Five Things Tech: Intel, Solar Polar, Apple, 100x, Ideas
Here are five must-read articles just for you!
Hello again, and welcome back to Five Things Tech!
I’m old enough to remember when Intel introduced the Pentium processor and then AMD came around the corner a few years later with processors that were cheaper and better, at least for the stuff I was using them for. I also remember when NVIDIA released their first graphic cards that were much better and cheaper than the existing stuff from a company whose name I have long forgotten. And now Intel is looking a lot like they thought they could just continue to do what they were doing for eternity and print cash while doing so - and suddenly GenerativeAI takes off and the world needs GPUs that only NVIDIA can deliver. It will be interesting to see how fast Intel will get back on track. Or if they will turn into just another chipmaker.
As a side note: why do people leave those stupid “intel inside” on their laptops? are those the same type of people that leave the stickers on their baseball caps?
I’m looking for answers here! 🤷♂️
Quick reminder: your reading pleasure is so much better after you go paid. So don’t hesitate!
How Intel Got Left Behind in the A.I. Chip Boom
Intel has long been the gold standard in the chip industry. This is the classic inventor’s dilemma. The company got so huge, made a few fateful decisions, like not buying NVIDIA and then they missed the surge in demand for GPU and suddenly everybody starts writing about a company that used to be innovative and moved the industry forward.
Solar power from space? Actually, it might happen in a couple of years.
“The concept of harvesting solar power continuously from large satellites in space—where there are no nights, no clouds, and no atmosphere to interfere with the collection of photons—is fairly simple. Large solar arrays in geostationary orbit collect solar energy and beam it back to Earth via microwaves as a continuous source of clean energy.” - this sounds like science-fiction, but this could be extremely cool.
Tim Cook on Why Apple’s Huge Bets Will Pay Off
I got my first Mac more than 30 years ago and still this company fascinates me. One of the things Apple was always good at is being a fast follower and making it look so right that whatever they did was immediately perceived as their invention. This is were Tim Cook is following Steve Jobs in his footsteps.
Who Says Another Google is Coming?
“The trouble is that there hasn’t been a new Google or Facebook since Google and Facebook. There’s been plenty of profitable new companies, mind you. Uber has gotten rolled up into many people’s conceptions of huge successful Silicon Valley firms, and setting aside any questions about their business model, it’s true that the company has grown quite large. But large is relative; Uber’s market cap is less than 10% of Google’s. And besides, it’s too late to get in early on Uber. The company will be old enough to drive next year. (See what I did there?) There simply hasn’t been any success stories on the scale of Google and Facebook since.” - hence the current focus on AI.
What Do You Do With an Idea?
This is a really well argued piece about ideas and progress. I particularly like how
showed that old ideas are oftentimes ideas that could not be turned into a product earlier, but now we’d have the technological means to do so. Hence we have a backlog that needs to be turned into reality.That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
— Nico