Tag: technology

Project Orion is Meta’s first pair of true AR glasses. They project hologram onto the world and are controlled with a neural wristband. They aren’t for sale but they’re a prototype of what Meta thinks will replace your smartphone in the coming years.

Auto industry insiders were stunned when Caresoft, a highly regarded engineering consulting firm, tore down BYD’s mass-market EV, the Seagull. Priced around $11,000, the engineers found the Seagull to be well-designed, user-friendly, rich with options, and of surprisingly high quality and reliability. The US automakers reacted swiftly and produced reports insisting that BYD’s entrance into US car markets would be met with strong enthusiasm from buyers, and legacy carmakers would be unable to survive. Because of the Seagull’s low price point, US tariffs of 25% would be irrelevant: BYD could still make high profits even after the tariffs were paid. Or, BYD could simply place final assembly plants in Mexico and avoid them altogether. Aware of this, the Biden Administration in May jacked the tariffs up to 100% and announced that Chinese car plants even in tariff treaty countries would be cut off from US markets.

After losing a landmark antitrust case over its dominance in the search market, Google is now facing the real threat of a court-mandated breakup of the search giant. But on the heels of a flashy ‘Made by Google’ event showcasing new phones and AI features, Google is now more deeply integrated than ever – an ecosystem within search, cloud, streaming, hardware… and generative artificial intelligence is the thread tying it tightly together. It all means a potential breakup would be nearly impossible technically – and could hold true for other megacaps including Apple, Amazon and Meta, all of which are facing their own antitrust suits. This week on TechCheck, is big tech too big to split?

Why aren’t we taking full advantage of the planet we’re living on? If we launched rockets from mountains, they’d be closer to space where the air is thinner so we could use more vacuum-optimized engines.

Or why don’t we launch rockets from the equator? The Earth is moving quite quickly at the equator which gives a substantial boost in the initial velocity of the rocket. I mean it’s free energy right? How much of a difference does launching rockets from different locations actually have?

Today we’re going to dive into the physics of launching rockets from different spots on the earth. We’ll go over the pros and the cons of launching from mountains or closer to the equator in great depth and see if we can figure out why exactly we just don’t see rockets launching from these locations all that often if at all.

Last week Blackrock (the world’s largest asset manager), and Citadel Securities (the world’s largest hedge fund) teamed up to make a major announcement that could reshape global financial markets. They were going to team up to create a new wall street… in Texas. These two companies have the financial muscle to make a “Texas Stock Exchange” viable, but the question is… why? The startup exchange that will be located in Dallas is already taking shots to challenge the dominance of the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ which are both located in New York City and are by far the largest exchanges in America, and also the largest exchanges in the world. Both of these incumbents are private businesses that make money by providing a place where public stocks and other financial instruments can be traded securely. They make their money by charging companies that want to list on their exchange a one time IPO fee and an ongoing annual fee. The New York Stock Exchange is really not much different to a farmers market where businesses will pay the market organizer for the right to sell their stuff in a place with lots of customers. The only difference is that instead of beets, and artisanal honey, they are selling shares in their company. If the New York Stock Exchange is like a farmers market then the NASDAQ is like ebay, it’s still a marketplace but it’s all done online. The NYSE is owned by a company called Intercontinental Exchange whos shares you can buy on the New York Stock Exchange so apart from a lot of regulatory paperwork there is nothing too special about these companies. As long as a business gets approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission there is nothing to stop them from establishing their own stock exchange wherever they want. The reason they both happen to be located in New York City has more to do with legacy than any pragmatic benefits of operating in a state that is actually not particularly business friendly. The New York Stock Exchange was formed when New York was still a trading center and the NASDAQ set up there in 1971 because at the time the city was the undisputed business capital of America and back then physical proximity was much more important than it is today even though it has always been an electronic exchange. So why is this new challenger bucking the trend and setting up in Texas? Well… why not Texas? So it’s time to learn How Money Works to find out why some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world want to build a new Wall Street in Texas

America is short over 3 million homes. People are pouring billions into 3D construction companies because machines can build homes twice as fast as stick-built homes. But 98% of homes are still built on-site, mostly out of wood. And in 2023, only about 100 out of 1.2 million completed homes in the US were made with a 3D printer. We talked to multiple 3D construction companies to find out what it will take to build more, how the cost compares to stick-built homes, and find out whether it can help solve our housing shortage.