David Lidsky's Blog, page 3016
April 3, 2015
A New App Uses Gambling (For Real Money) To Improve Health
Created by two doctors, Bushytail Health lets you bet cash on your ability to get healthier.
Last year, Americans lost an estimated $119 billion gambling. Is there a way to use that betting obsession to make people . . . healthier?
Why Your Bitmoji Looks So Much Like Your Actual Face
Bitmoji has nailed the concept of making adorable, eerily accurate cartoon avatars to text to your friends. Here's how they did it.
The other day, I texted a friend my Bitmoji, a lookalike cartoon avatar I created using this app. "Wow," he said. "That actually looks strikingly like you." He isn't the first person to tell me the little brown-haired caricature looks eerily like my actual, human self—nor is mine the first Bitmoji to get that reaction. My friend Alex's Bitmoji looks like it ate him and stole his soul. When another friend texts me his emoji likeness, I get chills.
April 2, 2015
Streaming Video On Periscope Just Got Way Less Creepy
With its first-ever update, the live-streaming app Periscope fixes a feature that revealed users' home addresses.
Last weekend, I discovered that Twitter's new live-video app, Periscope, had a rather scary privacy flaw: If a broadcaster did not turn off location sharing, a zoomable map accompanying the video stream pinpointed his or her location down to the intersection. Because many people use the app at home, this meant that Periscope was potentially revealing the home addresses of thousands of users. In an article published on Monday, I suggested that Periscope's developers remedy the problem by limiting the map's zoom function, so that only a user's city could be seen, and not their pinpointed location. Today, with the release of its first app update, Periscope has done exactly that, disabling zoom on the map. That means people can now more securely stream videos of their pets and refrigerators.
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Today in Tabs: Facebook Presents Your Year in Tragedy
If there's no pizza, don't even invite me to your wedding.
Silk Road–the darknet site that blended techno-libertarianism, unexpected pathos, drugs, and that sweet elixir of larceny Bitcoin into what has already been one of recent history's most entertaining legal proceedings–is not done with us yet! Like all Silk Road related news, the charges against DEA agent Carl Force and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges are incredibly implausible and circuitous, but Sarah Jeong does as good a job explaining them as anyone could hope for. Keywords include, but are not limited to: murder for hire (simulated), intimidation (failed), theft (flagrant), and LinkedIn contact request (regrettable). Lauren Smiley has a step by step guide in Matter for Feds interested in catching the Bitcoin-laundering wave, and Kashmir Hill collected 5 of Force's wackiest side-projects for Fusion.
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The European Union Is Preparing To Sue Google, And It Wants A Fight
The battle is heating up between American tech companies and European regulators.
The writing is on the wall, says The Wall Street Journal: To all appearances, the European Union is preparing to sue Google. The EU has been accusing the California-based tech company of antitrust and anticompetitive practices since 2010, and Google and the previous EU antitrust chief tried and failed three times to come to an agreement. But the new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, has made it clear that she is not looking for a settlement from Google. As the The Wall Street Journal reports, Vestager wants a landmark case that will set precedent for how tech megacorporations operate in the EU.
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New Report On Android Security Finds Fewer Than 1% Of Phones Are Potentially At Risk
Using anonymized data from 1 billion phones, Google has set the bar for Android security. Will Apple follow suit?
Google just released its 2014 Android Security Year in Review, an intensely data-driven report intended to bring transparency to the vulnerability of phones running on Android. Its findings: fewer than 0.15% of devices that only install from Google Play had a Potentially Harmful App (PHA)—apps that pose a threat to users or their data— installed. Overall, fewer than 1% of Android devices had a PHA installed in 2014. Apple, Microsoft, and Blackberry haven't released similar figures.
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Watch This Artist Flawlessly Draw Your Favorite Logos By Hand
No sketching. No outlining. Just pure awesomeness from Seb Lester. Logos include: Game of Thrones, Nike, and Harry Potter.
On a scale from one to THIS, where do your drawing skills fall?
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Smart Design Founder Davin Stowell: "I've Never Had A Real Job"
The founder and CEO of creative innovation consultancy Smart Design discusses his 35-year career and how to design products with meaning.
Thirty-five years ago, Davin Stowell founded Smart Design, a creative innovation consultancy with offices in London and New York City. Since 1980, the company has grown from three to 90 employees (down from a high of 120), and has worked for the likes of BMW, Cigna, Ford, HP, and Nestlé. It's helped Under Armour design sports bras, partnered with Gatorade on a quantified hydration system, and given the New York City taxi a makeover.
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How Redesigning The Cockpit Could Prevent Another Germanwings Tragedy
The best way to deter suicidal pilots and terrorists is to seal the cockpit. Here's what that might look like.
Airlines and regulators often wait to enact airline safety measures until long after the urgency for such measures becomes apparent. It's painfully evident in the wake of the March 24 Germanwings tragedy, when Andreas Lubitz, 28, locked his copilot out of the cockpit, disabled the security code, and crashed the plane in the French Alps. The incident highlights the need to rethink how we design airplane cockpits.
The current rules don't work.
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What Happens After Y Combinator: The Marathon After The Sprint
Startup founders obsess about "winning" Demo Day. But even the winners will struggle to build sustainable businesses.
As she cleans out the hacker house where she and her employees have spent the past three months, Liz Wessel is experiencing a bit of an emotional whiplash. "We're going back to our normal life," Wessel tells me earlier this week, eyeing a mostly boxed-up living room in Los Altos, California, that served as the temporary headquarters of Wessel's company Campus Job. The recruiting startup, which Wessel cofounded last year, was one of 114 companies taking part in the current Y Combinator batch, which I've been following over the past three months.
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