Sinkhole chaos at League Two club
Internet blackouts and prawn rings.
Hello!
We’ve been living in the age of the screen. For the past 20 years the technology sector has focussed on monetising our attention and making businesses more efficient through applications.
There’s a couple of reasons for this. Firstly smartphones changed everything and things are only starting to stabilise in terms of how we engage with them, 17 years after the first iPhone was released. Secondly, developing applications has become incredibly cheap thanks to cloud computing. With the right skills you can have a functioning application in days. The challenge is that there is only so far you can go with a phone or a laptop. The tech giants of the future are going to have to have invent some new things.
Of course Meta and the like are fiddling around with AR/VR to find new surfaces to show us adverts but the really exciting innovation will be elsewhere. The cost of energy will finally go down as Small Modular Reactors come online. Material science will reduce the plastic we dump in the ocean and robots will make sure your nan gets her morning cup of tea.
Ironically the solution to moving innovation beyond software is probably more software. Software is massively increasing our ability to simulate the real world which makes the process of inventing far cheaper and faster. Rather than doing a Rick Sanchez-esque experiment to see how two things react, you can just ask AI eesneet.
This all of course depends on there not being some sort of nuclear apocalypse because we’re incapable of getting along with each other.
All the tests,
Hugo
Chief Proponent of Making Stuff
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Telegraph likely to go to US bidder 🗞️ - the owner of The New York Sun (no relation to The Sun apart from being right wing) has popped in a competitive bid of £550m. David Efune is not magician but a 39-year old from Manchester who owns The New York Sun (as well as being Editor-in-Chief and CEO). It sounds like Mr Efune has a bit of the old family cash but he’s “called in the calvary” to help with the purchase of the Telegraph.
There is a ‘baby’ botox boom underway 💉 - the ‘baby’ bit is a double entendre as it refers to the 71% increase in twenty-somethings (and a 79% increase in under twenties) receiving the treatment and it is used to prevent rather than smoothen out wrinkles. Fun fact: botox is made from a toxin produced from the same bacteria that gives you botulism. I mean good that it’s natural but who discovered that? Can’t have been AI. Ahh Alan B. Scott.
The Middle East is demanding its own content 🌍 - there has been a big change in Saudi Arabia where Shahid is now the dominant platform. 96% of Netflix’s catalogue consisted of foreign content whereas almost half of Shahid’s was produced locally. This led to an announcement by Netflix earlier this year they are going to expand their Arabic content.
Musk continues to fight with the UK Government 😵💫 - the man has really got a bee in his bonnet, presumably because someone’s dared suggest inflammatory content on X might have an impact in the real world. He wasn’t invited to the International Investment Summit this week (possibly for suggesting the government was building detainment camps in the Falklands) and posted a tweet claiming convicted paedophiles were being released to make space for posting on social media.
India shuts down the internet more than most countries 🇮🇳 - over the course of 2024 there have already been 51 blackouts that are put in place by the government when people do stuff like protesting or to prevent people cheating in exams(?).
Iceland is attempting to trademark prawn rings 🍤 - I really can’t be bothered to cheapen this newsletter with stinky fish puns but there has been an inevitable war of words between Iceland and Lidl with the former threatening to sue if they sell shellfish in a circular shape this Christmas.
AFC Wimbledon gets a big hole in it 🕳️ - the pitch flooded during the torrential rain at the beginning of the week, which caused a big sinkhole to appear. The club has asked for a pause in donations after the JustGiving page started by a fan raised £120,000 (with an initial £5,000 target).
Meta’s AR glasses makes Vision Pro look a bit silly 👓 - the frames still look like the type worn by the kid who gets bullied in an 80s high school film but they are pretty sci-fi in terms of how they work. As a glasses wearer I would pay a lot of money for a heads-up display that means I don’t have to keep looking at my phone when following a recipe (and let’s face it, that’s low hanging fruit).
Senior OpenAI leaders leave as it looks to become a for-profit entity 🤑 - what started out as a massive science project is becoming more product-focussed thanks to the old forces of capitalism. This will make Sam Altman a billionaire many times over but has resulted in some of his more sciency colleagues departing.
Jaguar Land Rover to pile £500m into updating an old plant 🏭 - it’s Halewood facility in Merseyside will be transformed in order to start producing electric vehicles by 2025. Tata Motors, its parent company, is investing £18bn with the aim of only producing electric vehicles by 2030.
Quote of the week
“I find it amazing how many people still think the petrol cap on a Ford Focus is offside rear.” - Alan Partridge