Kozminski Techblog

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Mutalk is a new device developed by Shiftall looking like a VR headset, but it is not to be worn on your eyes – in fact it is a microphone thats prevents voice leakage.

Probably the first thing that comes into your mind is “Why would anyone use this?”. The company suggests a couple of reasons why somebogy would be interested in a product like this. First of all it is advertised as a microphone which can be used in Metaverse (But who really uses Metaverse?). Next practical use of this device would be while gaming, so nobody hears your screams in heated moments of gamplay. This one is more valid, but I still don’t see a reason to spend $200 on a microphone when you can just try to be quiet. The last situation that the company states the microphone might be useful is when you engage in a meeting in a loud, crowded place and don’t want others to hear what you are saying and don’t want the people you are talking with to hear noises from the surroundings.

Although at the first glance these purposes might make sense I have some issues with this device.

First of all – Nobody really uses metaverse, as I stated before, and even if does why would he need to mute himself while using it? I see no practical use in this situation.

Second of all – While gaming, if you are a human being, you are able to control your voice. You don’t need a special device that will mute you. Especially not for $200. Maybe if you have walls as thin as paper it may make sense but still the market is absolutely small.

Next problem that I have with this device is keeeping it clean. While you use it it must get really moist. This would allow germs to spread and in the end ruin your device. A microphone in a moist environment isnt going to last for too long.

Summing up, this produc in my opinion is an absolute waste of time for the company that developed it and is aimed at people who have too much money to spend and still, these people will not be happy with the stuff that this microphone provides. I’ve seen in the past other products like this for example HushMe which never was a true breakthrough

Source: https://en.shiftall.net/products/mutalk

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Recently a Rzeszów based company revealed their product – a solid-state thin-film battery. One could think “Who cares, it’s just a battery”, but this invention poses a lot of benefits to the currently used Li-Ion batteries.

But what makes them so special? First of all these batteries are said to be really thin, allowing them to be used in small devices such as smartwatches or bluetooth earphones. The picture above this text is showing the thinness this battery. It could be as small as 0.1 mm and can be bent, flexed or rolled without causing damage, opening up a possibility to improve for example foldable phones or create really thin devices. This might bring up a question of how much energy they can hold, and it turns out that they are way more dense – they achieve over two times the energy density of Li-Ion batteries. Another upside is that they have a big range of operating temperature, meaning that the batteries could hold their capacity from -40°C-+170°C (If specially designed they could withstand an instantaneous temperature of even 280°C), allowing them to be used in really harsh conditions. Until now special purpose Lithium batteries could operate up to 125°C, but unlike The Batteries product, they had a limited lifespan of around 40-60 charges.

A big downside of Li-Ion batteries was that they were prone to exploding and highly flammable. This was completely mitigated as Solid-state batteries presented by The Batteries don’t use any liquids that emit gases and pose the risk of exploding. This gives the opportunity for the batteries to be soldered in without causing any damage to the battery and risking an explosion.

Small electronics could be really improved. Nowadays bluetooth earphones, smartwatches or any other really small devices fight over who has the best battery life. The Batteries batteries can be in many shapes and sizes, allowing them to fit inside any device you can imagine. To this day standard use batteries weren’t as flexible. Combining the flexibility with the energy density these batteries can be a game changer in small electronics, as they could be the most efficient in in fitting in small spaces. Charging them also turned out superior to the Li-Ion batteries, The Batteries states on their website that they could be fully charged over 6 times as quick. Even thought the charging speed is really quick, it is stated that they could live up to 10 000 charge-discharge cycles, which is 9 400 more than Li-Ion batteries.

Such a great invention surely must come at a high price. Yes, it was the case until after five years of development The Batteries found the way to reduce production costs to those of currently used batteries. Until now the price to produce a smartphone battery circulated around 1000 dollars, which was unacceptable for a regular consumer.

Basically this sounds too good to be true, everything that I wrote so far was just stated in their website, so we will have to wait until these batteries go out to the general market to draw any conclusions. If this invention finishes off successful we will have an absolute revolution.

References:

https://businessinsider.com.pl/technologie/nowe-technologie/the-batteries-rewolucja-w-bateriach-do-smartfonow-fabryka-powstanie-w-rzeszowie/p08ylqd

Product

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In recent years the popularity of regular television has been steadily decreasing with the development of streaming services such as Netflix, Youtube or Amazon Prime Video. It seemed to me that the last thing keeping the cable TV viable were older people and sports fans who had limited options when it came to watching their favorite sports. Now a big part of this is about to change, as streaming services are also acquiring the rights to streaming sports events. At first it was Amazon with their exclusivity deal that let them stream “Thursday Night Football”, next Apple with Major League Soccer, and now, the biggest deal of them all was signed – Google’s Youtube is ready to pay $2 billion per year for the rights to stream National Football League.

As I mentioned before, the last things keeping regular TV in my opinion are older people and sports fans. While the first group will be hard to be drawn away from it, the second one just needed the place where they can see their favorite sport online, for the sake of at least convenience and flexibility with where they are able to watch the games. This might become a major shift in media industry, as other streaming services follow. Many people may cut their pay-TV subscriptions, which may prove a big hit for the television providers all across the US.

But how is it beneficial to YouTube? According to Financial Times if they charged $25 for the subscription, the company would need 1,85 million subscribers to break even. This is a third of the amount of subscribers they currently have. This will not be easy to quickly achieve this amount, for sure, YouTube will operate on a loss, but in a long run as NFL games average around 15,7 million viewers it for sure is an achievable target.

