Will's Weekly Roundup

June 12th - June 18th

Will Sullivan
June 19, 2023

Will's Weekly Roundup is a curated list of tech, business, and startup headlines from last week to kickstart your Mondays.

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Business

The business headlines you missed (or need to see again)...

Squarespace - Alphabet is selling its Google Domains business for ~$180 million to Squarespace. LINK

NIL - In the two years since the NCAA suspended its NIL rules for college athletes, deals have surged by 146% every year, with 17% of athletes in Division 1 schools signing one. LINK

Uber - Uber will cease food delivery in Italy and exit Israel. LINK

Netflix - Netflix saw nearly 100k daily sign-ups after its password-sharing crackdown took effect. LINK

Soros Empire - 92-year-old billionaire George Soros is handing control of his $25 billion empire to his "more political" son Alex. LINK

Goldman - Goldman’s CEO David Solomon has come under fire from partners who complain about bonuses, strategy, and the CEO’s DJ side gig. LINK

Egypt - Egypt's core inflation rose to 40.3% in May. LINK

Crypto - The SEC has accused the crypto exchange Binance of systematically lying to regulators and mishandling client funds (the FTX case), and the SEC is suing Coinbase, accusing it of running an unregulated exchange. Robinhood has become the first major platform to delist the cryptocurrencies Solana, Cardano, and Polygon in response to the lawsuits. LINK, LINK

Live Sports - Netflix is preparing to enter live-stream sports with a celebrity golf tournament this fall. LINK

Crypto Bot - A crypto bot borrowed $200 million in a flash loan to secure just $3.24 of profit. LINK

Tech

The tech headlines you missed (or need to see again)...

COVID - BioNTech, the German biotech company that co-developed the mRNA vaccine with Pfizer, is facing its first German lawsuit over alleged COVID vaccine side effects. LINK

Bullet Train - California has plans to build a $100 Billion electric bullet train that will be entirely solar-powered. LINK

ChatGPT for Government - Microsoft is now offering a siloed and secure version of ChatGPT for US government agencies. That means that the data you enter into it is contained - not that it will be more or less reliable. LINK

Twitter - Twitter has reportedly refused to pay its Google Cloud contract, rushing to move its services off Google's infrastructure, but the effort is running behind schedule, putting some tools at risk of going offline. LINK

Watchlist

Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…

Unspun - Unspun is making apparel from weaving 3D printed materials with the goal of fixing the waste problem of the fashion industry. LINK

Framer - Framer lets you create websites in seconds with AI. LINK

Percepto - Percepto is using the power of drones and other robots to automate inspections. LINK

SheetPlus - SheetPlus lets you turn plain English into Excel and Google Sheet formulas using AI. LINK

Outside Interests

Interesting internet finds…

14-Year-Old Genius - A 14-year-old is set to become the youngest university graduate in US history later this month and will start his new job at SpaceX in July. LINK

Reddit - Thousands of the largest communities on Reddit went private, effectively removing themselves from the site, in response to Reddit’s plan to charge developers for access to its data. The Reddit blackout is significantly affecting Google searches since Reddit serves as a significant source of user-generated content and answers for the web. LINK

China-Cuba Spying - The Biden administration confirmed China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019. LINK

Espionage - US chipmaker Applied Materials is accusing a Chinese rival of a 14-month espionage campaign. LINK

Kindergarten - Getting into an NYC private school kindergarten is harder than getting into Harvard. Here’s a short article explaining why. LINK

Visuals

Three visuals worth taking a look at...

Modelo has dethroned Bud Light as the top-selling beer brand after a month of backlash against Bud Light.

The popularity curve of the search term "GPT" on Google is mirroring the trajectory that the term "NFT" experienced in 2021.

The US stock markets have been unusually calm so far in 2023.

Wisdom

Two quotes of wisdom...

"The most invisible form of wasted time is doing a good job on an unimportant task." ― James Clear

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." ― Kurt Cobain