TikTok Ban, CES 2025, Smart Glasses, Human Thought, and Evacuations
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
🖼️ Digital Landscape
📚 TikTok Ban
📱 CES 2025
🗑️ Smart Glasses
🫥 Fact Checking
💼 Human Thought
🏢 Evacuation Research
Podcast
Redefining the Digital Landscape: JB Benjamin on Privacy, Blockchain, and the Future of Technology
In this episode of Product by Design, host Kyle sits down with JB Benjamin, the CEO and founder of multiple tech companies under the Akuma Engineering umbrella. JB shares his innovative journey in building products designed for a more equitable, decentralized, and privacy-focused digital future. From post-quantum encrypted messaging tools to Vox Alive's ad-free social media platform, JB dives deep into the philosophies and technologies driving his work. We discuss everything from post-quantum encryption to blockchain to Universal Basic Income. You won't want to miss this one.
News and Useful Reads
The TikTok Ban Is More Likely Than Ever
Listening to the arguments, I can’t help but feel despair at the lack of technological understanding that permeates the US government and the supreme court. It’s disheartening, but I expect TikTok to be banned next week.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a landmark First Amendment case on Friday that will determine the fate of TikTok in the United States. For more than two hours, the nine justices questioned lawyers for TikTok, content creators, and the US government about a law passed last year that, if left to stand, could result in a ban of the popular video-sharing app on January 19.
CES 2025: The best tech and gadgets we saw in Las Vegas
I’ve been seeing some amazing new technology at CES this year. It’s been great to see so many videos (on TikTok, of course) of some of the exciting things coming down the pike. But what were some of the best this year?
But there was a small group of new products that rose above the rest. Our list of CES 2025 winners covers a variety of categories, ranging from typical areas like home entertainment, transportation and smart home to theme-based topics like sustainability and accessibility. After our team shortlisted nominees and voted on the best for various categories, we then conducted another round of voting to decide on the best product of the show.
The smart glasses era is here — I got a first look
We’re on the cusp of smart glasses. It seems like dozens of companies are making them, and I expect certain form factors and experiences will really win out soon.
It seems that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes the perfect pair of smart glasses. I must have tried out 20 pairs over the course of the last week, but they all seemed to fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.
Let’s fact-check Mark Zuckerberg’s fact-checking announcement
Zuckerberg is taking a page out of Elon’s playbook and getting rid of fact-checkers and content moderation on Facebook. Likely to curry favor with incoming President Trump, who thrives on lies.
The plan includes relocating Meta’s Trust & Safety employees to Texas (this may be a sleight of hand, if most of its moderation staff is already Texas-based) and allowing a little bit more misogyny and homophobia. It also unwinds algorithmic scanning for harmful content that will result in more Meta users getting harassed.
There's a speed limit to human thought — and it's ridiculously low
How fast can humans think? Apparently, it’s not very fast. Though we take in vast amounts of information, we can only process it slowly.
The peripheral nervous system — the network of nerves that deliver information between the brain and the body — takes in environmental information at over a billion bits per second, a speed comparable to a lightning-fast internet connection. But people think and process that information at just 10 bits per second, researchers report in the study.
Other Interesting Finds
The Evolving (and Inexact) Science of Fleeing a Wildfire
It has been terrible to watch news of the California wildfires and the devastation they’re causing. As people have fled for their lives, it has had me thinking about how I’d evacuate. And apparently it’s a field of research—how to best evacuate people from natural disasters.
To prevent this sort of chaos, researchers are attempting to answer some basic but critical questions: Who reacts to what kind of warnings? And when are people most likely to get out of harm’s way?