Live First, Post Later October 29th - Bogota

this is the best breakdown I’ve seen of the dark arts behind Block Blast!, the most downloaded mobile game in the world last year intentionally making players lose to optimize which ads they see, the sophistication behind such a “simple” game is stunning.

AI will reverse engineer how the human attention span works, and produce content that grabs you in less than one second and doesn't let you go

Cell phone addiction is an absolute thermonuke to the brain and nobody 'takes it seriously' because it is not clear that there is any solution in a world where the revealed preference of everyone across the globe, regardless of income, race, age, any factor whatsoever, would rather be on their phone than do *anything* else. Deciding "I use this too much" and meaningfully altering one's behaviour doesn't seem to have much success for any of the very small minority of people with the sentience or self-reflection to realize how bad it is. Most people seem to think of it as an unproductive habit at most, rather than an addiction. Any attempt to speak seriously about this is met with derision, accusations of pretentiousness. There is no real solution to it. The future of human cognition fifty years down the line is horrifying if you stop and think about it for even a moment.

we know who owns the data layer and the inference layer. but who owns the hanging out layer. the getting a beer and laughing with your friends layer