GM Grapeviners,
After a short summer break, weāre back! Every Friday, weāll continue to curate the most interesting & relevant stories in the intersection between technology and society. As always, please let us know if you have any feedback or ideas for us!
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? š
P.S. Donāt forget to support the humanitarian efforts in Ukraine here.
The Grapevine Newsflash š„
13 tech & startup stories in 153 super short seconds.
š¤« The Twitter Whistleblower! Twitterās former head of security has accused the social giant of a series of terrible security practices. These accusations come at a particularly sensitive time for Twitter given the Elon acquisition conversations. You can read more about Elonās reaction here.
š Amazon & Whole Foods! CNBC just published this fantastic video on the impact Amazon has had on Whole Foods since the acquisition five years back. Watch the vid here.
š¤ Bots Hate Zuckerberg. Facebook has launched a new AI chatbot. The problem? It keeps bashing Mark Zuckberg. When asked about Zuckerberg the bot said āhe is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethicalā. Check out more info here.
š No Filter at Snap Meanwhile, Snap hasnāt avoided the reckoning. Earlier this week, they announced a 20% cut in employees (about 1,300 people) and closed various divisions including social-mapping app, Zenly, which was reported to have 40m+ users. They also scrapped their drone camera project (which we called upon launchā¦).
š¦ Twedit The most demanded product change in history is almost hereā¦ the Twitter edit feature. The social media giant announced it is in testing and will be rolled out to its premium subscribers soon.
š· The Next Snapchat or Vine? This summer has been the launch pad for several new āauthenticā social media apps like BeReal. Will they make it in a notoriously difficult space? How will they monetise? Learn more in this video here.
āļø Ethereumās Step Up After more than 8 years of debate, the Ethereum network is set to undergo āthe Mergeā - a significant upgrade with particular benefits on energy consumption. As part of the upgrade, the blockchain will shift from āproof of workā to āproof of stakeā. Read more about it here.
š« NFT Tickets! Ticketmaster will now let event organisers distribute tickets as non-fungible-tokens on the flow blockchain. This is awesome, and has a bunch of cool benefits which you can better understand here.
š¤ How Does Google Search Work? Good question! You can get a detailed answer by watching this 5 minute video published by Google here.
š PoolAI Governments theoretically have plenty of uses of AI to improve the environmental, social, and economic situations of their citizens and countries. So, what is France doing with the technology? Well, their tax authorities are using AI to identify undeclared swimming pools. They discovered more than 20,000 pools and have amassed about $10m in revenue.
š¤ ā¦.Talking of Zuck. The Facebook founder sat down with Joe Rogan for a 3 hour conversation. Itās fascinating and well worth a listen, with the pair covering everything from Facebookās election involvement to their Metaverse expansion plan. Listen on Spotify here.
š£ļø Techās Dr. Doolittle In the last few years, there have been significant developments in machine-learning for language processing. Although most efforts have focused on human language, thereās a quickly developing interest in animal communication. This article highlights just some of those efforts, including studies with mice, bats, chickens, and whales.
š Revolutionary Electric Motor. A 17 year old kid in Florida has designed a motor that has the potential to revolutionise the electric car industry. This is awesome, and it's so easy to forget all the opportunities still left in engineering and hardware. Check out this article about the kid here.
Want to have a chat?
Shoot us an email at founders@onthegrapevine.co
Donāt follow us on LinkedIn?
š§Ā Follow Louis
š¤Ā Fw Nick
šĀ Follow The Grapevine
Over & Out,
Nick & Louis