Observe. Think. Chat. Do. Trade. Repeat…
‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.‘ – This quote, which is credited to Oscar Wilde, tells us that we are unique and valuable and to be ourselves and not imitate others. You are original.
Mr Musk has long said that he wants to transform his social media firm, which he bought last year for $44 billion, into a much larger platform.
He has previously praised WeChat – a so-called ‘everything app‘ that combines chat, dating, payments and social media – and has said creating something “even close to that with Twitter… would be an immense success”.
In a post on X this week, Mr Musk said that over the coming months, ‘we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world’.
He will hope that growing X will lead to a revenue recovery – the company has lost almost half its advertising revenue since Mr Musk bought it, and it is struggling under a heavy debt load.
He has successfully disrupted several industries with his ventures such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He may be able to bring some fresh ideas and solutions to the social media space with X. It will be interesting to see if he adopts an existing digital payment system or develops his own. XRP, for instance – could be a good fit.
WeChat is a ‘super-app’ that combines messaging, social media, payments, e-commerce, entertainment, news, and more. It is owned by Tencent, one of China’s largest tech companies, and has over 1.2 billion monthly active users, mostly in mainland China.
WeChat users can do almost anything within the app, from ordering food to booking tickets to paying bills, without leaving the app. WeChat also hosts millions of mini-apps that are created by third-party developers and businesses to offer various services and functions to users. It is like WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Uber, Amazon, Tinder and a whole lot more rolled into one. Launched by technology giant Tencent in 2011. WeChat is now used by almost all of China’s 1.4 billion pupulation (1.2 billion users seems to be the latest concensus).
WeChat’s huge success in China is arguably down to two major factors. For one, most people in China access WeChat on smartphones, rather than desktop computers, due to the relatively late development of the internet in the country. And two, China’s lack of competition regulation – which contrasts with most Western countries – allows an app like WeChat to potentially effectively block rival platforms.
Could Mr Musk make a similar app work outside China? We may be finding out soon – and experts believe it may all depend on digital payments and his ‘system’ to implement this everyday task.
A major difference between China and the West is the widespread adoption of digital payment technology.
While shops in China are legally obliged to accept cash, in practice, digital payments are far more common.
This difference, may be an obstacle to Mr Musk’s ambitions. It will take the Western world longer to implement a truly cashless or credit card free society.
Elon Musk has been an admirer of WeChat for a long time. He once said that WeChat is ‘so usable and helpful to daily life‘ in China, and that he wanted to achieve something similar with Twitter, no X. He also said that buying Twitter was an ‘accelerant’ to creating X, the everything app.
Mr Musk has hinted that he plans to add more features and functionalities to Twitter, such as video, communications, and financial services. He also said that the Twitter name did not make sense in the new context, so he decided to rename it as X, a brand that he has used before for his online banking business that later became PayPal.
Is the Super App a natural progression and development for good or yet another infringement on our freedom, liberty and privacy. Is it even necessary?
In China, we have witnessed a level of state control interference over the internet that has reportedly made it extremely dangerous for people to speak out against the government on WeChat.
It is not unusual for dissenting voices to have their accounts suspended for days or weeks for something they have said in Chats or on Moments.
Even people sharing seemingly uncontroversial information have found themselves on the wrong side of government censors and had their accounts and chat groups shut down.
Everything Everywhere – a super ‘system’ monitoring what you do, what you buy, where you go, when, how, who you talk to, what you say – all your movements, comments, discussions and activity will be known by someone else, somewhere, even your private discussions, holiday activity and medical details will be visible in the ‘system’.
Some may say this has happened already, but this ‘super-app’ will be a massive step closer to ‘life without privacy’.
Someone, somewhere is monitoring you.
Apple shares previously failed to close at levels that would have given the company a market cap of $3 trillion, despite a promising intra-day move in January 2022.
Apple has become the first publicly traded company ever to be worth $3 trillion. The company’s market valuation reached this milestone on January 3rd, 2022. Apple’s stock briefly eclipsed $182.86 a share before closing at $182.01. The milestone is mostly symbolic but it represents investor recognition of Apple’s success over the past few years as the company has reported several record-breaking quarters of big growth in all of its product lines.
Apple is not just a hardware player – it has an even bigger slice of the tech’ consumer pie than you may imagine, especially in the cloud computing arena.
