Let’s begin this year as we mean to go on, with an early edition of “Things from my Newsblur”. As usual, the most investment-related stuff is at the end.
Dwarf planet 'The Goblin' discovery redefining solar system
Approaching Halloween last year, one of Our Man’s son’s was very into space and especially the hypothetical Planet 9 and the Dwarf planets. Imagine the joy, at (i) the discovery of a new dwarf planet, (ii) that it’s called ‘The Goblin’, and (iii) that its existence and orbit further suggest Planet 9 is out there. Happy days, though the song needs updating!
(Hannah Devlin, The Guardian)
Women’s Pockets are Inferior
Mrs. OM hcompains about the frustration of women’s pockets, and especially the decorative faux pockets. Well, here’s the data (and cool graphics) on the differences in pocket sizes and shapes in twenty of the most popular blue jeans for men and women. Spoiler alert: No shock but the data proves that women have a right to be upset!
(Jan Diehm & Amber Thomas, Pudding.cool)
Rodney Brooks: Tech Prediction Scorecard, January 2019
Predicting the future is fraught with the risk of looking foolish…and more so when you’re looking at to 2050 and thinking about technological change. A year ago, Rodney Brooks made multiple predictions on self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the space industry. He will revisit them and highlight the progress, as well as where he is on track or off base. If you only read one blog post on those subjects, each year, make it this one.
Why is it interesting? Well, the future is interesting, and Dr. Brooks is more qualified than most to hazard these guesses. Additionally, we can see how the data and his thinking evolve each year - process matters! Dr. Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, where he was also the Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. He’s also a Founder, former Board Member and former CTO of iRobot.
(Rodney Brooks, his blog).
Vietnam is Winning the US-China Trade War
With the current US-China trade war picking up, and the sense that it’s the start of a new dynamic between the two countries rather than a one-off spat, technology manufacturers are starting to set-up factories elsewhere. This coupled with Vietnam opening up to free trade (e.g. the TPP and a trade deal with Europe) has meant that “Vietnam, once dependent on garments and other cheap exports, has begun to rival China’s tech sector.” This is not something new, but merely Vietnam starting to tread down the path that Thailand took ~30yrs ago, and China ~20-25yrs ago. Absent a major change, expect Vietnam to be Our Man’s portfolio for a looooooong time!
(Bennett Murray, Foreign Policy)
Dwarf planet 'The Goblin' discovery redefining solar system
Approaching Halloween last year, one of Our Man’s son’s was very into space and especially the hypothetical Planet 9 and the Dwarf planets. Imagine the joy, at (i) the discovery of a new dwarf planet, (ii) that it’s called ‘The Goblin’, and (iii) that its existence and orbit further suggest Planet 9 is out there. Happy days, though the song needs updating!
(Hannah Devlin, The Guardian)
Women’s Pockets are Inferior
Mrs. OM hcompains about the frustration of women’s pockets, and especially the decorative faux pockets. Well, here’s the data (and cool graphics) on the differences in pocket sizes and shapes in twenty of the most popular blue jeans for men and women. Spoiler alert: No shock but the data proves that women have a right to be upset!
(Jan Diehm & Amber Thomas, Pudding.cool)
Rodney Brooks: Tech Prediction Scorecard, January 2019
Predicting the future is fraught with the risk of looking foolish…and more so when you’re looking at to 2050 and thinking about technological change. A year ago, Rodney Brooks made multiple predictions on self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the space industry. He will revisit them and highlight the progress, as well as where he is on track or off base. If you only read one blog post on those subjects, each year, make it this one.
Why is it interesting? Well, the future is interesting, and Dr. Brooks is more qualified than most to hazard these guesses. Additionally, we can see how the data and his thinking evolve each year - process matters! Dr. Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, where he was also the Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. He’s also a Founder, former Board Member and former CTO of iRobot.
(Rodney Brooks, his blog).
Vietnam is Winning the US-China Trade War
With the current US-China trade war picking up, and the sense that it’s the start of a new dynamic between the two countries rather than a one-off spat, technology manufacturers are starting to set-up factories elsewhere. This coupled with Vietnam opening up to free trade (e.g. the TPP and a trade deal with Europe) has meant that “Vietnam, once dependent on garments and other cheap exports, has begun to rival China’s tech sector.” This is not something new, but merely Vietnam starting to tread down the path that Thailand took ~30yrs ago, and China ~20-25yrs ago. Absent a major change, expect Vietnam to be Our Man’s portfolio for a looooooong time!
(Bennett Murray, Foreign Policy)
How Open-Source Software Took Over the World
Regular readers will know that OM has been reading about, linking to, and mentioning software (especially enterprise) a lot recently. Five years ago, the idea that open-source software was viable let alone would be dominant was met with skepticism from investors. The world has certainly changed, with IBM’s purchase of Redhat (for $32 billion!!) headlining a list of multi-billion dollar takeovers, IPOs and companies! Mike Volpi goes through the evolution of open-source software from Linux and MySQL, through the second generation and how it evolved towards Software-as-a-Service business models enabled by the cloud.
(Mike Volpi, TechCrunch)
But…
AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source
What if enterprise open-source software is music; and the software cos are the record cos? Music like open-source software is relatively worthless once it’s been produced, since it can be copied endlessly. Record companies don’t sell music, but rather the tools that make music usable (i.e. CDs in the good ole days)…and it is the same with open-source software, especially in the cloud era. Therein lies the rub, will the value accrue to software cos (or record companies) or to those companies (and products) like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's Azure, etc. (or Spotify, Apple Music, etc in the case of music) that provide the convenience to the end customer.
(Ben Thomspon, Stratechery – if you like technology and read nobody else on a weekly basis, read Ben!).
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