What I read online #16
NFTs, shipping canals and tunnels, drone airports, psychological tricks, most popular and fastest-growing OSS projects, Uber's data culture, trans people and sports, sustainable homeware on Instagram
Do you enjoy “What I read online”?
Follow @WhatIReadOnline on Twitter, visit the archive or subscribe below.
All about NFTs, an a16z podcast
My good friend Denis, who’s a Madrid-based artist and fashion photographer (check his work here), was asking me the other day about NFTs (non-fungible tokens). NFTs are very frequently on the news lately but honestly, I didn’t have many answers for him. But I promised to do some research and report back. If you are in the same position, then you may want to check this recent a16z podcast, on what is and isn’t an NFT, what forms they take, common myths and misconceptions, how they work, etc.
Norway building a ship tunnel under a mountain and shipping canals which were never built.
On more news from last week, there is close to zero possibilities you didn’t hear about the giant container ship blocking Egypt’s Suez Canal. Canals are vital conduits for the global shipping industry. Norway is moving forward in building the world's first ship tunnel to be built under mountains while other shipping canals are so contentious that they’re often stalled or cancelled.
The world’s first airport for flying cars and drones opens this year
The Ricoh Arena in Coventry, UK was chosen as the location where Urban Air Port will build its first Air-One transport hub for autonomous delivery drones and electric flying cars. The facility will support delivery drone and air taxi technology and eventually transport cargo and people across cities and will launch later this year.
People are sharing effective psychological tricks they use in everyday life
When Reddit user u/PM_ME_UR_PUPPYDOGS asked, "What is the most effective psychological 'trick' you use?", people responded with some super interesting answers. Then Buzzfeed picked their top-23 best of these answers.
The most popular and fastest-growing Open-Source projects on GitHub
Two Sigma Ventures published last week “The Open Source Index”, their directory of the top 100 most popular and fast-growing open-source projects on GitHub. Check it out here, and also read about the methodology they used. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve, then reach out and share your feedback.
Uber’s journey toward better data culture from first principles
At Uber, petabytes of data are collected and processed per day and thousands of users derive insights and make decisions such as better pricing and matching, fraud detection, lowering ETAs, and experimentation. Published on Uber’s Engineering Blog last week, this post describes how Uber teams solved vital problems beyond the scaling challenge of their data systems and their own journey towards better data culture.
The massive Republican push to ban trans athletes explained
There are many things happening in the US that don’t make sense to the rest of the world - there, I said it. Why a certain group of people who identify in a certain way, are raising the issue of trans people playing sports to a life-existential threat and a criminal offence, is something I personally don’t quite get. Read this article, and let me know what you think.
The best sustainable homeware brands to follow on Instagram
I really enjoy reading The Modern House’s Journal newsletter, its editors curate a very interesting selection of articles about architecture, interior design, and lifestyle. This post is their favourite picks for the best sustainable homeware brands to follow on Instagram.