Author: Ben Macintyre This is not the author’s first time writing a thrilling true-life spy book – and once again he delivers a phenomenal story full of intrigue, insight, spycraft the all-important details. Set against…
Author: Steven Johnson People have been making decisions of great importance for as long as there have been people. With the help of evolution, some of those decision-making tools have been genetically encoded into our human…
“A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation — and a huge spike in carbon emissions.” | learn more
“From shelf-stable probiotic-filled products to Pacific Rim-inspired foods, see a full list of Whole Foods wellness trends for 2019.” | learn more
Researchers Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen ran a survey of scientists to conclude: “Over the past century, we’ve vastly increased the time and money invested in science, but in scientists’ own judgement, we’re producing the…
Vijay Pande, partner at a16z, published this post in Scientific American explaining how we’re moving from pure discovery to a more structured engineering approach for biological. “With design, however, we can plan and progress very…
“A new experimental study out of Penn State, however, directly links more social media use to worse emotional states, and less use to better.” This newsletter does not count as social media (says me)! |learn more
Writer and masters student in cognitive science Alexey Guzey writes: “I ask a lot of people about their life plans. At least half of them tell me that they have no idea where to move…
This clever viral ad campaign had people offering to pay hundreds of dollars for $20 shoes. |learn more
Ben Davidow writes about how a dispute over the outcome of a prediction on Augur may lead to the network getting stronger. | learn more
“In what is thought to be a world first, the colleges of business and engineering at the university signed a three-year contract with an insurance broker to pay the annual six-figure sum, which provides coverage…
I bought a new coat for the upcoming Chicago winter. Salespeople threw around stats for fill power but couldn’t explain what fill power was. Wikipedia to the rescue! | learn more
Someone updated Maslow’s hierarchy, and it’s pretty great. I seem to have accidentally skipped the base of the pyramid. | learn more
The tech unicorn is in a fight with Morgan Stanley. A fund of MS owns a small bit of Palantir and values it around $4B. Meanwhile, the MS investment bankers want to take them public…
“In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, Digiday spoke with a data scientist inside the marketing department of a company who says marketers are still lost when it…
“The software hooked into Piper’s home TV screen, which displayed an image of Piper standing next to robot avatar. When the avatar marched in place, jumped or balanced on one foot, Piper mimicked its movement. Piper…
Subscriber Luke Shepard wrote this great article explaining the school ratings most parents rely on and their limitations. | learn more
“Teams led by employees at Microsoft, Intel, and Tencent are participating in a cucumber-growing competition to operate autonomous greenhouses to explore artificial intelligence applications in indoor farming.” | learn more
“…a new discovery from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, published in Nature, claims to have discovered a fifth kingdom of life—a new kind of eukaryote. The paper describes two organisms, one newly unearthed in Nova…
“Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra walks us through the framework his startup used to make product/market fit more actionable, detailing the survey and four-step process that were key to measuring and optimizing it.” | learn more
“Sometimes we make decisions based on how they will look to others rather than whether or not they will produce the best outcomes. This article looks at why we tend to do that, and what…
A great visual map of the companies in the space. “The security token ecosystem has six sub-categories: (1) Issuance (2) Broker-Dealers (3) Custody & Trust (4) Legal (5) Compliance and (6) Trading” | learn more
Christian Auty is back with another great issue of Distributed Counsel where he discusses the latest SEC news related to crypto and enforcement. | learn more
In yet another example of top-notch content from the a16z team, Benedict Evans posted a video of his presentation at the firm’s annual tech conference. “Close to three quarters of all the adults on earth…
“Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, joins YC Software Engineer Kyle Corbitt to share his experience and insights on tech and startups.” | learn more