Apple has regained its $3 trillion valuation to become the first-listed company, in modern times, to reach the $3 trillion milestone again. It acheived this on 30th June 2023. Shares climbed more than 2% to hit a record $193.97. However, by direct comparison and by todays valuation, the East India Trading Company beat Apple to this accolade long-a-go in the 17th Century having acheived a higher value equivalent to $7 trillion in todays money.
C’mon Apple you laggard!
Arthur C. Clarke, in full Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, (born 1917, Minehead, Somerset, England – died 2008 ). English writer, notable for both his science fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the novel of that film.
Threads is a new app, owned by Meta (Facebook), and built by the Instagram team, for sharing public conversations akin to Twitter. You log in using your Instagram account and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos with a 5 minute limit. Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol
Threads is seen by many as a direct competitor to Twitter, the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on July 5, 2023, with politicians, celebrities, news creators and users joining the platform. Threads surpassed 100 million user ‘sign-ups’ within five days of launch according to information from Meta.
Threads is projected to contribute a staggering $8 billion to Meta’s annual revenue by 2025. The report further highlights that Threads has already garnered 1 million sign-ups and is on track to reach an impressive milestone of 1 billion users in the near future.
However, some recent news reports suggest that Threads has encountered challenges in retaining its users and competing with Twitter. Threads ‘daily active users’ is reporteded to have fallen from 49 million two days after its launch, to 23.6 million users about three weeks later in July 2023, according to reports. The app’s average usage time also fell from 21 minutes to 6 minutes over the same timeframe.
According to a recent news article, Google says people should use its search engine to check whether information provided by Bard is actually accurate, as it may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views. Just Google views I wonder…?
Google’s UK boss Debbie Weinstein said Bard was not really the place that you go to search for specific information, but rather an experiment best suited for collaboration around problem solving and creating new ideas.
According to an Android Authority article, both Bard and ChatGPT can hallucinate or confidently lie when asked about obscure topics. Bard does offer a link to search results and will sometimes cite a source or two. However, Google states that Bard can even lie about its own inner workings so you cannot trust everything it says…?
According to a report by Marie Haynes, Bard predicts it will generate accurate responses 85% of the time by September 2023, but in an experiment, it posted an accuracy score of 63%, meaning it had incorrect information in more than 1/3 of its responses
Early days, or habouring a problem for the future?
The FEDNOW payment system is a new instant payment infrastructure developed by the Federal Reserve that allows financial institutions of every size across the U.S. to provide safe and efficient instant payment services.
It went live on July 20, 2023 and enables individuals and businesses to send and receive money in near real-time, 24/7/365, through their depository institution accounts.
The service is a flexible, neutral platform that supports a broad variety of instant payments and offers optional features such as fraud prevention tools, request for payment capability, and tools to support payment inquiries.
FedNow is the first new payment rail in the United States since the introduction of the Automated Clearing House (ACH) in the early 1970s.
Is this a possibly a pre-emptive strike to get ahead of international digital currency deployment and set the scene to adopt a digital payment structure of a new ‘crypto coin system’ for the future – the digital dollar?
Rolls-Royce share price soared by 20% in july 2023 after it raised its profit guidance and reported strong demand in its jet engine and defence businesses.
The company, which makes engines for aeroplanes, ships and submarines, repoertedly said it expects to make between £1.2 billion and £1.4 billion in underlying operating profit this year, up from its previous forecast of £800 million to £1 billion.
The profit upgrade reflects the improvement in Rolls-Royce’s operations under its new chief executive, who took over in January with a mandate to turn the companyaround. A transformation programme was launched to boost productivity, efficiency and innovation across all divisions. It appears to be working.
One of the main drivers of Rolls-Royce’s recovery is the revival in air travel and flying hours as Covid restrictions were eased. The company charges customers for the number of hours its jet engines run, which have dramatically rebounded from the slump caused by the pandemic. Rolls-Royce said it expects to generate £750 million in free cash flow this year, up from its previous target of £500 million.
Another factor behind Rolls-Royce’s growth is the increased defence spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company makes propulsion systems for Royal Navy warships and submarines, as well as engines for military aircraft. Rolls-Royce reportedly said its defence unit had delivered ‘exceptional‘ performance and secured new contracts.
