Tech - Karl's Notes

Snap's increasing focus on utility AR

Snap has been quietly working on expanding development of its utility AR tools and experiences, making it easier for users to enhance our physical world through digital addons.

Tech

What you have to go through to travel to Malta during COVID-19

Updated February 2022 The Health Authorities in Malta have been promoting the use of the ‘traveltomalta.gov.mt‘ website for those wishing to travel to the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both nationals and non-nationals are encouraged to visit the website to confirm that they can indeed travel to Malta,

No Code

A Hacker News-inspired aggregator built with Softr.io

Hacker News has been a fascination of mine since I discovered it several years ago, and today it has become part of my morning routine. Through the site, I discovered countless interesting articles and ideas, and the most read article on this site also owes its success to the millions

Politics

Challenges to creating a Network State

This is a review of the ‘How to Start a New Country’ piece by Balaji S. Srinivasan, which highlights possible pathways to a country founded and built online, and later also owning physical territory. I call this ‘the Reverse Estonia’, as the country has been on

Business

IKEA and the future of living

The keyword guiding IKEA’s history is innovation. Ever since its start in 1943, the name IKEA has been synonymous with minimal, cheap furniture that can be bought and assembled in one’s own home. Its first innovation is also its most famous one – the flatpack furniture. By introducing

No Code

Analysing famous speeches using Metaranx - an AI no code platform

Update - Metaranx is unfortunately no longer operational, but there are several other platforms which can do this. I recently received an invite from Metaranx to try out their new platform, an AI no code tool which currently lets users analyse the emotional sentiment of text using pre-built AI tools.

No Code

Building a No code app for a friend's side hustle

One of my friends started baking and selling pizzas during the COVID-19 quasi-lockdown. His way of reaching people consisted solely of a Facebook page and sharing posts on his personal profile and a local Facebook group. People could either contact him on the page, directly on messenger or by calling

Politics

Facebook of the 1940's

While World War II was nearing its end, the practise of data gathering to sell products or services directly to the consumer, was already in existence in the US. Data for sale Specific data on someone’s lifestyle was gathered in a list according to different interests and was

Politics

How did Keir Starmer win?

I recently wrote about the online campaigns of the three candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Out of the three, Keir Starmer successfully clinched the nomination with the help of a formidable online campaign on Facebook and Instagram amongst other social media platforms. Keir

Data Visualisations

UK Labour Leadership election: the online campaign - Part 2

Back in February I had published a post regarding the social media following and number of ads promoted by the three contestants for leadership of the UK Labour Party, as well as a former contestant. The voting for the leader by members of the Labour Party, closed on 2nd April

Politics

Political campaigning in the time of Corona

The Novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has spread around the world at a phenomenal rate. Many institutions and private businesses have had to shutter down, white-collar workers started to work from home, and people in general have been left in a sense of disbelief at how a virus could

Politics

Deepfakes in an Indian election campaign

VICE has recently reported that the president of India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), used deepfake technology to change the language of his speech in a political advertisement. In the original video he speaks Hindi, one of the main languages spoken in India, while in the other