Originally shared by Judah Richardson

At Swift’s shows, ISM installed cameras behind kiosks marked as “selfie stations”, drawing concert-goers in with Swift trivia and behind the scenes footage. Their hidden cameras scanned the facial features of fans interacting with the screens, the company explained in a series of posts on its website. They also outlined how this helped generate metrics used to enhance the tour, in a post that has since been removed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/how-taylor-swift-showed-us-the-scary-future-of-facial-recognition?CMP=fb_a-technology_b-gdntech

Via Keith Wilson.

Headline is, of course, a clickbait exaggeration not backed up by the article. But it’s interesting to contemplate the scenario where human population is dropping.

Originally shared by Irreverent Monk

Unintended consequences… Blackberry started the first generation of smartphones. It did emails very well, but the apps sucked. The browser sucked hard too. Then Google bought Android. And was about to deliver a blackberry killer, and BAM Apple came out of nowhere and kick started the second generation of smartphones. Google quickly retooled, and shipped Android. And thus began the smartphone wars.

Apple was focused on their hardware and software, and making it the best they could.

Google was focused on spreading Android far and wide. And because Verizon couldn’t get iPhones for 5 years, they were forced to go Android.

And now, you can find Android everywhere. From the expensive high ends, to the cheap low ends.

And everywhere means EVERYWHERE

Even the very poor, living in slums in 3rd world countries, have smartphones.

And what does having a smartphone give you, besides flappy birds and other games? Data. Information. Girls, women, are now exposed to knowledge.

And are choosing to have smaller families.

Cheap smart phones are pushing the world population down.

Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?

Android leads to lower global birth rates.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-might-actually-run-out-of-people/

https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-might-actually-run-out-of-people/

I’m increasingly concluding that if you want to find the real drivers of history, you need to look beyond the great man theory and study food. Also cloth, but mainly food.

Originally shared by Kerry Amburgy-Dickson (Kalex)

https://qz.com/quartzy/1148452/potato2/

Well, this is pretty huge. We are looking at a powerful, flexible tool for bioengineering that is also controllable and precise.

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

CRISPR Just Got More Powerful With an “On” Switch

https://suhub.co/2R9TjKr

You can get a basic drone for a few hundred dollars, a good one for about a thousand, one that will follow a cellphone (to act as a camera platform) for a little more.

There hasn’t been consistent regulation, and what there has been is relatively easily ignored; they aren’t hard to build from cheap parts, which gets around any “geofencing” restrictions on where they can fly, for example (even without hacking the commercial versions, which isn’t that hard).

They can’t fly especially fast or carry very much weight, but they could be turned into weapons despite that, and even without weapons they can (demonstrably) sow fear and confusion disproportionate to their cost.

You can defend against them, but so far, people haven’t been, particularly, even though drone attacks are a pretty predictable occurrence.

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

Are We Ready for a Sky Full of Drones? Recent Airport Attacks Say No https://suhub.co/2QZ3lxT

https://suhub.co/2R3PAhn

“It looks like you’re trying to live life in the 21st century. Would you like some help with that?”

https://singularityhub.com/2019/01/15/the-rise-of-a-new-generation-of-ai-avatars/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=eblast&utm_campaign=fy19q1-xthinkers&utm_content=January-week-3&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWWpSbE1UaGpOemN4WlRVMCIsInQiOiJuT0tQaXJBb201dUhpcDZFa2h4eFFQbzFOQ3BMWjQya0dUVjEzYlQ3S01YMEROZnNsYW0yZGx2dVJ6WHdFRVdRVFZZbEdMZEhqYzhHUGZWTEJPXC9vaEhGNjRYSnRNNDI0MHdZbEc4MXhGMXQxcFBmWWdxXC9JNzhYRDFGeDVoRWErIn0%3D