Rolls-Royce’s share price hit its highest level since March 2020, when the prospect of travel bans caused aviation-related stocks to plunge. The stock has almost doubled in value this year, making it the best-performing stock on the FTSE 100 over the past six months.
Analysts and investors have welcomed the signs of progress at Rolls-Royce, which had struggled with profitability and cash flow issues even before the pandemic.
Rolls-Royce is scheduled to report its half-year results next week, which are expected to show profits of between £660 million and £680 million some analysts suggest, more than double market expectations. The company said it remains confident in its medium-term outlook and its ability to deliver value for customers and shareholders.
Definitely one to watch. It’s been on my ‘share radar’ for a couple years now. Share price hit intraday high of £1.94 on 28th July 2023
Profit for the six months ending in June 2023 for British Gas owner Centrica rose to around £1.34bn from £262m a year earlier. The rise in profits came from the company’s nuclear and oil and gas business, rather than from the British Gas energy supply business which performed much worse. The average annual British Gas profit has been £584m in recent years.
However, the profit boom is surprisingly down to a ‘tweak’ to the regulator Ofgem’s energy price cap that allows the supplier to recover elements of the costs of supplying its 10 million customers during the energy crisis.
The supplier’s current profit highs are likely to upset consumer groups that have campaigned against the supplier’s treatment of vulnerable energy customers as record energy market prices forced millions into fuel poverty. Some have called the profit making ‘legalised robbery’, and demanded to bring energy into public ownership.
Centrica plans to raise its interim dividend by around a third but remarks that its underlying profitability will ease significantly in the second half of the year. Energy firms saw their profit margins hit last year when wholesale prices surged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Wholesale prices also jumped as th UK emerged from the dark cloud Covid as markets undicated that the UK was ill prepared for the enconomic recovery. Brexit blues didn’t help either.
The energy price cap remains £1,000 above its pre-pandemic average, despite oil and natural gas costs easing significantly. It is predicted by industry ‘experts’ to remain around the £2,000 a year average for the coming winter months, maintaining excessive pressure on household budgets.
Centrica chief executive reportedly said that a lot of the firm’s profits were ‘going back into society’.
‘I know it’s difficult to see the word profits, or dividends, or similar words when people are having a tough time. I’m very conscious of this,’ he reportedly said.
‘Bear in mind, over the next couple of years we are expecting to pay a windfall tax of ‘probably‘ well over £600m on our UK gas business off the back of the profits that we’re seeing, so a lot of this is going back into society.’
A business needs to make profits otherwise there is no business. It exits to make a profit and to supply a service or product – but it is about how that business makes its profit, isn’t it?
Token windfall tax temporarily slapped on by the UK government is only payable on UK profits. Oil and gas recovery companies will only pay a tax windfall on UK related profits not on overseas returns!
Profits from fossil fuel recovery invested in greener energy for the future – that’s a topic for another article.
XRP, the native token of the blockchain company Ripple, soared more than 60% on Thursday after a U.S. judge delivered a major victory to the firm in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC had sued Ripple in December 2020, alleging that it had raised over $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP in an unregistered securities offering. The SEC claimed that XRP was an investment contract that gave buyers the expectation of profits based on Ripple’s efforts.
However, the Judge ruled that XRP was not a security “on its face” and that some aspects of its sale did not violate the federal securities laws.
The judge drew a distinction between the sales of XRP to institutional investors, which she said could constitute investment contracts, and the sales of XRP to the general public on exchanges, which did not.
The judge also denied Ripple’s argument that the SEC lacked jurisdiction over XRP transactions because they were not domestic, and agreed with the SEC that the Howey test, a four-pronged criteria to determine whether an asset is a security, applied to cryptocurrency transactions.
The ruling was welcomed by Ripple and its supporters, who argued that XRP was a utility token that facilitated cross-border payments and did not depend on Ripple’s efforts for its value.
Ripple’s chief legal officer, reportedly tweeted: “A huge win today – as a matter of law – XRP is not a security. Also, a matter of law – sales on exchanges are not securities. Sales by executives are not securities. Other XRP distributions – to developers, charities, and employees- are not securities.”
A lawyer representing over 19,000 XRP holders who intervened in the case, reportedly called on U.S. exchanges to relist XRP in solidarity with the decision.
The ruling also boosted the sentiment in the broader crypto market, as it suggested that the SEC did not have unlimited authority over digital assets and that some tokens could escape the securities classification.
