Amazon announced the Dash Button, a physical WiFi button you stick on your washing machine that orders more detergent when pressed, on March 31st, and the entire internet assumed it was an early April Fools joke. It’s real. That’s the tell for this era: the real products and the parody products have converged. A button that buys one thing is either the dumbest object ever shipped or a genuinely clever removal of every friction between want and buy, and knowing Amazon, they’ve A/B tested which.
Twitter’s Periscope launched properly (RIP Meerkat, we knew ye a fortnight), and April Fools brought the usual flood of fake products, none as weird as the real ones.
YC’s Demo Day recaps read like a different industry than 2013: fusion energy, supersonic planes, pharma. “Software eating the world” apparently finished the appetizers.
The Cricket World Cup ended Sunday: Australia, again, at the MCG. The office watched the India-Australia semifinal on a projector the week before, and when the chase died the floor went so quiet you could hear the AC. My crest methodology called the champion and nothing else. Science continues.
TIL: BLE beacons and how the Dash button actually connects (a WiFi setup dance via ultrasound from your phone app?). The hacks inside “simple” products are never simple. Simple is the most expensive feature.