May 27, 2023

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

(due to personal circumstances, we’ll be publishing sporadically)

Technology

Password Crackdown:  Netflix is finally coming for the passwords in the US, and if you share yours with someone not in your household, you can pay $7.99 extra per month to add them or you’ll have to boot them off your account. (UK accounts will get a similar option.) Netflix will be emailing accounts who have been noticeably logging in on multiple devices not on the same IP address, and will be inviting them to join with this new feature. Alas, we hope the other streaming services don’t catch on or we can figure out how to hide our IP address through a VPN asap.

Vying for attention: Young people increasingly turn to social media for their news (in 2022 one survey found that Instagram, TikTok and Youtube were the most popular sources for ages 16-24). But with advancements in AI, one Swedish newspaper is trying to lure the youngins in by rapping the headlines. The pilot program, “News as Music,” was deemed slightly cringey and awkward, but the paper is hoping to push the boundaries of AI to broaden their audience. Sadly, the best performing rap summary was a news story about Beyoncé’s world tour — rather meta.

AI Watermarks: While Sam Altman of OpenAI continues to make the rounds asking for AI regulation, and the respective governmental authorities continue come up with differing methods, Microsoft has agreed to sign all AI art that its apps “generate with a with a cryptographic watermark indicating it was made with an algorithm.” Adobe’s Firefly also generates a similar mark, but it doesn’t carry over into other applications, and Bing’s tool includes a small “b” at the bottom of images it generates. As more platforms adopt the AI watermark, or the standard adopted by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authority, the hope is that disinformation through imagery will be easier to stop (like this week’s AI-generated, viral image of an explosion at the Pentagon or last month’s fake image of the Pope in a puffer coat).

Apple becomes domesticated: Apple announced a deal to spend over $400BN in manufacturing in the US of all places. Apple is partnering with Broadcom to manufacture 5G wireless connectivity components across a variety of US cities. Apple has been working to move manufacturing out of China as US-Chinese relations sour, and the company has already opened new factories in India and Vietnam. Apple also announced last year, that the company would source its chips from Taiwan’s TSMC’s Arizona factory as early as 2024. Overall, Tim Cook announced that Apple plans to invest $430BN in the US economy over the next 5 years, and has 48 manufacturing sites here.

Ozempic Face or Nails: Ozempic (or semaglutide) is a diabetes drug that has become popular for weight loss, and while it suppresses appetite, researchers have found at least anecdotally that it also suppresses other addictions besides food. Users have found have “reported losing interest in a whole range of addictive and compulsive behaviors: drinking, smoking, shopping, biting nails, picking at skin.” Ozempic works so well for weight loss that demand for diabetes drugs for actual diabetes patients was in short supply. One other side effect, that was most noticeable in celebrities on the red carpet or politicians running for office, is Ozempic face: facial sagging and aging due to the rapid weight loss.

Sun spots: While the James Webb Telescope has been blowing our minds with images of deep space, our Earth-bound telescopes are also releasing some spectacular imagery. The new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii released images of the sun that show sunspots in incredible detail. (To us they look like the inside of an orange or a sea anemone.) Scientists are still in the process of studying our local star to understand why, when and how these solar storms happen, but for now we’ll enjoy the view.

Culture

Nurses as Athletes: In 2021, the US Supreme Court ruled that college athletes can profit from their name, image or likeness reshaping NCAA rules. One athletic brand is taking the ruling to a whole new level and treating Nursing Students as brand ambassadors: Saucony has launched a partnership with Galen College of Nursing. The nurses will be brand ambassadors, will be featured on the brand’s social platform and hopefully will be able to pay off their student debt using this boost. If we learned anything from the pandemic, it is not to take our nurses or their jobs for granted, so we hope this initiative does inspire the “next generation of elite student nurses.”

Coffee and Biscuits: We are not a big fan of paper straws, so we are not sure how to take this news, but we appreciate the initiative. A crowd-funded start-up in Australia is making a coffee cup that is meant to be eaten. Good-Edi’s edible coffee cup supposedly tastes like an unsweetened wheat biscuit, can hold a hot drink for 40 minutes or a cold one for 8 hours. Currently, the cost of the to-go cup does increase the price of the takeaway order, but we guess you are also getting a snack with your drink?

Retail Apocalypse: Malls have been losing major tenants with the demise of Bed, Bath and Beyond and the overall rise in online shopping. If you’ve been to your local mall lately, however, it probably looks a little different with some opening medical centers, virtual reality experiences, and now Pickleball. Pickleball America will be taking over an 80,000 square foot retail space formerly occupied by Saks Off 5th in Stamford, CT, while Camp Pickle is already set to open with a food court in Huntsville, AL in 2024. Get ready to see a combination of seniors doing their laps around the mall to the iconic sounds of the pop-pop-pop of the pickleball courts.

Looking for a new home: The US Government is giving away ten lighthouses at no cost (or sold at auction) as GPS has effectively made the beacons irrelevant for navigation. Since 2000, about 150 lighthouses have been transferred with around 80 for free and 70 at auction raising around $10M. Some of the lighthouses that have been sold in the past are operated by nonprofit organizations while others have been converted into private residences. If you don’t mind the tourists, the history, and most likely the isolation, you too can own your own historic lighthouse.

If you have to ask the price: We don’t quite understand this story, but…would you pay $250 for a jar of honey produced by the bees placed in the gardens of celebrity homes? Or a box of curated farm goods sourced from local organic farms in a pink box with the label “home for radical pleasure”? Flamingo Estate, a home in the hills of Los Angeles (that was formerly a porn-king’s mansion), curates unique luxury gift for the environmentally conscious and cash rich.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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