A Wife's Revenge, Google Translate, Meta Threads, Dynamic Pricing, and Earth's Core
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
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Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
💯 Mastering Product Development
📵 A Wife’s Revenge
🗣️ 110 Languages
🏛️ US Supreme Court
🧵 Meta Threads
🧾 Dynamic Pricing
🌎 Earth’s Core
Podcast
Mastering Product Development and Team Dynamics - With CEO Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson is the CEO and founder of Particle41, a dev firm specializing in software development, DevOps, and data science. In this episode, Kyle and Ben explore the interaction between product management and software engineering, and how important both are to product development. Ben shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur and his approach to balancing work and life through the four pillars of faith, family, fitness, and finance. He delves into the importance of agile scrum processes, the role of a fractional CTO, and the significance of outcome-based communication in business. We also discuss the challenges and strategies for app modernization and team formation, exploring the importance of blamelessness and system optimization.
News and Useful Reads
A Wife’s Revenge from Beyond the Grave
This is a long read, but is absolutely fascinating. We’ve become accustomed to 3 minute TikTok videos and snap judgements, but the truth is often far more nuanced and complicated. Nuance doesn’t get views the same way that rage does. But rage destroys lives far more quickly. (See also Sepia Bride).
When Francesca started digging into their story, she found that nothing was as it seemed. To get to the truth, she has spent more than eight months speaking to dozens of people and reading hundreds of documents. This is the longest piece we’ve ever published, and it’s well worth your time. Because it isn’t just a story about one family’s ugly domestic dispute, though that story is a wild one. It’s equally a story about how social media can distort our perceptions, reflecting complicated human beings in a funhouse mirror that bears little relationship to who we really are. —The Editors
110 new languages are coming to Google Translate
Google has plans to have 1,000 languages in Google Translate. And it just took a huge step by adding 110 new languages using AI.
Now, we’re using AI to expand the variety of languages we support. Thanks to our PaLM 2 large language model, we’re rolling out 110 new languages to Google Translate, our largest expansion ever.
The US Supreme Court Has Handed Big Tech a Big Gift
If you are an American, or just a person living in this world, it hasn’t been a great week in news as the US lurches more toward oligarchy. And big companies aren’t going to wait to take advantage of recent rulings to bend the rules in their favor.
The overturning of Chevron in particular means “we’re clearly going to have more litigation,” says Berin Szoka, director of the Washington, DC-based nonpartisan think tank TechFreedom. For example, the FTC’s April decision banning noncompete clauses is likely at risk. Even though the agency has not relied on Chevron in its enforcement actions in recent years, the doctrine did provide it a level of deference in courts when it came to rulemaking. “There’s a zero percent chance that argument wins now,” Szoka says.
One year of Threads: How is Meta’s X rival really doing?
Everyone seems to be asking “what is the next Twitter?” after Twitter messed up so badly. But I’m not convinced there will be a next Twitter at all. Just like we’ve collectively moved on from things like non-stop superhero movies, I think this format had its time and is fading out.
But as the one-year anniversary nears, Threads’ ascent has seemingly slowed, with the app now seeing about 175 million monthly active users, according to Meta. It’s a decent showing, to be sure, but a long way from 1 billion users. And it raises the question of whether any single app can be the successor to the platform now known as X, let alone expand the format to significantly larger audiences, in a time of increased audience fragmentation and skepticism toward social media.
‘Should be illegal,’ fumes Burger King diner as meal cost increases in front of eyes – fears ‘dynamic pricing’ is here
We mentioned that surge pricing may be coming to fast food chains soon, and it seems like that day may be here. While Burger King is claiming it was a “bug” in the system, we all know that this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
As they were ordering at a kiosk, a popup on the screen notified them that the "pricing has changed on some of the items" in their order.
Before they could finish ordering, the notification showed that the total had increased from $33.89 to $34.18.
Other Interesting Finds
Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Here’s what it could mean
Earth is fascinating. The fact that the core of earth is as hot as the surface of the sun is insane. And the fact that the inner core is possibly slowing down and speeding up its rotation over decades seems like it could have an impact on…something.
This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means.
