Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 35

Marques Brownlee and Walt Mossberg on Trustworthy Tech Reviews

How useful will tech reviews (or any other kind of online review) be in a future where they can increasingly be AI generated? This was a topic tech journalist Kara Swisher focused on in an interview with tech reviewers Walt Mossberg and Marques Brownlee. They are an interesting duo to discuss the topic side by side. Mossberg essentially invented the category of tech reviews as the long-time reviewer at the Wall Street Journal. Brownlee is a wildly popular YouTube reviewer with hundreds of millio...

The Pronatalists Want Everyone to Have More Kids. Are They Right?

Malcolm and Simone Collins believe it’s their duty to have as many kids as possible. They think you should, too. Over the past few years, they have become the unofficial spokespeople for pronatalism, the idea that the only way to fight population decline is to encourage the world to have more kids. Lots more kids. Their methods are controversial, as are some of the people they sometimes share stages with. Their movement is fairly criticized for its lack of diversity and how it can sometimes attr...

Soundproof Silk May Transform How We Manage Noise at Home and Work

Early in the pandemic I decided to make a home studio and looked into installing sound panels. Unfortunately, they were generally expensive, bulky and needed professional installation. Researchers from MIT may have developed a solution for this and many other problems with a new noise cancelling silk fabric about the width of a human hair that uses vibrating fabric to “generate sound waves that interfere with an unwanted noise to cancel it out, similar to noise-canceling headphones.”

If i...

Why I Love Ridiculous Art

One of the group conversations I had last weekend required each participant to share something that we think is bullsh*t. My choice was political advertising, which David Ogilvy famously suggested ought to be stopped because “it’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left.” Someone else in our group nominated modern art … and referenced the banana duct taped to a wall saga as proof.

Feel free to disagree with my perspective (I look forward to your comments!), but in that conve...

India Is Ground Zero for the Irresistible Appeal of Sanctioned Deepfakes

The biggest AI story this week was the showdown between Open AI and actress Scarlett Johansson over the use of a voice concerningly similar to hers after she had refused to collaborate with Open AI. This is quickly becoming a recurring typical deepfake story: someone steals the likeness of a famous person, and that person fights back.

Photo by Taylor Hill / WireImage

The less popular but perhaps more concerning story is the growth of sanctioned deepfakes. This week, WIRED detailed how ...

Truecaller Offers Perfectly Useless Feature to Let AI Respond to Calls in Your Voice

This week’s example of unnecessary AI innovation comes from the caller ID platform Truecaller which is using Microsoft’s Personal Voice technology to power a new tool that can “replicate users’ voices in order to greet and respond to callers.” Here’s a breakdown of each “feature” it promises, along with a list of how I currently accomplish these things myself:

“Answer phone calls for you” – I can answer them myself, if I want.“Screen unknown calls” – I don’t answer.“Take messages” – ...

IKEA Organizes Flea Markets Across Europe to Help People Sell Used Items

This summer, in their ample parking lots across several European cities, IKEA will be hosting weekend flea markets for people to come and sell their used household goods and other items they don’t need anymore. Donations from the day will be used to support vulnerable single-parent families. The effort is designed to underscore the brand’s sustainability focus that includes programs encouraging people to resell their used IKEA products and generally to throw away less items in favor of upcycling...

France Creates Scratch-and-Sniff Stamps That Smell Like Fresh Baguettes

Just in time for the feast of Saint-Honoré, a day honoring the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, La Poste in France released a limited edition set of scratch-and-sniff stamps featuring a baguette wrapped in the national colors of the French flag. The effect was achieved through “microcapsules of fragrance embedded in ink” and 594,000 copies of this special edition stamp were created.

There are so many reasons to love this. It offers a distinctly French sensory experience to anyone ...

Uber Caregiver Is a Golden Opportunity … If They Get It Right

Earlier this week Uber made an announcement about their future roadmap of offerings and the one getting the most attention is the ability to book a shuttle with friends to attend a concert or some other live event. The announcement that should be getting the most attention was mostly ignored.
Uber Caregiver is a new feature of the app that will allow caregivers to create a secondary account where they can organize rides on behalf of someone else, and eventually use this service to organize grocer...

How To Overhaul Presidential Debates? Stop Pretending it’s a Debate.

This past week both political parties agreed to hold a Presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump. Many observers are already criticizing it as a waste of time and unlikely to change anyone’s mind. They are probably right, but what if they weren’t?

The idea of giving the public a chance to hear directly from candidates in an unfiltered way is an important one.
Unfortunately, it’s an ideal that the modern debate format rarely lives up to. Instead, these televised deb...