China Startup Crackdown, Bergmann's Rule, Lots of E-Commerce
1st of October 2024
Hello,
Aurenotes.com is now available in dark mode.
Here's what I have published on the blog:
Here's the best of what I have published on Medium (free to access from this email):
Here's the cool stuff I have learned:
Assortative mating refers to the phenomenon where people with similar genotypes get together more often than they would with people with a different genotype. Sameness breeds relationships.
The human capital theory suggests that education improves the productivity of a workforce (nurture) while the signaling theory of education posits that diplomas only signal high capabilities to employers (nature).
This study investigated the effects of giving disadvantaged people $1000 per month no-strings-attached for three years. It had no effect on their levels of wealth or rates of bankruptcy.
Bergmann’s rule states that species of larger size are found in colder places and the other way around.
A university professor quit teaching because of ChatGPT. His students no longer wrote essays by themselves. AI is a prosthesis for the brain.
An interesting article on the world of tutoring for the superrich’s kids. Tl;dr: the value of your service = the price you charge for it.
Selena Gomez is a billionaire based on her beauty brand’s valuation.
The chip design ARM was invented by the British company Acorn which ultimately went bankrupt in the late 1990s.
Greeks are now the second poorest in Europe due to a bad economy, low salaries, and brain drain (probably).
Microsoft bought a nuclear power plant to satisfy its energy needs for the development of AI. We’re entering a stage where the private sector is fixing the public sector’s mismanagement.
As alcohol consumption keeps on dropping, France plans to uproot 30,000 hectares of vineyard.
Another sign the economy is not doing well is that the stock price of luxury companies is down.
The refurbished tech platform Back Market was founded 10 years ago and will be profitable for the first time this year. This made me think of Vinted, the second-hand clothing platform founded in 2008 that only became profitable last year or so. Platforms are really hard businesses to get into.
I have written about the Portuguese luxury e-commerce platform Farfetch which was acquired a year ago by the South Korean Coupang amid losses. Meanwhile, Mytheresa, a German copycat of Farfetch, is doing well.
The black market for AI chatbots is thriving. These models don’t have any built-in safety and will answer any one of your queries.
I built a complete top bar functionality into my e-commerce website with the new GPT 01-preview chatbot in a bit more than one hour. And…
…Replit announced AI would now take care of creating the different files in a directory according to the product you want to build so you don’t need to do it yourself. This means that…
…there’s never been a better time to start building your app or website, no matter how good (or bad) you are at coding.
About four years ago, Toyota said that electric cars were a bad idea. Today, Italy and Germany are calling to “rethink” the 2035 ban on thermal engine cars.
The startup scene in China is not going well after a political crackdown on entrepreneurs for reasons that remain unclear.
iPod designer Jony Ive is working with OpenAI on an AI device.
A Chinese smartphone company is growing fast by focusing solely on the African market.
I went to an osteopath to fix my back and one of the side effects of the therapy was that…it decreased my tinnitus by 70%!
Not moving enough inflames your muscles (was I told by said-osteopath).
You should check out the Arc browser. It’s kind of like Notion but for the Internet.
Despite inflation, the average value of an online purchase in France has been quickly decreasing from 2005 to 2023. Source.
There are several ways to interpret this:
People are getting poorer.
Low-income shoppers are shopping more online (Temu, Shein, etc), bringing down the average.
It’s probably a mix of both.
Take care.
Aure :)
very interesting, as always looking forward to reading your monthly newsletter Aure, wished you did it weekly or 2 times a month!
btw, the new dark mode looks great but there's a big moon icon bug at the end of your website