most will agree that automation is coming to fill up the shortage of labor and prepares us for the demographic shift in the next few decades.
While that should be the future, along the way, I believe there will be miserable frictions., as technology advancements and deployment is not as smooth as changes in the working population.
How to minimize the negative impacts of those frictions will be a critical topic. After all, we want people to live in good lives.
“The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth, and it is not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. So, we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other. ”
“We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals; hearts, likes, thumbs up. And we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth. And instead what it really is, is fake, brittle popularity. That’s short-term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because then you’re in this vicious cycle, like, what’s the next thing I need to do now, because I need it back. Think about that compounded by two billion people, and then think about how people react then to the perceptions of others. It’s just a really bad thing, it’s really, really bad…”
March 14, 2019 at Tesla’s design studio in Los Angeles.
Debut of Model Y – the full event below:
With introductory version priced at $39K, Model Y will start to deliver next year with premium versions first.
In terms of design, it is more like 7-seats version of Model 3. In fact, they share around 75 percent of its components. (good for supply chain management and another win for modular design)
The “SEXY” lineup has now completed.
Then what is next for Tesla besides mass production and updates of these models?
Bringing Tesla to Mars is one thing mentioned during the event. But that is SpaceX’s work.
Infrastructure for global adoption of EV and solar power is definitely a sexy target to work towards. But that will also rely on governments’ and other organizations’ efforts.
Tesla Semi (the e-truck) is also on the way to deliver. It will be Tesla’s Business Solution, which is different from what Tesla has been doing all the time – selling to consumers. Could Tesla become a service company? E-truck + autopilot as a service? It could be a good spin-off.
[Update March 15] Another product teased on the event is Tesla’s e-pickup truck. [More on e-truck]
There was something, but no one caught it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 15, 2019
About a minute in, we flashed a teaser pic of Tesla cyberpunk truck pic.twitter.com/hLsGsdyuGA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2019
Smaller e-vehicles + autopilot? for food/grocery delivery on sidewalks. Possible.
Or bigger flying e-vehicles? Possible but requires a lot more new designs/engineering. Would be a tough sell for investors. Besides, Musk seems to be more interested in next-generation transportation underground (with the Boring Company) than in the air.
Also briefed in a previous post.
First video stored in its digital form in bacteria’s DNA, with the help from CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.
DNA as a storage is not an entirely new idea. Microsoft has been exploring this field with Twist at least since 2016. They have successfully stored music (audio) performances in DNA in 2017.
Now (in the video), researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute are using live organisms.
[will keep updating]
Roche to acquire Spark with a 122% premium of it previous closing price, with a deal valued of ~$4.3 billion.
Spark won FDA’s first approval on gene therapy for genetic disease more than one year ago, treating retinal dystrophy (by mutations on the RPE65 gene) with LUXTURNA. The treatment carries a list price of $850,000, or $425,000 per eye.
Besides, Spark Therapeutics has SPK-8011 in clinical trials, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of haemophilia A, which is expected to start Phase 3 in 2019.
Here is a brief video of the procedure for it first patient in US last March.