Fungible factories. “Because the entire process is encoded in software and the hardware is identical, activating new cells is like installing a new program on a computer.” Ben Reinhardt sketches “fungible factories”: shipping-crate-sized manufacturing cells you can copy-paste to scale […]
Trials by PEAK6. During a chat with Matt Hulsizer I learned of their initiative to seed entrepreneurs with capital and distribution to build new fintech businesses. They’re calling it Trials. “Trials isn’t an accelerator or incubator. There are no cohorts […]
Happy map. 100,000 moments of human happiness, mapped. ~ learn more
How to talk to anyone – and why you should. “You don’t always know if it’s OK. Sometimes you have to take the risk and find out.” The Guardian argues we’ve lost the everyday habit of talking to strangers, and […]
Payphone tag. “Payphone calls in Australia are now free. No coins, no credit, just pick up and dial.” Someone turned the collection 14,000 free payphones across the country into a real world game of territory control. ~ learn more
Selection bias, the real teacher. “In the world of educational data, “too good to be true” usually means there is a hidden variable in how the data was collected or filtered.” Readers may remember that I’m bullish on Alpha School’s […]
Fasting hype meets a meta-analysis. “Intermittent fasting just doesn’t seem to work for overweight or obese adults trying to lose weight,” said Luis Garegnani, after a Cochrane-backed review of 22 randomized trials found IF was no better than standard dietary […]
How exercise can lower Alzheimer’s risk. “Now, closely examining cells from geriatric animals’ blood-brain barriers, the researchers noticed that a damaging protein, known as TNAP, proliferated on the surface of those cells in far greater numbers than on cells from […]
A way to rejuvenate the immune system. Stimulating the liver to produce some of the signals of the thymus can reverse age-related declines in T-cell populations and enhance response to vaccination, which is evidence of boosted immune reaction. ~ learn […]
AI-generated ads win, as long as users don’t know. “Across studies, we find that genAI-created ads consistently outperform both human-and genAI-modified ads, increasing click-through rates by up to 19% in field settings.” Visual generative AI shows more promise in creating […]