Crypto-related stocks such as Coinbase and crypto-coins such as ADA, HBAR, BITCOIN & ETH surged following the news.
However, the case is not quite over yet, as the SEC said it would continue to review the decision and pursue its claims against Ripple for the sales of XRP to institutional investors.
The SEC also responded to the judge’s ruling by saying that it did not change its position that XRP was a security and that it would seek to prove that Ripple violated the securities laws in certain circumstances.
The outcome of the case could have significant implications for the crypto industry, as it could set a precedent for how other tokens are regulated and how other lawsuits are resolved.
Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.
It’s hard to calculate the number of people in the world accurately, and the UN admits its calculations could be out by a year or two – but it estimated that in November 2022 the eight billion line was crossed.
It is only 11 years since the population hit seven billion, and experts say this huge growth is because of many reasons including better health, nutrition and medicine.
The world reached one billion people in around 1800, then it took about another 100 years to get to the second billion – but since the 1950s the popultion growth has sped up dramatically.
Countries in Asia, including India, were responsible for a large amount of population growth over the last ten years.
The increase in population shows more children are being born, surviving adulthood and having children of their own.
People are also living longer because of better medicine and nutrition.
If you saw a picture of every person on the planet every second, it would take 253 years.
Middle-income countries, mostly in Asia, accounted for most of the growth over the past decade, with 700 million more people since 2011.
India has increased by roughly 180 million people, and is set to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation next year for the first time in almost 2,000 years.
Birth rates in China have decreased since 1980 when the country’s one-child policy was introduced, and more women have also been having children later in life to focus on their education and career opportunities.
When it comes comes to which countries are likely to grow more in the future, the UN says that most of the 2.4 billion people to be added before the global population peaks are likely to be born in sub-Saharan Africa. This includes countries like Angola, Botswana, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.
But experts say that the rate of rapid growth is starting to slow down, meaning it will take about 15 years for the population to reach nine billion – which wouldn’t be until the year 2037.
One of the main reasons for this is that people in many parts of the world are having less children. In the 1960s five births per woman was the global average, now it’s nearly half at 2.4 per woman.
The UN is predicting that the global population will rise to around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s and remain at that level until 2100.
The population growing is seen as a success by the UN because it shows how much public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine has improved – but it can also present challenges.
Having more people on Earth puts more pressure on nature, with people in competition with wildlife for water, food and space, as well as with each other. Also, growing food as fuel creates immense infrastructure pressure.
This could lead to mass migration and conflict in coming decades, experts say, particularly as extreme climate change could make parts of Africa and countries so hot they could be unsuitable for people to live in.
More people means there are less resources to go around, and so governments will also need to think about how the way people and countries use what the world currently has and how this can this should be used.
This also includes how we are using energy and the impact on climate change if big countries with growing populations continue to use fossil fuels.
Although having more people on the planet will impact the environment, in fact it is the increase in producing and using materials which creates dramatic pollution increases that causes more of an impact to our immediate environment.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres said: ‘…it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another.’
Twitter, the social media platform, has undergone a major rebranding, changing its name to X and replacing its iconic blue bird logo with a simple black-and-white X. The move was announced by the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who reportedly said he wanted to create a “super app” that would transform the global ‘town square’.
Musk and Twitter’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, posted pictures of the new logo projected on the side of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California. They also changed profile pictures and bios to reflect the new brand identity. The desktop version of the app has already switched to the new logo, while the mobile version is expected to follow soon.
Musk is reported to have said he was looking to change Twitter’s logo because he wanted to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. He also said he had a personal affinity for the letter X, which he also used for his other ventures, such as SpaceX and X.com. Yaccarino said the rebrand was an exciting new opportunity to make a fresh “big impression” and go further than Twitter.
The rebranding of Twitter marks the biggest change to the platform since Musk began his tumultuous tenure. Among the changes have been sacking thousands of staff, locking verification checkmarks behind a paywall, reinstating banned accounts like those of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, and applying reading limits.
The reaction from users and marketers has been mixed, with some praising the bold move and others criticising it as unnecessary and confusing. Some have also questioned whether the new logo infringes on the trademarks of other companies that use similar designs, such as Tesla and Xbox.
