Interesting corollary from Ben Evan’s “the most interesting thing is a new Google feature called ‘circle to search’. You can use your finger to draw a circle around anything on your Android phone screen, in any app, and Google will do a text or image search. So, you can circle a hat in a Tiktok and Google will tell you where to buy it. It occurred to me a while ago that screenshots are the native file format of smartphones, but they lose context. But what if the OS knows what’s on the screen, in every app? Screen-scraping is the new API…”
A very good history of Y Combinator and how Paul Graham, through his essays and otherwise, had a huge part to play in building the cult of the founder.
This history is trapped inside a not-so-convincing argument of YC’s demise.
Excellent interview with Herbert Hovenkamp professor at Penn Law School specializing in US anti-trust on what he thinks of the big cases against Big Tech in the US.
Worth a read for any holders of AAPL, META, GOOG, AMZN.
“In model year 2022, the average estimated real-world CO2 emission rate for all new vehicles fell by 10 g/mi to 337 g/mi, the lowest ever measured. Real-world fuel economy increased by 0.6 mpg, to a record high 26.0 mpg.1 This is the largest single year improvement in CO2 emission rates and fuel economy in nine years.“
2023 model year is already showing improvement on this.
The long-term trend is encouraging (see chart) all while horsepower is up 88% since 1975 (see page 27).
Something not so good is going on in EV land – and it isn’t aggressive Chinese competition.
Hertz for one has decided to dump 20,000 EVs citing hidden costs, especially of accidents.
“Expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter, thereby supporting the Company’s decision to initiate the material reduction in the EV fleet.“
Then there is this chart showing EVs are taking longer to sell.
“The chart shows how the cost of desalination has fallen over the long term. This has been driven by technological advances, larger plants translating into greater economies of scale, and project development choices such as colocation of desalination plants with power plants.“
Japan has steadily but surely become more shareholder-friendly – more talk about profitability and actual shareholder returns (see chart, source), more shareholder proposals and M&A (here).
