Around the world in 7 days #4
Dinesh Hosamani
Global Product Support Engineer @ ASM | Master's Degree, Particle Accelerators
ONDC clocks 10,000 transactions per day in India
Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) clocked 10k transactions per day, ONDC stands for Open Network for Digital commerce ,is a network based on open protocol aimed to facilitate e commerce, right from food , groceries, fashion , footwear, home, kitchen electronics, beauty , personal care, mobility and even financial services can today opt for ONDC. This is a democratization of e-commerce and aims to reduce the entry barrier for traders to enable access to e commerce. Presently e-commerce in India is at 4% where as countries such as South Korea has 26% and China has 25% of e-retail penetration, a decent 10-15% percent e-retail in India could be game changing.
My Take : E-commerce is profitable for the businesses if the ticket size is large. For Eg. Nykaa As seen with Swiggy and Zomato these companies are now effected with ONDC as the charges are reduced and driving the customers to ONDC, as more vendors opt for ONDC there will be a healthy competition. There isn't any significant change in consumption in India because of e-commerce and this will be just another means to get your coffee, food or gadgets in a better and convenient way and remove inefficiencies.
Microsoft signed a agreement to purchase electricity from a nuclear fusion generator
A company called Helion Energy thinks it can deliver that Holy Grail to Microsoft by 2028. It announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft this morning that would see it plug in the world’s first commercial fusion generator to a power grid in Washington. The goal is to generate at least 50 megawatts of power — a small but significant amount and more than the 42MW that the US’s first two offshore wind farms have the capacity to generate today.
My Take : Global per capita consumption of energy is going to increase irrespective of the population increase due to high consumption , hence finding efficient and green ways to generate electricity is of paramount importance , though the Helium-3 required for the fusion is a concern, this is by far the most desirable alternate source of energy to be developed. The scare around nuclear fission isn't curbed and it would have been nice if Thorium based reactors would receive similar interest. India has an abundant source of Thorium and looks like it could be the only country who maybe interested to develop it.
SoftBank sells Alibaba stake
Softbank sells its stake in Alibaba, and still posted a $32 billion loss. They are getting defensive in their investment and are working to launch ARM IPO. This is also the time it is looking to invest in AI .
My Take : Looks like AI is set to roll out set of innovations as many old internet companies saturate. Alibaba also mentioned that they will invest in new AI technologies
Google reveals AI updates as it vies with Microsoft
Google’s return to an in-person I/O after pandemic. It covered the following
My Take : Looks like Google is betting on the fact that people spend more time on phones and tablets than on PC and if they can successfully integrate AI to their products they can still surge ahead in the race. They lack monetizing skills as well, and can give a good competition to Microsoft.
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Elon Musk found a new CEO for Twitter
Twitter owner Elon Musk has announced that he has found a new chief executive for Twitter. "Excited to announce that I've hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!", Musk said in a tweet.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was in talks for the job. The WSJ cited people familiar with the situation. Yaccarino joined NBCU in 2011, after 15 years at Turner Entertainment and has been credited with dragging the network's ad sales operation into the digital future.
My Take : Elon used his charm to make some difficult changes which lets be honest no one could have executed, with some major shuffle and new guidelines he is stepping back from day today execution to more of a policy and long term strategy such as integrating AI and adding new features. He also claimed to make twitter as a video streaming app and also rolled out encrypted DMs.
Tweaking vegetables to make them tastier.
“Don’t waste your time talking about trying to educate people to eat better,” says Klee, the tomato breeding researcher. “Just give them products that taste better, that they want to eat.” I think that pretty much summed up the intentions of this effort. Thanks to new genetic technology such as the gene-snipping technique CRISPR and DNA sequencing that is cheap enough to use liberally we can now expect to eat tasty vegetables.
In the late 1990s scientists identified specific chemicals, called glucosinolates, that made Brussels sprouts taste bitter so today we are targeting same compound but by gene editing instead of tradtional methods
My Take : Gene-snipping technique CRISPR and DNA sequencing are new technologies and such experiments can help us answer complicated implications that can take place on say animals or humans. Its a long shot since anything in Biotech is hard to know if this actually works given the background of incidence from Elizabeth Holmes. But hey Moderna was also a new startup (started around 2017) that helped us out in Pandemic ;)
Electric vehicles as a backup power source for the electric grid.
A new California bill would turn electric vehicles into a backup power supply for the state’s troubled grid. The intent of the proposal is to provide California with electricity on days when supplies are tight. But it isn't as simple as it sounds, EV has DC current whereas grid needs AC current, so we need a converters either on wall or inbuilt. The bill also mandated to have two way charging that would add cost to vehicle. This also mean that there should be a uniform charger to all the vehicles. To top it all , there are always safety hazards.
Nissan Motor Corporation Leaf, Ford Motor Company F-15 lightening truck already have a two way charger. Tesla also promised to add a two way charger to its upcoming model.
My Take : This means there is a high probability that the government is expecting EVS to be more mainstream then now, and they imagine a scenario where electricity consumptions during peak hours and panics could be a new factor in disrupting the grid. Either ways Ford F-150s can back up homes for 3 days and such legislations could bring more Commercial vehicles to opt for sending power back to grid since they have more define hours of operations and can handle complexities around the converters. All in all looks a good future for EVs.
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