Five Things Tech: Google, Open Source, Supersonic Airliners, Apple Car, Metal Plants
It's Saturday and I have a grab-bag of interesting stories about tech for you!
Hello and welcome back to Five Things Tech! As every week, I have picked five stories about tech that I think you should read. And also as always, the choice seems a bit random, but that’s just how my interests are sometimes. I usually read everything doing the week and then I sit down on Friday evening and then I put everything together.
What’s the top story this week? I don’t know. But I was very intrigued by the story about the Apple Car and also the one about the supersonic airliners. Also, I’m very interested in what’s going on at Google. And, as an Open Source advocate, I find the discussion about open and closed around AI very interesting. And last, but certainly not least, read about plants that could help extract metals. How awesome is that?
Read on! 🤖
Can Demis Hassabis Save Google?
The pressure is huge for Google to figure out how to get AI right while not killing his hugely successful advertising business. This profile of Demis Hassabis by
gives a good impression about what’s at stake for Google.The tech industry can’t agree on what open source AI means. That’s a problem.
This really is a huge issue, not because Elon sued OpenAI for not being open after all, but more generally because we need to define open and closed AI models as we try to develop the industry further and come up with smart guidelines and regulations.
Why Did Supersonic Airliners Fail?
I remember when the Concorde was still flying and I always found it impressive. Unfortunately, I never got to fly on one. Maybe all the available tech we have nowadays would make this possible again?
has put together the history and the tech behind the supersonic airlines and it is quite fascinating how they managed to pull this off in a time with very limited computing power.How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built
This has been a pretty impressive failure for Apple. One would think that a company the sitze of Apple with all the available tech and cash could pull of something really cool and disruptive in the automotive space. Turns out, Apple couldn’t.
These Plants Could Mine Valuable Metals From the Soil With Their Roots
“The concept of phytomining has been around for a while and relies on a class of plants known as “hyperaccumulators.” These species can absorb a large amount of metal through their roots and store it in their tissues. Phytomining involves growing these plants in soils with high levels of metals, harvesting and burning the plants, and then extracting the metals from the ash.” - this is a cool idea.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
Five Things Tech: Vision Pro, AGI, Neuralink, CS, X
— Nico