DataDownload: Google’s big Chrome update rewrites the rules of the web.

8 min readFeb 6, 2021

DataDownload: Google’s big Chrome update rewrites the rules of the web. A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser

Somehow, it seems like we had a slow news week. Unless you count Bezos, or the impending impeachment trial, or the 1.9T COVID relief bill. Oh, and Groundhog Day — and the video that can’t be unwatched.

But today’s newsletter is full of surprises. Google’s Chrome Update is going to be massive. All the big money is betting on the Moon — and beyond. Musk has monkeys playing video games with their brain. Samsung is betting on personalized mobile photos. And Apple’s almost-ready VR Headset is almost ready again. So, all of that plus — you can now build your own City of the Future, thanks to IKEA… as long as you can follow the directions.

Read, enjoy, comment — then burn after reading. Or not.

See you next week —

Steve

Steven Rosenbaum
Executive Director
The NYC Media Lab
Steve@NYCMediaLab.org Must-Read Google’s Next Big Chrome Update Will Rewrite the Rules of the Web

As Azeem Azhar pointed out in The Essential Ethical Quandary of Industry, “industry-driven research may be lucrative and comfortable, but researchers are ultimately employed by a company with a profit motive, not the academy charged with furthering the frontiers of knowledge.” While Azhar was criticizing Google’s doublespeak around ethical AI, the point is that what’s better for the people and what’s better for the bottom line is often at odds in Big Tech.

Chrome ditching third-party cookies certainly looks good, but it seems to be benefiting Google the most. While larger sites like The NY Times have been preparing a first-party data approach for nearly a year, others reliant on personalized adverts like smaller publishers and ad firms will take the brunt. Google gets a tighter grip on its half of the digital ad duopoly, but the move is still a win for privacy advocates. Third-party cookies “were the most privacy-invasive technology in the world for a while,” said Bennett Cyphers, a technologist at civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. So what is Google replacing it with?

“Google’s plan is to target ads against people’s general interests using an AI system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). The machine learning system takes your web history, among other things, and puts you into a certain group based on your interests. Google hasn’t defined what these groups will be yet but they will include thousands of people that have similar interests. Advertisers will then be able to put ads in front of people based on the group they’re in. If Google’s AI works out you really like sneakers, for example, then you’ll be chucked in a group with other similarly-minded sneaker fans.”

WIRED / 10 min read Read More Billionaire Battles Are Shaping Our Future in Space

“This thing they’re doing for society’s benefit — there’s a competition involved.” — Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation

When SpaceX asked the FCC to let the company lower the orbits of some of its satellites, Amazon and Dish objected, saying the move would interfere with their own satellites. Amazon’s Project Kuiper, like SpaceX’s Starlink, is planning to use constellations of satellites to provide high-speed broadband, while Dish plans to deploy a 5G wireless service.

Amazon wrote that they “designed the Kuiper System to avoid interference with Starlink, and now SpaceX wants to change the design of its system. Those changes not only create a more dangerous environment for collisions in space, but they also increase radio interference for customers.” While NASA is supportive of private enterprise in space, critics argue that billionaire feuds foreshadows a future where the bottom line drives space exploration and settlement… in other words, “squabbles about satellites could grow into fights about fresh air to breathe in space.”

Axios / 3 min read

In a surprise Clubhouse chat, Elon Musk discussed Neuralink and its latest experiment: implanting a monkey with a prototype BCI and having it play video games: “We have a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull with tiny wires who can play video games with his mind. You can’t see where the implant is and he’s a happy monkey. We have the nicest monkey facilities in the world. We want them to play mind-Pong with each other.”

Input Mag / 3 min read Read More Samsung Mobile’s Head of Camera R&D Wants Your Phone to ‘Personalize’ Your Photos

Smartphone users have had mixed feelings around Samsung’s approach to photos, from excessive auto-smoothing, to auto-sharpening, to making colors punchier than reality. But it isn’t a single department head or even a small team that decides the Samsung look for the year’s phone. The company uses in-house imaging experts, color scientists, a panel of professional photographers, and a global survey that asks what people find appealing in photos.

On the hardware end, VP of Samsung visual software R&D Joshua Sungdae Cho says there is no limit on many cameras smartphones should have (the Galaxy S21 Ultra has five). Cho’s goal isn’t exactly more cameras or better auto-smoothing, but literally to satisfy everybody through personalization: “When there are ten people taking a picture of the same object, I want the camera to provide ten different pictures for each individual based on their preference of the brightness, the color tone, the detail enhancing, etc.”

Engadget / 10 min read Read More New Report on Apple’s VR Headset: 8K in Each Eye, Potential $3,000 Price Tag

Both The Information and Bloomberg suggest that Apple is planning to launch a high-end VR HMD as early as 2022. The $3k headset, codenamed N301, will have LiDAR, two 8K displays — one per eye — along with a next-gen M1 chip. One version of N301 apparently has over a dozen cameras, “used for everything from tracking hand movement to delivering a live feed of the space around the user for mixed and augmented reality experiences, instead of just fully immersive VR ones.”

But why so late in the game and why at such a high price point? Apple’s focus has been AR thus far, with little developer support for VR. Ars Technica has a theory: “[It] seems plausible that these reports may be accurate but missing one critical caveat: that this is actually a tool being made and marketed to developers to kickstart that mixed reality glasses software-support journey, akin to the Apple Silicon developer kit Apple sent out to devs after last year’s WWDC.”

Ars Technica / 6 min read

“Humanity now has incredible power to shape nature and the Earth: the power to destroy and the power to repair, says sustainability champion and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. In this action-oriented talk, Steiner shows how this power is putting our own survival at risk — and takes us on a global tour of individuals and societies that are choosing to write a new, sustainable and equitable chapter for people and the planet.”

TED (YouTube) / 9 min watch

Watch Now What We’re Listening To Podcast: Why We Believe What Isn’t True

“We’re no stranger to stories about misinformation or deliberate disinformation. We live in a world where now more than ever, you have to be skeptical. That skepticism can be healthy, but it also can be used to cast more doubt and misinformation on data and statistics that are very real. Today, we’re dedicating our entire episode to why people believe things that aren’t true.”

Spotify / 10 min listen

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Join the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center for a panel discussion with B2B procurement and startup business development experts to uncover how you can catch a big fish and close more deals. Register Here. A Deeper Look How to Build the City of the Future, According to Ikea’s Innovation Lab

IKEA innovation lab, Space10, released a new book called The Ideal City that explores 53 modern cities and how they employ sustainable design measures. “Our cities are planned, designed, and developed in silos,” says Simon Caspersen, communications director at Space10. The Ideal City is meant to be like a cookbook for city planners and designers “to browse through the world’s collective creativity.” A few examples from the book:

“In an abandoned subway station in London, a heat pump captures extra heat from a nearby train line and pipes it to nearby homes in the winter. In another part of the city, a cohousing building for seniors is designed to fight loneliness. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, an office building covered in planters grows food. In Harbin, China, a recently built park was designed to act like a sponge for stormwater. In Lavale, India, a school for girls from low-income families was built from materials reclaimed from demolished buildings to keep costs low. In Copenhagen, a playground makes use of an empty rooftop.”

Fast Company / 3 min read