In my opinion sooner or later regular TV will not be the major player anymore in the media industry as it used to be over the last years. Younger generations prefer freedom and flexibility of streaming services over TV, so watching sports games will always be more appealing to them on a phone instead of in one fixed place every time without the possibility to watch on the go.

Links:

https://www.ft.com/content/f5437d18-58d2-4ef2-a780-cb30167ea075

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/23/youtube-nfl-sunday-ticket-deal-win-for-traditional-media-companies.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/business/youtube-nfl-sunday-ticket.html

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2022/11/04/Media/NFL-average-viewership-down-Thursday-Night-Football-Amazon.aspx

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The founder of Anduril, Palmer Luckey, after realising that not too many silicon valley tech companies wanted to cooperate with the American Department of Defense decided that he will be the biggest contractor for the US government regarding high-tech software and hardware technology. After selling his company – Oculus – in 2014 for $2 billion he started preparing and by 2017 he started a company Anduril. The company states that it wants to transform the US & allied military capabilities with advanced technology. They got the first funding of $17 million in January 2017 – immediately after starting the company. Later on in the second quarter of 2018 another big investment was made, $41 million, led by Founders Fund – a San Francisco based venture capital firm investing in revolutionary technologies.

The investments made it possible for Anduril to grow in size and develop important products, the first one being an AI-driven sentry tower that is able to detect threat from 2 to 15 kilometers away, that now is used to overlook the USA-Mexico Border. Later on, the company started developing other products like force protection, air systems, underwater vehicles, but most importantly – Lattice OS – an operating system designed for war. It uses deep learning to help make suggestions to support the operators in tough decisions. Another important function of the system is Real-Time Understanding, which uses sensor fusion, computer vision, edge computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect objects and classify them in the operators vicinity. Lastly, it enables real-time command and control. It allows just one operator to quickly control a team of assets.

Summing up – Anduril brings many new capabilities to the defense. It may prove beneficial in situations like the current one in Ukraine. Since the start of war Anduril has been steadily arming the Ukrainian forces with high-tech armament. After just 5 years on the market company managed to be valued at $7 billion dollars. It is one of the fastest growing start-ups in recent years and I think that they are just getting started with improving their products as well as releasing new highly advanced defense systems.

Links:

https://www.generalist.com/briefing/anduril

www.anduril.com

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs

https://www.ft.com/content/56d7d1ed-6b84-476a-9342-a47f94ce8f2a

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First of all, what is neuralink?

Neuralink is a company co-founded by three men – Elon Musk, Max Hodak and Paul Merolla in July of 2016. It’s aim is developing implantable brain-machine interfaces (in short BMIs or BCIs) to make humans able to connect their brains to the digital world (which Elon Musk named transhumanism) as well as treat many diseases starting from anxiety, through dementia to paralysis, while being not bigger than a large coin. It’s second product would be a robot, that could safely and quickly perform the implant operation.

2016-2017

Initially, the company was founded under-the-radar, it wasn’t until 2017 when Wall Street Journal reported on its existence. The initial hires were people mostly from areas of neuroscience, biochemistry and robotics. In April of 2017 the company released a statement, where they shared the aims of their products, which I mostly mentioned in the previous paragraph.

2019-2020

In 2019 Neuralink had raised $158 million, of which $100 million were invested by Elon Musk himself and the companys value was estimated to be just over $500 million. (according to PitchBook). The most important event during the year of 2020 was the release of a demonstration video (available here) of a pig named Gertrude, where the implant could precisely predict the positioning of the pig’s limbs. It was reported that the pig was living with the implant for two months at this point. In August of 2020 Stat News reported that only 3 of 8 founding scientists remained in the company, as the pace of timelines conflicted with the slow pace of science.

2021-2022

In April 2021 Neuralink released another video (available here) which this time featured a monkey playing Pong using only the implant. It wasn’t the first time that a monkey could use computer using just an implant, in 2002 a research group managed to make a monkey use a computers cursor just with neural signals, but this time the technology was improved with it being wireless and increasing the number of electrodes. The following month, one of the companys co-founder, Max Hodak announced that he will no longer be working at Neuralink, leaving the company with only 2 of original 8 co-founders.

Controversies

The biggest claims against Neuralinks were related to animal cruelty. An animal rights group, called Physicians Comittee for Responisble Medicine reported, that they obtained records, which shown that 15 out of 23 monkeys had died during the tests, as well as they claimed that the animals were subjected to suffering. Neuralink only admitted death of only 8 monkeys out of reported 15, of which 2 were euthanized to gather information, only obtainable through autopsy. The claims made the company put out a statement on animal welfare on their website. (here)

To be honest, allegations towards Neuralink seem to be serious. Should we believe animal rights groups or the statements that the company put out? It’s hard to determine exactly the animal casualties. Also, Isn’t it a good price to pay for us to be able to help humans overcome diseases and let us progress even more technologically? Probably there are as many opinions as people thinking about this topic and as long as Neuralink works under the state law it will continue their research.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink#Technology https://www.businessinsider.com/neuralink-elon-musk-microchips-brains-ai-2021-2?IR=T#elon-musk-likes-to-boast-neuralink-can-let-monkeys-control-computers-with-their-brain-signals-but-neuroscientists-dont-see-this-as-a-big-deal-6 https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/other-tech-news/what-is-neuralink-how-does-the-technology-work-and-what-can-a-person-do-with-it.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/05/elon-musks-neuralink-bold-ideas-hurdles.html https://www.slashgear.com/867308/the-incredible-and-controversial-evolution-of-elon-musks-neuralink/