through the latter, you pay the same but Amazon gives 0.5% of your order to a charity of your choice. What's AmazonSmile? From … Continue reading Smilebot: Transform Amazon Links to AmazonSmile on Twitter
LessNoise: Unfollow Recommendations for your Twitter Feed
Bucking a looong running thread of starting but never completing side-projects, I've kind-of "completed" LessNoise! LessNoise shows you unfollow recommendations for your Twitter feed. I've followed way too many people over the years, and my feed feels super noisy (particularly in the chronological view which I prefer). Here's the idea (described on the homepage): 👉 Check it … Continue reading LessNoise: Unfollow Recommendations for your Twitter Feed
We Need to Start Celebrating our Progress on Climate Change
Climate change news coverage is predominantly doom & gloom and finger-pointing. Real progress towards decarbonisation is being made: we need to widely share and celebrate it! This will create positive reinforcement and help us shift the debate from fear, confusion, and apathy to understanding, possibility, and action. “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they … Continue reading We Need to Start Celebrating our Progress on Climate Change
Where are the personalised UIs?
Isn’t it crazy, in an age of abundant contextual data and AI breakthroughs, that we all use the same user interfaces? I don’t mean personalised content — there is plenty of that going on in the form of ads, commerce, video recommendations — I mean that everyone using a given app on a given platform has the same UI … Continue reading Where are the personalised UIs?
Autonomous Vehicles and the End of Privacy
Everything, everywhere, will soon be continuously recorded and uploaded to the internet. This will start with dense, urban areas, but over time every single square meter of every part of the globe will be recorded. Advances in computer vision & AI mean this data will be usable at scale, which will revolutionise advertising, law enforcement, … Continue reading Autonomous Vehicles and the End of Privacy
First Principles Entrepreneurship, à la Elon
Most founders and companies subscribe to the Wayne Gretsky school of business: they skate to where the puck is inevitably going. Rare are those who figure out where the puck should be in the future, and shoot it in this direction through unchartered terrain. Elon Musk and a few others do this. (There will be … Continue reading First Principles Entrepreneurship, à la Elon
