Bloomberg - China’s Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts

Prices for batteries in China are plummeting, and the implications are just starting to ripple outward for the global automotive market.

Over the last year, the price for lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, battery cells in China has dropped 51% to an average of $53 per kilowatt-hour. The average global price of these batteries last year was $95/kWh.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-s-batteries-are-now-cheap-enough-to-power-huge-shifts

WSJ - Top American Brands Like McDonald’s and Apple Are Losing Ground in China

Major American brands like Apple, Starbucks and McDonald’s are rapidly losing market share in China to new domestic rivals. WSJ’s Jonathan Cheng explores how Chinese brands are squeezing out their U.S. rivals. Photo Illustration: Liting Yen

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/news-explainers/top-american-brands-like-mcdonalds-and-apple-are-losing-ground-in-china/FF0D734A-40BA-42D4-B08F-3E0581150693?mod=hp_trending_now_video_pos1

WSJ - Rise of the Restaurant Robots: Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Others Bet on Automation

Kernel, a New York City startup from Chipotle Mexican Grill founder Steve Ells, uses a robotic arm to flip plant-based burger patties and a conveyor belt to move dishes along the assembly line. Humans put on the finishing touches and package the meals for customers to pick up.

https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/restaurant-robots-flippy-chippy-autocado-9de44eeb

The Atlantic - White-Collar Work Is Just Meetings Now

The meeting-industrial complex has grown to the point that communications has eclipsed creativity as the central skill of modern work.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/white-collar-meetings-more-frequent/678941/

Battery News - European Battery Cell Production Capacity

"Battery-News.de" presents a current overview of planned and already implemented projects in the field of the production of lithium-ion batteries. As usual, the corresponding data comes from official communications from the respective actors and from sources for battery production.

https://battery-news.de/batterieproduktion/

Forbes - Chinese self-driving cars have quietly traveled 1.8 million miles on U.S. roads, collecting detailed data with cameras and lasers

https://fortune.com/2024/07/08/chinese-self-driving-cars-us-roads-data-collection-surveillance-national-security-concerns-investigation/

The Atlantic - Do Navigation Apps Think We’re Stupid?

Mapping software is incredible. Having instant access to every storefront, building, park, and transit stop on every street, almost anywhere in the world, has changed my life as much as any other single innovation of the cellphone age. But also, mapping software is a little weird. Seemingly random places show up as landmarks in my neighborhood: a Bitcoin ATM, a nearby hotel I’ll never stay at. And when I need directions, my app likes to tell me things that no one ever needs to know, such as when to merge onto the freeway from an on-ramp. Why is it so obtuse? Or perhaps the better question is: What makes the software think that I’m obtuse?

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/google-maps-apple-glitches/678904/

NYT - Why GPS is Under Attack

The Global Positioning System runs the modern world. But it is under daily attack. This year alone, researchers say, more than 60,000 commercial flights have been hit by bogus GPS signals, which can confuse pilots.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/02/world/gps-threats.html

The Economist - The exponential growth of solar power will change the world

“Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/20/the-exponential-growth-of-solar-power-will-change-the-world

NYT - How Big Tech Is Killing Innovation

“Silicon Valley prides itself on disruption: Start-ups develop new technologies, upend existing markets and overtake incumbents. This cycle of creative destruction brought us the personal computer, the internet and the smartphone. But in recent years, a handful of incumbent tech companies have sustained their dominance. Why? We believe they have learned how to co-opt potentially disruptive start-ups before they can become competitive threats.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/big-tech-ftc-ai.html

The Econmist - Three reasons why it’s good news that robots are getting smarter

“The robots are coming! In science fiction that is usually an ominous warning. In the real world, it is a prediction—and a welcome one. The field of robotics has made impressive progress in the past year, as researchers in universities and industry have applied advances in artificial intelligence (ai) to machines. The same technology that enables chatbots like Chatgpt to hold conversations, or systems like dall-e to create realistic-looking images from text descriptions, can give robots of all kinds a dramatic brain upgrade.”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/06/three-reasons-why-its-good-news-that-robots-are-getting-smarter

NYT - As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’

“The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/business/china-internet-censorship.html

WSJ - It’s Crunchtime for a New Generation of Climate StartupsIt’s Crunchtime for a New Generation of Climate Startups

“Hundreds of young climate companies like Material Evolution are burning through cash and racing to turn new technologies into big businesses. The transition period is called the “valley of death” because so few startups survive it. 

