004 —January 22, 2017
SpaceX Stuck It, Flying Cars, #ClassWatch2017, Every Pixar Movie is Connected +
It’s cold, raining, you’re feeling a little sniffly and a Sunday. Days like this make you yearn for 3-day weekends. I feel you. I need that too.
To say that this week was an emotional rollercoaster would be a grand understatement. A death in the family combined with work travel +intense meetings made it challenging to stay on top on what was happening. I appreciate having great friends and family to lean on over the past few days. You know who you are.
Consequently, this issue is going to be a bit more focused and smaller than usual. I’m trying some new and subtle things here. Let’s get into it.
SpaceX successfully landed their Iridium-1 rocket on a boat. As usual, the company managed to capture stunning high-resolution photos of the event.
Link (Flickr)
Iceland knows how to stop teen substance abuse but the rest of the world isn’t listening
State funding was increased for organised sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, to give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group, and to feel good, rather than through using alcohol and drugs, and kids from low-income families received help to take part. In Reykjavik, for instance, where more than a third of the country’s population lives, a Leisure Card gives families 35,000 krona (£250) per year per child to pay for recreational activities.
Fascinating article. My wife and I visited Iceland for the first time last year — many locals kept telling us how safe the country was and how there was a comparative lack of substance abuse relative to other European countries.
Link (Mosaic Science)
Can Snapchat’s Culture of Secrecy Survive an IPO?
Even Snap’s offices assist in discretion. Employees describe a siloed company, scattered among the buildings in Venice, California, instead of in a main corporate campus. Snap also doesn’t hold all-hands meetings to explain strategy — a staple of employee life for its Silicon Valley peers. Spiegel communicates with his executives primarily via Snap messages, which vanish after they’re read.
Well at least they’re eating the company’s dog food for delivering messages internally. I wonder if Snap will ever enter the enterprise — I know that there have been attempts and misses by startups. Assuming they can figure things out regarding data governance, I’d give it a shot.
Link (Bloomberg)
Someone converted an iPhone 5s into an iPhone 7 mini, and it’s awesome
The Redditor says that he has some experience with iPhone repair, and the entire process took him about three hours from start to finish. He used this iFixit guide to help him, and he used all of the tools recommended in that guide. He says that the result is “sexy,” and that the aluminum looks and feels just like the aluminum Apple uses on the real iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The biggest problem with the conversion, according to the post, is that reception has been degraded by what he believes to be 15% — 20% following the conversion.
I love this idea. Here’s hoping the next iPhone SE looks like this. Speaking of the compact device, isn’t it due for an upgrade soon? It was released in March 2016 and we’re coming up on a year.
Link (BGR)
Hue
Hue is a vibrant, award-winning puzzle adventure, where you alter the world by changing its background colour.
This game has been out for a very long time but I’ve only recently discovered it. I have it queued up after I get through Uncharted and Firewatch.
Link (PS4, Steam, Xbox)
A funny perspective from a professor.
Link (Twitter Moment)
Airbus last year formed a division called Urban Air Mobility that is exploring concepts such as a vehicle to transport individuals or a helicopter-style vehicle that can carry multiple riders. The aim would be for people to book the vehicle using an app, similar to car-sharing schemes.
Surprised and not surprised to see Airbus get involved. #FlyingCar2017
With the new architecture, Lavabit will no longer be able to hand over its SSL key, because the key is now stored in a hardware security module — a tamper-resistant device that provides a secure enclave for storing keys and performing sensitive functions, like encryption and decryption. Lavabit generates a long passphrase blindly so the company doesn’t know what it is; Lavabit then inserts the key into the device and destroys the passphrase.
Lavabit is back and founder Ladar Levison details some technical information about the service and its return. I’ve never used Lavabit but I’d like to dip my toe in. Leave a response or shoot me a direct message about your experience.
A video that traces the intricate web of the Pixar movie-verse. I can’t imagine how much time this must have taken to put together.
How a complete mess of a music video shoot, complete with the artist failing to show up on the day, turned into one of the most popular videos of the year. Good job, Thugger!
We’ll end this week with a fantastic cover of The Strokes “Someday”.
And now my fears, they come to me in threes
So I sometimes
Say, “Fate, my friend, you say the strangest things I find
Sometimes”
Unlike trying to replicate the song in tempo, Julia Jacklin brings her own sensibility and swagger to make this her own. I never heard a Julia Jacklin track before this and now I’m following her on Spotify. You should too.
Thanks for reading issue 004. I’m looking forward to the NFL Conference Championships today — go Packers and Patriots!
See you next week! 🐨
