2024, Dispatch #1
On Product
Apple Vision Pro is now for sale with deliveries in the first week of February. It’s an exciting new device category and in a few years we’ll probably find a similar device much more affordable. Let’s see what developers can do with it. For now, I’d just wish there would be an app to let me identify bird or mountain peaks, like these AI-powered binoculars from Swarosvki Optik. Link to preorder.
Rabbit Phone, designed by teenage engineering (one of the most exciting companies out there). Lovely product in form, but I deeply believe it’s not going to work anytime soon. The interaction is still a bit weird. I can feel the upside of not having a phone that takes away your focus (much like Punkt’s), but this is still doesn’t quite make it for me. Also, given that some users will represent a $15/month cost on ChatGPT to run, how come this company is selling these devices for $199 with no subscription plan? Sounds like a death plan. Link to keynote.
OpenAI is dissenting the New York Times on their latest blogpost, even though they use their content to train their models literally for free. Link.
The founder of Instagram created a company a while ago called Artifact, exploring AI as a way to select better news for you. It’s dead now. Link.
Meta is now moving away from the Metaverse and focusing on AI, after sinking $12 billion in the last 16 months. The markets reacted quite well to this news. Link.
Outside Interests
NASA is now close to testing X-59, the new supersonic project that promises to reduce the sonic boom when travelling over land. If you are a fan of all-things-Concorde, this is not news to you. Link.
The world of craft beer is shrinking. BrewDog is facing many adversities to keep up with the current structure while 3 Fonteinen has announced that they're laying off entire teams. Part of Mikkeller is being bought by Carlsberg. Link 1. Link 2 (see translation). Link 3.
An amateur won a golf competition of the PGA Tour "The American Express”. Because he’s an amateur, the amazing €1.5M award for the winner will be handed to the golfer who came up in the second place. He’s name is Nick Dunlap and I hope Dunlop sponsors him, for obvious reasons. Link.
Portuguese tennis player Nuno Borges reached the Round 2 of the Australian Open. As a Portuguese and tennis lover, this is something we usually don’t expect. Fell against Medvedev but that’s OK. Link.
