Will's Weekly Roundup

July 10th - July 16th

Will Sullivan
July 17, 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)...

Prime Day - Amazon Prime Day sales hit another record high this year, shipping $12.7 billion worth of goods across more than 375 million purchases. LINK

Avocados - The USA now buys 86% of the avocados that Mexico exports, up from only 30% in 2003. LINK

Brady - Tom Brady lost $30M from the FTX collapse. LINK

Homes - 41% of home listings in New York City are above $1 million. LA has the most home listings above $1 million at 65%. LINK

Remote Work - Remote work is predicted to wipe out $800 billion from office values. LINK

Rolex - Prices for second-hand Rolexes are at their lowest since 2021. LINK

India - India is projected to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075. LINK

Domino’s - Domino's stock surged up to 12% after announcing that customers can soon order through delivery apps like Uber Eats. LINK

Disney - Disney took a $1.5B write-down after removing 30+ shows off Disney+ and Hulu. LINK

Microsoft - Microsoft was approved to close its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. LINK

Bitcoin - Some predict Bitcoin will reach $120K by 2024, a 293% gain from its current levels. LINK

Amazon - Amazon Prime members spend an average of $2K on Amazon per year, 4x that of non-members. LINK

China - China’s regulatory crackdown wiped out $1.1 trillion off Chinese tech stocks. That’s more money than Denmark and Norway’s economies combined. LINK

TikTok - TikTok had a total of $1 billion in in-app purchases in Q1. Additionally, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will allow its US staff to cash out on their shares. LINK, LINK

Tech

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

xAI - Elon Musk announced a new company, xAI, created to understand the true nature of the universe. LINK

Air Taxis - Archer Air’s electric air tax (eVTOL) has a 100 miles range, can carry 5 passengers, and is 100x quieter than a helicopter. LINK

AI Music - A company has claimed that it has produced 100 million songs using AI, equalling the total number in Spotify’s entire catalog. LINK

Blue Origin - Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket engine exploded during testing. LINK

GPT - Anthropic's ChatGPT competitor, Claude, was just released, and it's incredible. You can try it for free here. LINK

Starlink - SpaceX’s Starlink satellites had to make 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers in just 6 months to avoid collisions with other spacecraft and orbital debris. LINK

Google Health - Google is testing a medical AI chatbot, called Med-PaLM 2, with research hospital Mayo Clinic. LINK

Location Data - Lawmakers in Massachusetts are considering a ban on buying and selling location data. The bill, called the Location Shield Act, would be the first of its kind in the U.S. LINK

Deep-Sea Mining - A deep-sea mining gold rush will be upon us within the next two years. LINK

Google Project Terminated - Google has quietly abandoned plans for an AI-powered chatbot targeted at Gen-Z users. LINK

Threads

News and updates on Treads, Meta’s Twitter competitor…

Advertising - Meta’s Threads could be the Twitter replacement advertisers have been waiting for. LINK

Monetization - Meta intends to roll out branded content tools on Threads, bringing monetization to the platform even as ads are still not allowed. LINK

Rubber Chicken - If you try to search for specific Threads content on Twitter, you’ll be greeted by a rubber chicken. LINK

User Churn - Treads is basically Twitter for the millions of users who churned from Twitter. LINK

Polarization - Instagram wants to keep politics and hard news off Treads, leaving those topics for Twitter. LINK

Watchlist

Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…

Composer allows users to build, backtest, and execute trading algorithms with AI. LINK

StoryIt is a social media platform that rewards users for sharing their stories and building social loyalty. LINK

Pano is using cameras and AI to detect wildfires. LINK

Verity is using autonomous drones to take inventory in warehouses. LINK

Mylo is the world’s first virtual lifeguard system. LINK

Outside Interests

Interesting internet finds…

TikTok - 59% of Americans believe TikTok poses a threat to national security. LINK

Ukraine - The US is running out of ammunition for supplying Ukraine and consequently has resorted to sending cluster bombs to the country. LINK

Travis Scott - Travis Scott is launching his latest album, Utopia, with a live-streamed performance at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. LINK

Prime Hydration - Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for an FDA investigation into Logan Paul and KSI’s PRIME energy drink for packing a little too much energy for kids. LINK

Tattoos - Nearly half of all millennials have tattoos, compared with 13% of the baby boomer generation. LINK

Drake - Drake’s website has a virtual tour of his mansion filled with easter eggs and links to purchase merch scattered around his house. LINK

Jony Ive - Famed ex-Apple design head Jony Ive and his LoveFrom studio have designed their first physical product post-Apple: a $60,000 record player. LINK

Twitter Jet Tracker - Jack Sweeney, the college student behind the banned Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet, has popped up on Threads to troll Mark Zuckerberg and the whereabouts of his private plane. LINK

Finding The Next Big Ideas - Tim Ferris says to find the next big idea, look at (1) what the nerds are doing at night and on weekends, (2) what rich people are doing now that everyone might be doing 10 years from now, and (3) where people are cobbling together awkward solutions. LINK