Blog | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

The story of my life in China is here.

'This Is Small Talk Purgatory': What Tinder Taught Me About Love  

CJ Hauser in The Guardian:

But once I gave up on the banterers, my Tinder chats became uniform. The conversations read like a liturgy: where are you from, how do you like our weather, how old is your dog, what are your hobbies, what is your job, oh no an English teacher better watch my grammar winkyfacetongueoutfacenerdyglassesface. The conversations all seemed the same to me: pro forma, predictable, even robotic.

That’s when I realised that what I was doing amounted to a kind of Turing test.

Daughter

Also check out the behind the scenes video:

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out  

In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization. He argued that if you believe that our civilization will one day run many sophisticated simulations concerning its ancestors, then you should believe that we’re probably in an ancestor simulation right now. His reasoning? If people eventually develop simulation technology — no matter how long that takes — and if they’re interested in creating simulations of their ancestors, then simulated people with experiences just like ours will vastly outnumber unsimulated people.

Nick Bostrom is the author of Superintelligence. (Check out Tim Urban’s take on it for Wait but Why.)

He makes a compelling argument with, again, grave consequences.

Old-Fashioned Rice Cookers Are Extremely Clever

How a simple rice cooker uses the physical properties of water and magnets to cook perfect rice.

Today I Learned That Not Everyone Has an Internal Monologue and It Has Ruined My Day.  

My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time.

It’s 2020 and You’re in the Future  

When World War 2 started, the Civil War felt as far away to Americans as WW2 feels to us now.

Also, remember when Jurassic Park, The Lion King, and Forrest Gump came out in theaters? Closer to the moon landing than today.

Many incredibly fascinating facts.

Andy Grove and the IPhone SE  

Andy Grove passed away the same day that Apple announced the iPhone SE. One of Grove’s best decisions reminds me of this launch.

Inside Apple's Perfectionism Machine  

Apple’s Phil Schiller explains how Apple has perfected its attention to detail over time, and how it manifests in products like the new MacBook.

The Bro Code  

Booze, Sex, and the Dark Art of Dealmaking in China

Stanford Researchers Discover the 'Anternet'  

A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.

How the Language You Speak Changes Your View of the World  

Panos Athanasopoulos says bilinguals view the world in different ways depending on the specific language they are operating in.

The Rise of the Red Prince  

How Xi Jinping took control of China.