The success of at least some of these startups is crucial to the world’s efforts to limit climate change. But companies in their early stages are often derailed by blown budgets, engineering failures and any number of unexpected hazards. 

“Everybody says there’s a playbook,” said Liz Gilligan, chief executive of Material Evolution. “There’s no playbook.” Had she known how hard it would be to develop industrial technology, she would have started a software company, Gilligan jokes.”

https://www.wsj.com/business/climate-change-startups-investment-business-8f5c83be?mod=mhp

WSJ - The AI Revolution Is Already Losing Steam

“Nvidia reported eye-popping revenue last week. Elon Musk just said human-level artificial intelligence is coming next year. Big tech can’t seem to buy enough AI-powering chips. It sure seems like the AI hype train is just leaving the station, and we should all hop aboard.

But significant disappointment may be on the horizon, both in terms of what AI can do, and the returns it will generate for investors.

The rate of improvement for AIs is slowing, and there appear to be fewer applications than originally imagined for even the most capable of them. It is wildly expensive to build and run AI. New, competing AI models are popping up constantly, but it takes a long time for them to have a meaningful impact on how most people actually work.”

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-ai-revolution-is-already-losing-steam-a93478b1

The Economist - A new age of sail begins

“In 1926 an unusual vessel arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic. This was a converted sailing ship renamed Baden-Baden. Its two masts had been torn down and a pair of 15-metre-high revolving cylinders were mounted on its deck instead. Known as Flettner rotors, after Anton Flettner, their German inventor, the rotors worked like sails. Not only were they extremely efficient, allowing the vessel to consume less than half the fuel an oil-powered ship of a similar size would use, they also let the craft tack closer to an oncoming wind than its original canvas rigging allowed. The rotors were hailed as a great achievement at the time (praised by Albert Einstein, among others) before cheap oil caused interest to wane.”

Forbes - Lash Extensions From An AI Robot: Is This The Future Of Beauty?

“My shock and curiosity were piqued when I learned that a fully functional AI lash extension robot exists in Northern California. This also meant I had to try it. Known as LUUM Lash, this is the first AI tool used to innovate the process of eyelash extensions, creating an entirely new category called “Beauty Experience Automation.” This autonomous robot performs a consumer service traditionally achieved by hand, at the scale of a nanometer. According to the brand, its machine is safer and more accurate than human eyelash extension application, and without any sharp instruments or tools.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dahvishira/2024/05/28/lash-extensions-from-an-ai-robot-is-this-the-future-of-beauty/?sh=78b219c56f7c

NYT - The Mostly Persuasive Logic Behind the New Ban on Noncompetes

The Federal Trade Commission used two very different rationales to get to its near-total ban this week on noncompete agreements. One of them is a no-brainer. The other is provocative but not completely obvious. I guess I’d call it a brainer.

As you may have read, the F.T.C. commissioners on Tuesday voted3 to 2 on a final rule against noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which limit the ability of an employee to quit and immediately go work for a rival. The commission determined that they are an “unfair method of competition.” The rule takes effect 120 days after its publication in the Federal Register, unless a court blocks it before then.

The Economist - Why is so much of the internet’s infrastructure run by volunteers?

A decade ago someone realised that the locks keeping swathes of the internet secure were not working. Openssl, a tool used to encrypt anything from social-media passwords to e-commerce purchases, had a fatal flaw that made the information it was supposed to protect visible to potential hackers.

WSJ - Where Does the Best Innovation Happen? Not in Stand-Alone Labs, Some Companies Say

As businesses consider how to tackle generative AI, the once trendy idea of a startup-style innovation group is fading for some

The Economist - A stealth attack came close to compromising the world’s computers

The attack is perhaps the most ambitious “supply-chain” attack—one that exploits not a particular computer or device, but a piece of back-end software or hardware—in recent memory.