The company has not yet revealed whether other aspects of the platform, such as tweets, hashtags, and handles, will also be changed to match the new brand name.
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, has revealed his latest venture: xAI, a new artificial intelligence company that aims to “understand the true nature of the universe”.
Musk announced the formation of xAI on Wednesday on Twitter and on the company’s official website, which features a minimalist design and a brief introduction.
Link to website: xAI: Understand the Universe
“Today we announce the formation of xAI,” the website states. “The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe.”
The website also lists 12 members of the xAI team, including Musk himself as the director. The team consists of researchers and engineers who have worked at leading AI firms such as Google’s DeepMind, OpenAI, Microsoft Research and Tesla.
It was reported that xAI was incorporated in Nevada in June 2023 and Musk has purchased thousands of graphic processing units (GPUs) to power his AI vision. The company also has a Twitter account, @xAI, which has gained over 300,000 followers in less than a day.
Musk invited the public to ask questions about xAI on a Twitter Space – this was scheduled for 1h. July 2023. He has not provided any further details about the company’s mission, vision or products.
However, based on Musk’s previous comments and involvement in AI, it is likely that xAI will focus on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), or human-level intelligence that can perform any task across any domain.
Musk has been a vocal critic of OpenAI, the AI research organization that he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018. He has accused OpenAI of becoming too secretive, too commercial and too “woke”, especially after the launch of its popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Musk has also expressed his concerns about the potential dangers of AI, warning that it could pose an existential threat to humanity if not aligned with human values and goals. He has advocated for ethical and responsible development of AI, as well as global cooperation and regulation.
With xAI, Musk may be trying to create an alternative to OpenAI that is more aligned with his vision and values. He may also be aiming to achieve breakthroughs in AI that could benefit his other ventures, such as Tesla’s self-driving cars, SpaceX’s reusable rockets and Neuralink’s brain-computer interfaces.
However, xAI will also face many challenges and uncertainties in its quest to understand reality. AI is a complex and rapidly evolving field that requires massive amounts of data, computing power and talent. It also raises many ethical, social and philosophical questions that are not easy to answer.
Moreover, xAI will have to compete with other established and emerging players in the AI space, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Meta. These companies have invested billions of dollars in AI research and development and have access to vast amounts of data and resources.
It remains to be seen whether xAI will be able to achieve its ambitious goal and how it will impact the AI industry and society at large.
As Musk himself tweeted: “The future is weird.”
Ernie was first introduced in 2019, and since then, Baidu has been improving and upgrading it with new versions. The latest version, Ernie 3.5, was announced in June 2023, and it claims to outperform OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT 4 in several key areas
Baidu’s Ernie is an artificial intelligence (AI) model that powers the company’s chatbot service, Ernie Bot. Ernie stands for Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities, and it is a natural language processing (NLP) deep-learning model that can understand and generate natural language.
Ernie 3.5 is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model, which is trained on huge amounts of data from various domains, such as news, social media, encyclopedias, books, and more. Ernie 3.5 can handle various NLP tasks, such as question answering, dialogue generation, text summarization, sentiment analysis, and more.
According to a test by the China Science Daily journal, Ernie 3.5 surpassed ChatGPT and GPT 4 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT 4 on several Chinese-language capabilities.
ERNIE version 3.5 boosted its training and efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to upgrade to future versions. Baidu hopes that ERNIE Bot will become the next must-have app in China’s internet market, attracting users because of its natural and engaging conversations.
Baidu has been integrating ERNIE Bot across multiple business applications, ranging from cloud computing to smart speakers.
ERNIE Bot is one of the examples of how Baidu is investing in AI technology and competing with other tech giants in the US and China. Baidu’s founder Robin Li, reportedly said that ‘foundation models are an engine driving global economic growth and represent a major strategic opportunity that cannot be missed‘.
The major BIG players, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft & META all have their own versions of AI. Hopefully it will be used ‘intelligently’.
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. AI can involve various aspects of cognition, such as perceiving, reasoning, learning, problem-solving, and even creativity.
AI can be classified into different types based on the level of intelligence and the scope of tasks that machines can perform. One common way to categorise AI is by using the following four types:
AI is here to stay – it’s all about how we use it for the betterment of ‘humankind’. Please, let’s use it safely, responsibly and for the good!
Alphabet/Google
Amazon
AMD
Meta
