Four short links: 31 March 2017
Robot Tentacle, Sharing Myth, Math OCR, and Club Penguin's Last Hoorah
- Robotic Tentacle — a worrying development which moves the CyberKraken-day Clock forward two minutes.
- The Myth of the Sharing Economy and Its Implications for Regulating Innovation — The Myth convinces people that the sharing economy is comprised of self-regulating platforms, which allow microentrepreneurs to utilize their excess capacity in an altruistic manner. However, the sharing economy is actually comprised of companies driven as much by market forces and failures as any taxicab company or hotel chain. The Myth possesses a simple and seductive appeal. It uses the familiar idea of sharing to make the claim that platforms are unique and should be subject to new and different regulation or no regulation at all. This Myth not only harms platform users, the environment, and the culture and diversity of communities, it has helped sharing economy platforms become powerful influencers in Silicon Valley, state legislatures, and beyond. (via Sam Kinsley)
- Mathpix — cute app to OCR written equations and then let you graph and explore them in Desmos.
- Club Penguin’s Dying Moments (Vice) — when communities go away.
