🤔Deepfake Tupac Raps again, Shop without checking out, and Follow the entire Internet!

(Don't actually try to follow the entire internet)

What’s that? It’s Monday again?

I know - I can’t believe it either. The weeks are flying by!

My sweet baby Louisa is due this week. We shall see when she decides to arrive. I’m very excited to become a father! It would be fun to have a St. Patricks day baby! I’ll let you know next week if she arrives 😀

Anyway, I hope you stay safe out there. There’s a lot of different experts weighing in on this Coronavirus stuff - and the opinions vary wildly. How long will this sickness spread? Who knows. All I know is that everyone and their mom is posting about this, and I’m not going to take up any more time talking about it.

Let’s get to the good stuff, shall we? Grab that coffee and cinnamon roll and let’s go!

🎙Deepfake Tupac Raps Again!

We keep getting closer and closer to the day where deepfakes of live and dead people will be a normal part of our cultural experience. Honestly - do you really think that there will be a cultural uprising when we start seeing more and more dead actors starring in films?

Anyway, I though I would share this really interesting project that Corridor Digital was tasked with by Snoop Dogg. (Yeah - Corridor Digital is still going strong! It’s hard to believe that I’ve been watching them for a decade).

They were given the project of bringing Tupac “back to life” to lipsync for a new Snoop Dogg music. They made a really interesting behind the scenes video - detailing many of the different elements they had to figure out to make it look just right.

It’s a long watch, but very interesting.

It really messes with my head when I see this kind of stuff. It seems real but isn’t. What do you think? Are deepfakes like this acceptable?

🛒Shop Without Checking Out

Amazon is back again with a brand new product that will transform life as we know it!

Yes, I know - that line felt old 5 years ago, but the truth remains. Amazon keeps delivering revolutionary products.

They just made their Amazon Go technology “Just Walk Out” available for retailers. What is it, you might ask? Well, do you remember hearing about the Amazon Go store where you just pick up items, walk out, and get charged - all without having to check out?

It’s that same technology - but now available to other retailers.

In Just Walk Out-enabled stores, shoppers enter the store using a credit card. They don't need to download an app or create an Amazon account. Our Just Walk Out technology detects what products shoppers take from or return to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When done shopping, they can just walk out and their credit card will be charged for the items in their virtual cart. source

It’s pretty genius! Leave it to Amazon to build great technology and then sell it to other companies for a ton of money. I bet we will start seeing a lot more stores with this feature, now that they can use Amazon’s tech as opposed to having to design their own. I’m curious about this technology works - is it a PWA (progressive web app)? How does the tech charge my credit card without me downloading an app? Are they using facial recognition? So many questions.

Check out Amazon’s official website about the tech at the link!

💻Follow the entire Internet!

Or at least the stuff you care about. I discovered this useful little Chrome extension that helps you tune out the noise of Social Media. It can be incredibly hard to follow the people that we care about - whether it be friends, marketing gurus, cool internet stuff, or whatever!

We get on IG or Twitter to see their latest posts and get instantly swamped by all the other stuff that we may not particularly care about.

There’s this neat little Chrome Extension called Fraidy Cat to help you keep track of particular Internet things that you really care about. You can add blogs, IG pages, Twitter accounts, soundcloud artists, youtube channels, and more! It’s an incredible and simple way to cut through the noise of social media platforms.

Whenever you find something really interesting that you care about - just add it to Fraidycat so you can get updates!

Ready to cut out out the noise? Download at the link!

🐙 The Land of Random

I have no idea why, but cool stuff was in abundance this week, and I’m so excited to share them with you! 😍

📺 Open Source Video Conferencing

Need a video conferencing solution for your business, but want to keep it as cheap as possible? Twilio just made their internal video conferencing solutions open source! You can use their solutions or modify them for your own company.

😯 Fake Folding Phone

Pablo Escobar’s brother (Yes, that Pablo Escobar) came out with a “folding phone” called the Escobar Fold 2. Marques Brownlee does a very interesting video about the weird folding phone. It’s really weird, and Marques tells you all the really fascinating details!

Yes - it’s 12 minutes long, but it’s worth the watch.

🦷 A More Environmentally Friendly Toothbrush

I ran across a really interesting toothbrush concept with a removable bristle. Every year millions of toothbrushes are thrown away to rot as plastic waste for 1000’s of years. What if there was a way to reduce the waste? Check out this neat design concept at the link!