Hello again lovely email friends. Hope you’re getting on okay at what’s proving to be a weird time for many. I should also welcome those who have come on-board recently. For the third and final time, whereas usually an email comes together in a week, this one has been brewing for months. this week’s 💥BLAST! is a round-up of interesting things that surfaced too late to be included in the relevant email. Some more about what’s to come in future at the bottom, but first…

33. Privacy: 🕵️‍♀️ A Vision of the Dark Future of Advertising: Companies will know more about you than you can even imagine. 🔤 The Case Against Big Tech Firms: from Rana Foroohar, a business columnist for the FT, analyst for CNN and author. 🗑 ‘Tossed my Fitbit in the trash’: users fear for privacy after Google buys company: Fitbit says data of its 28 million users will not be sold or used for Google ads. 📝 How to Opt Out of the Sites That Sell Your Personal Data: It’s much harder than it should be to get your name off of data broker and people-search sites, but it’s possible.

34. Cars: 🔌 Hot Wheels made two remote-controlled Tesla Cybertruck toys: Faithful representations of the Cybertruck that Tesla unveiled in November, including a “reusable cracked window vinyl sticker” you can use to recreate the onstage flub. 🚗 Sony’s electric car is the best surprise of CES: A real car stuffed full of Sony tech, but sadly not to purchase. Like a concept, it showcases ideas Sony has for the world of cars. But like a prototype, it actually works. 🛒 The next big thing in transportation is the un-car: The automobile industry will look a lot like the airline industry if manufacturers don’t rethink their offerings. 🙏 Carlos Ghosn: The fall of the god of cars: At his peak, Ghosn was a titan of the motor industry. According to his supporters, the allegations against him provided ample ammunition to a group of executives hell-bent on bringing him down.

35. Artificial influence: ❓ Fake CGI influencer Lil Miquela claims she was ‘sexually assaulted’: The computer-generated influencer said that the “threatening” man touched her leg and asked her inappropriate questions. Social media users were seriously angry about an influencer who doesn’t even exist claiming to have been sexually assaulted. 🗣 BBC, Google, Amazon and influencers have no credibility, study finds: Mindshare survey finds shoppers trust consumer reviews more than influencer views.

36. QR Codes: 💸 Tencent and UnionPay integrate QR code systems: Rather than using different QR codes for different operators, Tencent WeChat Pay and UnionPay Quickpass users can transfer and spend money using the same QR codes. 🕳 Discord users warned over QR code login scam that can result in pwned accounts: The chat app widely used by the gaming community launched a QR code feature so users can log into the web client using their phone. But fraudsters have been exploiting the system in an effort to gain unauthorised access to accounts. 🚨 Police issue warning about QR code fraud: Machine-readable codes for payment have an inherent flaw: they’re not humanly-readable. Malicious codes can open up the seller’s account allowing the buyer access.

37. Intrusion: 🧒 Why kids don’t trust Alexa: Children are not as blindly trusting as we first assume. 🎅 Santa hacker speaks to girl via smart camera: Video showing a hacker talking to a young girl in her bedroom via her family’s Ring camera has been shared on social media amid warnings people need to secure the devices better. ✂️ The Motherboard Guide to Not Getting Hacked: Want to stop criminals from getting into your Gmail or Facebook account? Worried about the cops spying on you?

38. Streaming: 😟 Too anxious to press play: Here we are at a moment in history where we are spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment, and this is stressing some people out.
🥁 The “celestial jukebox” era is dead. What’s next for music streaming?: The collective emphasis on volume of available songs is irrelevant to how streaming consumption and curation actually work today—we need a new metaphor for understanding music streaming in 2020, instead of aggressively clinging to the “celestial jukebox” with which we once fell in love.
🤳 Why Spotify May Soon Have a Big TikTok Problem: As TikTok continues to grow, should the streaming service be worried?
📺 What TV Shows Should Kids Watch? The streaming wars are coming for children, which means more minefields — and more excellent TV.
📉 Netflix, YouTube Share of U.S. Viewing Time Projected to Drop in 2020: The two video giants are expected to continue to be the most-watched video platforms next year, with Netflix remaining No. 1 in the U.S. in terms of time spent viewing followed by YouTube. However, with major new combatants trundling into the streaming wars, their relative share of time spent viewing is projected to dip starting in 2020.
🌱 ‘Completely unsustainable’: How streaming and other data demands take a toll on the environment: Tech firms look for solutions as data centres use huge amounts of power to fuel streaming and social media.
🌟 Has Amazon Already Figured Out the Future of Music Streaming? To grow, streaming services may need to offer customers more, better, and cheaper subscription options—something Amazon is already doing.

39. Salary: 🔢 A love letter to spreadsheets: Dropbox make a case for why designers should care about spreadsheets. 💰 Know Your Worth aggregates people sharing their salary information on Twitter to help eliminate existing pay gaps. 🤝 Breaking the Salary Sharing Taboo: Transparency about salaries can make workplaces more equitable, especially for women and people of colour. Why are so few willing to open up?

40. Tradition: 🤔 The Decade Tech Lost Its Way: When the decade began, tech meant promise—cars that could drive themselves, social networks that could take down dictators. It connected us in ways we could barely imagine. But somewhere along the way, the flaws of technology became abundantly clear. What happened?

