Quick Overview
- AI: Activation Atlases make their debut
- COMPUTING: USB-IF infuriates OCD tech people even more, calls new standard USB4
- CRYPTO: A fantastic tour through the current and future financial systems
- ENERGY: Bloomberg dives deep into Lithium-ion Battery prices
- MEDICINE: Gene therapy trial aims to protect at-risk brains from Alzheimer’s
- ROBOTICS: How to herd sheep like a boss – now with drones!
- TRANSPORT: 1,000 miles worth of range in 1 hour, Tesla’s new Supercharger V3
- TRANSPORT: Get ready for Model Y, the more popular SUV version of Model 3!
We believe that everyone’s future can be richer, happier and more efficient, but you can’t embrace that future unless you take the first most crucial step, being informed of it.
Welcome to The Tipping Point, news from the most critical future industries curated for you every week so you can stay informed and prepared. No need to waste hours everyday researching, stay on top of it all with one post and then get back to doing what you do best.
The Tipping point is named after the point at which a new technology goes from being disappointing, expensive and buggy to exciting, exponential, cheap and mainstream. This point of change often sneaks up on and surprises everyone including industry experts!
No matter if you’re personally employed in the industry or just a lurker, The Tipping Point is vital to staying up to date and being ready to transition smoothly rather than getting caught off guard.
This Weeks News!
AI: Activation Atlases make their debut
Google has worked with OpenAI to extend the traditional work done on feature visualisation. This is actually some very impressive and much needed work to finally help pull the veil back on the “black box” problem AI has created. With Activation Atlases you can now see much more clearly what image classification neural nets are doing when they classify an image. The results also produce some stunning collages too!
COMPUTING: USB-IF infuriates OCD tech people even more, calls new standard USB4
That’s right, you didn’t think that the USB-IF was done renaming all the existing USB standard to even stupider names did you!? This week they’ve gone and announced that the next iteration of USB won’t have a space in between the “USB” and the number, instead it’ll have NO space and be referred to as “USB4”. Although I’m sure they’ll rename it to “USB4 .2 Gen 8 6.6” or something equally batshit crazy at some point. The good news is that it’s sporting a full 40 Gbps throughput rate and will work with Thunderbolt!
CRYPTO: A fantastic tour through the current and future financial systems
Abra has two great infographics that help to educate on the pitfalls of the current centralised financial system and why the move to decentralised systems – or combining of the two – over the next 10 years will be a huge bonus to billions of people around the world. From reduced transaction times and fees to bringing on board over a billion unbankable people it’s pretty good news all round.
ENERGY: Bloomberg dives deep into Lithium-ion Battery prices
While there’s a lot of talk about battery electric car battery prices coming down Bloomberg has gone and released a fantastically detailed piece of research they’ve done over the last 8 years. It not only goes into detail on cost of batteries but even breaks things out in terms of pack vs cell value too. Overall the industry has seen a ridiculous 85% reduction in costs over the period of 2010-18 with even more decreases to come. They’re predicting that by 2024 (just 5 years from now) those already low costs will have almost halved again! All round fantastic news for the fully electric future
MEDICINE: Gene therapy trial aims to protect at-risk brains from Alzheimer’s
While not an outright cure for Alzheimer’s, Dr. Ronald Crystal and his team have performed multiple tests that showed that mice treated with their gene therapy accumulated fewer amyloid protein clumps. This suggests that the protective gene variant they’re working with helps to clear out or inhibit another toxic gene variant and ultimately prevent Alzheimer’s. While the idea is currently classified as “a bit of a long shot” the results on mice can’t be ignored and the team is taking baby steps towards learning more.
ROBOTICS: How to herd sheep like a boss – now with drones!
Herders have been using dogs to herd sheep for years but it looks like player 2 has entered the game. Farmers in New Zealand are using the new Mavic 2 Enterprise outfitted with a speaker to bark directly at the sheep and move them in the right direction. “A 2-hour herding job that usually requires two people and two teams of dogs can now be done in only 45 minutes using a single drone.” Not bad! Check out a video of it here
TRANSPORT: 1,000 miles worth of range in 1 hour, Tesla’s new Supercharger V3
Tesla has finally taken the wraps off their Version 3 Supercharging system. V2 used to charge their cars at up to 120 kW and would often be far less than that if you were sharing a stall with another Tesla. V3 not only increases the charging limit up to 250 kW but also debuts a new, liquid cooled and thinner cable. The new V3 Superchargers also will be able to deliver that 250 kW to each and every stall simultaneously. This huge power results in the capability to charge 1,000 miles of range per hour. For now it looks like this will only work with the newer Model 3 cars however current owners of Model S and X cars will soon be able to charge at up to 145 kW rates on V3 and V2 Superchargers once a OTA update is released.
TRANSPORT: Get ready for Model Y, the more popular SUV version of Model 3!
On March 14th at 8PM PDT Tesla is live streaming their unveiling event of Model Y. This new car will be a SUV version of the Model 3 just like the Model X is an SUV version of the Model S. As such the price is expected to be about 10% more than the Model 3 (so about $39,000 USD for the base model) and its range is 10% less due to the extra size and weight (so about 320 km for the base model up to 475 km for the long range model). Reports say that the Model Y won’t be using the famous Falcon Wing doors or even a “normal” 12V battery but who knows what other crazy new features they’ll announce? You’ll just have to tune in to see!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you again next week!
The benefits include: 1) How to get those silky smooth videos that everyone loves to watch, even if you're new 2) How to fly your drone, from taking off to the most advanced flight modes 3) Clear outlines of how to fly with step-by-step instructional demonstrations and more 4) Why flying indoors often results in new pilots crashing their drone 5) What other great 3rd party apps are out there to get the most out of your drone 6) A huge mistake many pilots make when storing their drone in the car and how to avoid it 7) How to do all of these things whilst flying safely and within your countries laws.
