Which small island is winning from AI?
And some stuff about the world's most expensive cheese.
Hey Comrade,
There's a great corner of YouTube that involves amateur pilots diarying their journeys in small aircraft. All the back and forth with Air Traffic Control (ATC) is delightfully arcane but disarmingly friendly. And there’s a lot of it required to move around, particularly in the UK as cheeky visiting pilots often complain. I always thought the level of communication was “Right, I’m off” and “OK, you’re good to go, see you later.” Turns out there’s a bit more to it.
The UK has one of the most complex airspaces in the world and so when things go wrong, they go badly wrong as we saw this week, with over 1000 flights being cancelled. The issue is that like a lot of aviation, systems are run on software from the 1990s. So when a dodgy flight plan was fed in, it sent the system into meltdown, and ATC had to revert to manual processes.
It speaks to a wider state of limbo we are in where we have the technology that no human ever needs to be involved in the process of flying a plane again but the route to getting there is somewhat perilous. It will also be a sad day when people are no longer flying around in rickety old Cessnas to slightly obscure airfields like Compton Abbas (that has just been bought by Guy Richie).
Prepare for takeoff,
Hugo
Captain Stuff
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
The world’s most expensive cheese 🧀 - even a block of Cathedral costs an arm and a leg these days but it has got nothing on this wheel of 2.2kg wheel of Cabrales that sold for €30,000 at auction recently. Imagine a parallel universe where instead of people paying that much money for a bottle of champagne at a club, they pay it for a rare semi-hard blue cheese and there’s a big ceremony with sparklers.
The third largest automobile maker in the world is VinFast 🚗 - the Vietnamese manufacturer will only actually produce 50,000 cars this year (compared to GM’s 5.9m) but due to the small number of shares being traded the value of them has shot up. The company’s valuation has swung wildly over the past week, leading some to declare it a ‘memestock’.
Former Fulham owner dies aged 94 ⚽ - Mohammed Al Fayed, who owned both Harrods and Fulham has died “peacefully of old age”. He did wonders for the West London club (apart from a dodgy Michael Jackson statue), having bought it for £6.25m in 1997. Not far off the average property price in the surrounding area today.
Everyone’s going mad for Macademias 🔩 - allegedly known as the ‘king of nuts’ which is news to me, production of these creamy little numbers is growing massively. Demand is expected to grow from $1.43bn in 2023 to $2.43bn in 2028. They are however a bit of a pain to grow which is what has made them a fairly expensive choice of snack.
BAE Systems is setting up shop in Ukraine 🔫 - the weapons manufacturer has seen its share price climb by more than 75% since the start of the war. Local manufacturing would further deepen Ukraine’s involvement in NATO, which immediately drew ire from the Russian government. The move suggests BAE see a market for their weapons in Ukraine for years to come.
Fungi potentially the answer to plastic junk 🍄 - mushroomy matter continues to lead us to believe that its got magical powers that will heal the world. Researchers in Sri Lanka have discovered a species of fungi that can break down polyethylene, the plastic used in the majority of bags, bottles and cling film.
Record transfer window for European football 💰 - the Saudi money seriously arrived this summer which led to clubs in the Premier League spending more than £2bn for the first time. The Saudi government handed control of four domestic clubs to the Public Investment Fund which enabled the spending spree. Chelsea was still the biggest spending club for the second year running.
Leadership at YouTube concerned about the impact of Shorts 😵💫 - the format was developed to compete with TikToks but senior staff are worried it will cannibalise its core business. Longer-form videos produce more revenue but are becoming less popular as all our attention spans get shot to pieces. At this point, an eight-minute video requires the same sort of commitment and focus it once took to read Bleak House.
Anguilla is making bank from the domain it owns 🇦🇮 - if you’re a small Caribbean island and your domain happens to be ‘.ai’ then you’re in luck this year. Everyone and their dog is using it for their AI-based start-up which is expected to net the island up to $ 30 million in domain registration fees this year.
Guardian blocks OpenAI from trawling its content 🫸 - “What have I told you about my trawling my content!?” is the 21st century equivalent of “Geroff my land!” But fair enough, it’s pretty annoying people making money off your intellectual property, particularly when it’s hard enough to make money out of it yourself. We will see the continued balkanisation of IP as language models compete to access content that will improve the quality of their tools.
Other Stuff
Quote of the week
"That was some of the best flying I've seen to date — right up to the part where you got killed." - Jester, Top Gun