41. Optimism: 📆 What went right in 2019: A turbulent year, from raging wildfires to divisive election campaigns stoking tensions. But there were plenty of positives this year, too. From a renewable energy tipping point to the legalisation of same-sex marriage. 🙌 The Decade in Cheer: Homicides fell, green space grew and your weather forecast got a lot more precise. The last 10 years were filled with positive change—really! 🤪 The joy audit: how to have more fun in 2020: This is the year to start taking happiness seriously. But how – and where do you find the time? Here are the tips and advice you need for a pleasure-filled year 👍 We Are Not Doomed: Seeing painful events as signs that we’ve lost our way misses the point. The truth is, we are less lost now than when we were comfortable. 🎧 Hope: Are We Really Doomed? Hope means believing there’s a future. But can hope co-exist with cataclysmic realities like climate change, or disruptive technological advances like artificial intelligence?

42. Love Island: ⬛️ ITV Pulls Love Island Episode After Death Of Former Host Caroline Flack: The broadcaster confirmed the current series will continue on Monday night with a tribute to the star.
☕️ Spilling the tea with the people behind the Love Island contestants’ Instagram accounts: To get to know the contestants better, The Face spoke to their most trusted confidants: their social media handlers.
📲 Love Island’s real genius is in its money-making app: ITV has made millions by teaming up with an app developer on Love Island—and its success hints at the future of the TV business.
👙 Love Island: 21 Facts About The Original Celebrity Series That Reveal Just How Different It Was: Back then, “muggy” only referred to how humid it was.
📚 Love Island’s literary forebears, from Eden to The Tempest: Mindless reality TV? Far from it. The exploits of Mollie-Mae and co are straight out of “Paradise Lost”.

43. Deepfakes: 🎭 Deepfake Porn Harms Adult Performers, Too: Their bodies are being weaponised for online harassment—and the experience, actors say, is eviscerating. 🚂 AI developer upscales famous 1895 train scene to 4K at 60 FPS: A developer used “several neural networks” to update a famous French short film from 1895 to make it appear as though it were shot on a modern phone. 🏷 Twitter to add warning labels to doctored videos and images: Under the new measures, users who retweet or like doctored and manipulated content will be shown a warning before doing so. 👩‍🏫 Could deepfakes be used to train office workers?: A consultancy that makes business training videos is advertising for a “deepfake expert” to create a new generation of presenters.

44. Bananas: 🍌 A Rainbow Of Bananas: Here’s an incredible diversity of bananas picked in a single nursery. They’re growing more than 80 different cultivars, with different tastes, shapes and colours. The blue one is incredible!

45. Surveillance: 🥋 Dressing for the Surveillance Age: As cities become ever more packed with cameras, public anonymity could disappear. Can stealth streetwear evade electronic eyes? 💄 These activists use makeup to defy mass surveillance: London is the second most surveilled city in the world. Dazzle Club is the activism group using anti-facial recognition paint to bring awareness towards this. 🔭 “Big tech is watching you. Who’s watching big tech?” The Markup is finally ready for liftoff: After a false start, the unconventional team of algorithm investigators is ready to dive deep.

46. Sleep: 🛩 How flying seriously messes with your mind: Travelling by plane has become an everyday activity – but our bodies and brains are still affected by it.

47. Big dating: 💔 Facebook suspends dating rollout in Europe after Irish officials search Dublin HQ: Facebook has suspended the rollout of its dating service in Europe planned for the eve of Valentine’s Day after officials from the Irish data regulator searched its offices.
♠️ Why dating is like poker: a gambler’s tips on the game of love: While some keep their cards close to their chest, others try raising the stakes. What can poker teach us about dating?
👋 Why Tinder Profiles Keep Appearing After You Swipe Left: The users who reappear after countless left swipes have become urban legends.
💏 Online dating: how markets and demographics differ: 31% of single internet users globally are online daters. This audience is characterised as 61% male and 39% female. Over the course of 2019 these numbers have shifted, with 2% more women and 2% fewer men.
🔪 Why ‘care’ and the ‘scare’ are inseparable when you love someone: Humans teeter on a knife’s edge. The same deep chemistry that fosters bonding can, in a heartbeat, pivot to fear and hate.
🧜‍♀️ 5 Couples With Unromantic Love Stories (…Or Are They?): There’s something appealing about the idea that an extraordinary love can be born out of the downright unromantic. Some of the least romantic “how we met” tales have spawned some of the best love stories.
🙃 Is It OK to Be Single in Your 20s? Not having much romantic experience in your late 20s can lead you to wonder if that’s normal.

48. Mindfulness: ⭕️ This Is The Key To Female Orgasm, Say Sex Experts: Your brain is more powerful than you realise when it comes to getting off. 🧘‍♀️ We need to move on from self-care to something that cannot be captured by capitalism: Rather than just seeing ourselves, we need to recognise that our health and fates are inextricably linked to our fellow human beings and find collective care. 🎚 Why Turning Off Matters: The symptoms of burnout are now so common that burnout has become a bit of a buzz word. But the effects and experience of burnout shouldn’t be taken lightly. Recently redefined, burnout is the result of chronic work stress that isn’t properly managed.

49. Miniature: 🏺 Alice Mara is a ceramicist whose work is recognisable because of the distinct and striking imagery that she uses to decorate ceramic objects. Office blocks are wrapped around vases and people hang from the rims of bowls.

And with that, we reach the end of the first year of 💥BLAST! Thanks for coming along with me. You’ll notice I’ve adhered rigidly to a format, but I’ve also taken a lot of feedback. It feels like a good time to make some improvements. Next week’s 💥BLAST! will look and feel a little different; hopefully easier on you and me. Let’s take this to the next level…