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Weekly Digest
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RIP McDonalds. Robot hamburgers are here ๐Ÿ”
RIP McDonalds. Robot hamburgers are here ๐Ÿ”
Robot hamburgers have arrived, and they're delicious. ๐Ÿค–๐Ÿ˜‹

We stopped by the brand-new Creator restaurant in San Francisco, home of the (almost!) completely automated hamburger-making robot.

Tomatoes, pickles, onions, cheese, and sauces are all stacked above a conveyor built. Toppings are sliced and immediately dropped onto brioche buns. Ketchup, mustard, mayo โ€“ drizzled down to the millileter. Shredded cheese is shared and heated in a rotating drum as the patties are cooked at the end of the conveyor belt. The patties are grilled to optimal medium-rare perfection tracked by 11 different sensors.

Needless to say, it was delicious and only $5.50.
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The best part: you can watch your burger travel down the conveyor belt. It's like a massive Rube Goldberg machine.

Of course companies like Creator make people nervous. Will robots take our jobs (this site will let you know if your job is safe)? Some think so. Others see companies like Creator in service of human labor, empowering people rather than replacing them. Creator has 20+ employees for the 40-seat restaurant, helping feed the burger-making machine and interact with customers.

Creator isn't the only robot-powered culinary establishment. Cafe X just raised a $9.4M Series Aย led by Jason Calacanis and Craft Ventures to build and operates robot baristas all around San Francisco.
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Our vision of a full robot kitchen is far, farrrr away. In the meantime, here's your glimpse into the future of food. ๐Ÿ”
Highlight
Big launch from Coinbase last week: Coinbase Wallet, your portal into the world of decentralized applications (dapps).

Dapps are typically hard to set up: you first need to download a browser extension like MetaMask, then create a wallet, then buy Ethereum or Bitcoin somewhere, and thennnn transfer it into your MetaMask wallet.

Coinbase's new wallet makes this entire process easier, with a built-in browser for dapps like Peepeth and 0x Protocol. There's even a built-in messenger for chatting with your friends.

Coinbase also just acquired Distributed Systems, a small startup focused on building a worldwide identity standard for dapps called the Clear Protocol. Their goal: to let you log into dapps with one click, just like logging into a site with Google or Facebook's authorization keys. Coinbase President Asiff Hirji called it โ€œa step towards reclaiming personal privacy.โ€

This further explains why David Marcus, an exec at Facebook, announced his departure from Coinbaseโ€™s board. Coinbase could become Facebookโ€™s biggest competitor.

The truth is, barely anyone uses dapps. Tools like DappRadar report the number of active users on the most popular decentralized apps that run on the blockchain. Some of the most popular dapps have dozens (yes, dozens) of users. Of course, itโ€™s early days and Coinbase Wallet is an attempt to make dapps more accessible. That said, thereโ€™s certainly interest in the space.

Open-sourced Twitter-alternative Mastodon claims 170,000+ users, who join community-owned and operated servers that run the same open-sourced software (no blockchain required). With no ads (or algorithmic feed!), the site promises to allow users to "put social media back in your hands."

Ready to decentralize? Here's are 10+ dapps to test. โ›“๏ธ๐Ÿš€
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Weekly Digest
Every Monday
THE curated list of the best in tech each week โ€” the top 10 products of the week, the big headlines only, and emerging trends.