Like him or not this is the full Joe Rogan experience with former President Donald Trump. After just 12 hours it already has 10M views.
Entrepreneurship
Robotaxi Overview
In a typical staged production last night, Elon Musk and Tesla showcased Robotaxi.
The concept is of course great. Taxis and Ubers barely need a driver now, are often undersupplied during events or peak times, and could easily be completed by a computer. Tesla has had self-driving for a while so it’s no surprise they want to compete with Uber and Lyft now.
Musk put on the We, Robot party.
The Cybercab, one of the models, has no steering wheel or pedals. Musk describes it as individualized mass transit. Musk explained that the average cost of mass transport is generally $1 or more per mile vs $0.30 per mile with Tesla’s new vehicles. In the past, he’s hinted that Tesla owners could rent their cars out to become taxis and earn income in the future.
The company expects to launch Robotaxi with Model 3 and Model Y in California and Texas in 2025 with the Cybercab model launching towards the end of 2026.
The car uses inductive charging, which means it has no plug.
Who is Laurene Powell Jobs?
Laurene Powell Jobs is an American businesswoman, philanthropist, and the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Born on November 6, 1963, in West Milford, New Jersey, she earned a BA in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in economics from the Wharton School, later completing an MBA at Stanford University.
Powell Jobs founded the Emerson Collective in 2004, an organization focused on social change through education reform, immigration, the environment, and social justice. She is also a major philanthropist, supporting education initiatives like College Track, a program she co-founded to help underprivileged students succeed in college.
After Steve Jobs’ death in 2011, she inherited his fortune and has since become a significant figure in tech, media, and philanthropy, using her influence to impact public policy and social change.
Peter Zeihan & The Geopolitics of Goods
If you can get past the “China Will Fall” sensational headline of this video, there is some good meat as it relates to technology. I can spare you the time in case you can’t listen to the whole thing. Peter Zeihan is a geopolitics expert and looks at the world from the perspective of demographics, populations and economic forces.
He ends up telling Grant Cardone at the end that the biggest opportunity of this century is going to be “Technical Experts Who Speak Spanish and English”.
This was not what I was expecting the answer to be. Long story short – the why of this -as it turns out the only group of people that are in a position to take over some of the production of goods and technology that currently takes place in China – is Mexico.
Apparently, China’s population of eligible workers is dwindling and thus the pending shift and Mexico is one of the only countries equipped to take on some of that technical production.
HoneyBadger and the Digitization Gap
Society is badly in need of automation and robotics. The issue is that suddenly the tidal wave of demand has been met with supply chain and labor shortages. Expert labor that understands the old paradigm, plus the new at the same time pretty much does not exist.
This gap is real.
Caleb Eastman and I have talked quite a bit on this topic of total digitization universality. Otherwise old systems can’t talk to new. We’ve even a new startup HoneyBadger Controls specifically to be a new type of Zapier of Industrial IoT. Zapier by the way, is an amazing piece of technology that Zaps data back and forth between SaaS applications so you don’t have to go ask your dev team to do it. Thanks to Andy Hayes for telling me about Zapier years ago. It basically put my custom integrations business out of business, but saved thousands of dollars in the meantime for customers.
We’re in stealth mode still but basically we just love badgers and see a real need for some better cross-domain connectivity.
The Concept of a Tugboat Computer by Caleb Eastman
Caleb Eastman is a friend and colleague. His LinkedIn profile says he’s ‘always worried about time and timing’. He is busy, but it’s also a play on words that only control engineers get.
Simply put Caleb spends a lot of time getting data from different types of hardware and software to talk on time, in a way that everyone, including the machines, understands.
It can be frustrating and tedious – yet data acquisition is also the limiting factor in organizations truly harnessing the power of data (See: Data is the New Oil).
Which is why he’s busy.
I was coming back from a refresh in the wilds and got a text from him with a link from his Medium blog.
He has a great analogy about computers and tugboats. It’s not actually what you think – but worth the read.
(Oh and Tom originated it.)
If you are interested in the future of A.I. and distributed computing you are going to want to check out the full article here.
Wing Drone Delivery
Wing.com – a Google project – is now live. One thing about acrisis – it drives innovation by removing barriers. Something that seemed a ways off a few months ago suddenly is very useful. Drones that can deliver medication, food, and supplies anywhere with zero human interaction is pretty useful as providers like Instacart and DoorDash are hit with sick workers and skepitcal consumers.
Inside Robauto’s Innovation Lab
2020 has already been a busy year at Robauto. With multiple new team members, ongoing robotics pilots and a busy product development year ahead with partners, we wanted to pause and update (and showcase) some of our research and development.
Featured Q1 2020 AI and Robotics Projects
Working with Coropilo to finalize their AI-enabled smart pillow.
Working on a stealth augmented reality device with Augment World.
Building an intelligent platform with Perfect Audience.
Building version 4.0 (and the consumer-ready version) of the BiBli OS.
Helping to visualize and optimize a 20-year-old services company‘s recurring and marketing data.
We are excited to be a part of all of these projects. We ‘bring technology to life’. Both in the sense of we make it smart – and bring it to market. If you are a startup or enterprise with an interesting or challenging technology concept, we’d love to hear from you.