Team builds the first living robots that can reproduce
— “Xenobots” can gather cells inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth,” assembling robot babies capable of self-replication when they grow up #Beifall
— clap your hands in this weird little web toy from the creators of KIDS and PLUG & PLAY via @any_user #Casey Newton on Jack Dorsey stepping down as Twitter CEO
— and what to expect from his successor, crypto-enthusiast CTO Parag Agrawal #NYT interviews Jack Ferver, the little lad who loves berries and cream
— a Starburst ad that went viral online in 2007 blew up again 14 years later, thanks to Justin McElroy and TikTok #Disney’s FastPass: A Complicated History
— Defunctland hired an industrial engineer to build a theme park simulation for this feature-length documentary #Ed Yong talks to health-care workers with long COVID
— dismissed by their peers, some medical professionals are re-evaluating how they’ve treated their own patients #AI breaks NES Tetris
— love the glitches introduced as it blows past the kill screen via Web Curios #How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation
— investigation into how millions of ad dollars bankroll clickbait actors, funding disinformation campaigns internationally via Garbage Day #Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit
— Stuart Brown goes deep into chiptune for a new episode of Ahoy via @soobrosa #Garbage Day unravels the mystery of Thinkarete Lifestyle, Facebook’s most viral publisher
— a “barely active drop-shipping scam page full of stolen video content” is the most widely-viewed page in the U.S. this year #Justin Ling interviews the reclusive creator of Pictures for Sad Children
— she deleted the comic and her presence online after a 2014 Kickstarter update blew up online #Apple announces self-service iPhone repair program
— getting ahead of FTC right-to-repair enforcement #Skittish Is Live!
As you may remember, I’ve spent the last few months working on Skittish, a playful space for virtual events and gatherings of all kinds — requiring only a browser and microphone, using spatial 3D audio to talk to others around you. Skittish was built in a 3D engine with a powerful but simple editor, making it easy to customize the world.
It took some time, but I’m happy to say Skittish is now open to everyone, along with a new homepage and public demo showing how it works. Anyone and everyone can now create their own world, start editing, and invite others to join you. Go try it out!
Huge thanks to all the beta testers, event organizers, and creators who used Skittish over the last few months, but special thanks to the XOXO community for their continued support and enthusiasm.
And extra extra special thanks to Simon Hales, lead engineer for the project, for everything he’s done to make using Skittish (and working on it) so joyful.