It’s all a blur. ICYMI, Drake shared yesterday on IG that he’ll be hitting the road this summer with 21 Savage for his first US tour since 2019. Tickets for the multi-city event kick off this Friday at 12 pm ET. But if you have a Cash App Card or drink Sprite (odd, we know), you can access the presale up to two days early. Based on how the internet handled Bey and Tay’s recent tour announcements, it might be best to avoid the general drop.
In other news… Starlink takes remote work into the wild, AI makes deepfakes cheaper, and Elon builds a town in Texas.
Top Trends
- YouTube → The Little Mermaid
- Twitter → Pedro Pascal
- Google → Drake
- Reddit → The Last of Us
- TikTok → “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” - Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg
- Spotify → “The Way” - Manchester Orchestra
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TECHNOLOGY
Starlink is making work very remote
The Future. Only two and a half years after Elon Musk’s Starlink launched its satellite internet service, it has launched thousands of satellites that provide fast, reliable service across the globe. That quick success seems to have made Starlink the de facto industry leader. But some users are worried that Musk’s patented move-fast-and-break-things ethos could also ground Starlink. In five years, will Starlink look more like Tesla or SpaceX? That may be up to Musk.
All the service areas
Starlink is flying high.
- It currently has over 3,500 satellites and hopes to ultimately put up 12,000 (there are only 10,000 satellites total in space right now).
- It’s available almost everywhere (except in banned countries like China and Russia).
- It can be accessed on land, sea, and soon, air — even while moving.
And when you have internet speeds of 150 megabits per second for as low as $90 per month (and a $599 hardware setup), that blows competition like HughesNet and Viasat out of the sky.
Outdoor office
So, do people actually like Starlink?
- The overall sentiment that The Information collected was that the service was not only a great option with consistent performance, but it felt like the only option available.
- It had excellent connectivity in places as far as Waipū, New Zealand; the frontier of northern Montana; and the Mogollon Rim of Arizona.
That’s not to say that Starlink is without complaint — customer service is light, having a lot of satellites up in space does kind of mess up the whole out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere stargazing experience, and many don’t love that they have to rely on a Musk-run company.
TECHNOLOGY
AI is making deepfakes a real problem
The Future. Deepfakes are not only on the rise, but they’re becoming increasingly easier to make, thanks to apps that leverage AI to do all the hard work. While social platforms have rules for dealing with purposely misleading content, the internet moves so fast that stopping the spread of deepfakes before they go viral may take cooperation among developers, platforms, and even the government.
Troll factory
Several new AI-powered apps allow anyone to create what Britt Paris, an assistant professor of library and information science at Rutgers University, calls “cheapfakes.”
- The apps make it possible for people who don’t have “sophisticated computational technology and fairly sophisticated computational know-how” to make deepfakes.
- The tech does so by “cloning celebrity voices, altering mouth movements to match alternative audio, and writing persuasive dialogue” (persuasive may be a stretch).
Meme or malware?
NYT reports that ElevenLabs, co-founded by a former Google engineer, is one of the main tools used to create cheapfakes. After the tech was co-opted by users on 4chan to spread “hateful messages,” ElevenLabs said it would put up new “safeguards” to try to stop bad actors from hijacking the tech.
It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, though. 4chan users said they would use the company’s open-source code to just build their own tool — one of the unfortunate side effects of open-sourcing.
Now, ElevenLabs hopes to work with other AI developers to build a universal deepfake detection system. With another round of heated elections coming up, it may need to happen sooner rather than later.
A new way to stay strong
Aging can be less than fun, especially when our muscles lose their oomph. But what if you could actually get stronger as you age?
We know it sounds impossible. But Tony Horton, a strong AF, 61-year-old celebrity fitness trainer, swears it's possible. And guess what? It doesn't involve killing yourself on the treadmill. It only takes one or two minutes a day — and it's got nothing to do with hitting the gym. So, put down those weights and turn back time!
Sponsored by Golden Hippo
SOCIETY
Billionaires love to build societies in their image
The Future. Elon Musk is generating headlines for his plan to build a company town in Texas that will act as a playground for Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company. While that seems bold, he’s not the first person to do it… which shows that there may be a potential for billionaires to carve out communities across America if they have enough resources, willingness, and filled-out paperwork.
Muskville, USA
Billionaires certainly have a knack for buying the life they want.
- Recently, Elon Musk said that he planned to build a town east of Austin, Texas. It would provide affordable housing for his employees and give a lot of control over how the land is used — a problem he ran into in Bolsa Chica.
- Les Wexner, the founder of Victoria’s Secret, developed New Albany, Ohio, into one of the most luxurious towns in the world — he turned a purchased 10,000 acres into a home for 11,000 residents with a median household income of $200,000.
- Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which has a population of about 3,000. He’s gone ahead and started renovating all the hotels on the island but has kept most of his plans close to the chest.
But back to Texas — Musk’s plan to build his town will probably be a much easier challenge than his complicated control of Twitter. To incorporate a new city in the state, all anyone needs is “at least 201 residents living within two square miles to petition a county judge for an election,” according to Bloomberg.
Heck, maybe you don’t need billions to do that.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Signature Bank falls too
In the aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank’s rollercoaster collapse, another bank is tanking: Signature Bank. The NY-based bank suddenly stopped operating on Sunday. Regulators shut it down, citing that the crypto-friendly bank (30% of its clients were in crypto) represented a risk to the entire banking system (because crypto, apparently) and needed oversight. Reportedly, all depositors will receive their full balances. Feels like ‘08 all over again.
Read more → techcrunch
Spotify gives a peek inside its AI DJ
One significant new feature of Spotify’s app redesign is DJ — the AI-powered playlist-making, song-recommending, and commentary-providing chatbot of its wildest ambitions. It was created using the company’s personalization tech (the stuff that powers Spotify Wrapped), AI tech from its Sonantic acquisition and OpenAI, the voice of Spotify’s head of cultural partnerships, Xavier “X” Jernigan, and a room of writers run by Sulinna Ong. In other words, DJ seems to be a creation of the best of AI and humans. Who’s given it a try yet?
Read more → variety
Gen Z likes real, tangible books
Move over, Kindle… turns out Gen Z really loves to read that old technology called paperback books. Why? According to interviews done by Insider, Gen Z counts the eye strain caused by digital readers, the desire to step away from a screen, and a newfound love of libraries as major reasons why flipping actual pages are preferable. And the data is there to back it up — McKinsey found that US book sales hit an all-time high of 843 million units in 2021. That dipped only slightly in 2022.
Read more → insider
GM wants to make AI a passenger
Everybody wants their own AI tools, and that includes automaker GM. The company announced that it’s working on an in-car personal assistant powered by ChatGPT and will have a unique “car-specific layer” built on top of the language model. It would essentially replace reading the vehicle’s owner’s manual (because who does). Maybe GM just wants to provide drivers with some company when driving solo…
Read more → engadget
Disney made a real lightsaber
Yeah, building a lightsaber at Star Wars Land is cool… but Disney wants to potentially make it much, much cooler. At SXSW, Disney Parks chairman Josh D’Amaro showed off what looked like a real, retractable lightsaber… and blew people’s minds. How does it work? VR developer Ben Ridout looked at the patent and found that the lightsaber is powered by, as The Verge summarizes, “a pair of fancy motorized tape measures.” It can’t quite cut down a Stormtrooper, but that’s some brilliantly simple magic.
Read more → theverge
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Edited by Nick Comney. Publishing by Sara Kitnick.