June 1, 2022 | ± 4 minutes
New here? The WC is a random mix of useful / interesting / notable stuff that gets pumped into your inbox every Wednesday.
And yes, we know WC also means toilet. I’ve had to live with these initials for 43 years.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
What have we achieved in the last decade?
Turns out, quite a lot.
From the always-excellent Azeem Azhar’s weekly newsletter, here’s a glance at some of the more remarkable technological advancements since 2012:
- In 2012, a desktop computer could deliver a gigaflop/s of performance for roughly 89c. By 2022, the latest Xbox Series X did that same number crunch for under 4c.
- A decade ago, the state-of-the-art chip had about 5 billion transistors. By 2022, the Cerebras WSE2 packed 2.5 trillion.
- The ultramodern deep neural network of 2012, AlexNet, had 65m parameters. Alibaba’s M5, unveiled in late 2021, has more than a trillion.
- Back then, under 1 of 20 cars sold in Norway was an electric vehicle. In March 2022, 92% of all cars sold in Norway were battery electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. (The vast majority, the former).
- The cost to write a DNA base pair was 90 cents in 2012. By this year, it had fallen to a tenth of that.
- And sequencing the human genome had fallen from nearly $7,000 to under $600.
It keeps getting worse for Elon
I wish I could go a week without writing about the mercurial billionaire, but Elon’s shambolic attempted purchase of Twitter keeps slogging on. The schadenfreude is just too much to resist.
As a reminder, I said this over a month ago:
Musk is going to back away from buying Twitter.
— Wyatt Cavalier (@itiswyatt) April 28, 2022
🙊 His Free Speech for All vision is unworkable on a global platform
📉 It’s destroying his $TSLA wealth
Can we all get back to our lives now?
Since the bid went through, Twitter shares are off 12%, Tesla is off 28%, and Twitter shareholders are getting a bit bored of his messing with their portfolios… so they’re suing him.
The class-action suit claims Musk’s complaints about bots and so forth are just an excuse to back away from the deal (I agree).
This is going to be an expensive distraction for Elon.
Britain’s in a bit of a death spiral
Average disposable income in Britain fell to £205 per week in April, which is the lowest since the 2008 financial crisis. This is off the back of 53% more expensive electricity and 95% pricier gas.
Anecdotally, this checks out. I lived in the UK from 2009 to 2020, and every family I know there is worse off now than they were when I left two years ago.
Out of work, struggling to make ends meet, burnt out, overwhelmed, and sinking deeper into debt (if they can get it).
So it’s a bit tone-deaf spending tens of millions of pounds this weekend celebrating the queen’s 70th year in charge. And people are pissed.
Two weeks ago, Liverpool supporters booed the Prince ahead of the FA Cup Final, and articles lamenting the money spent by local councils are everywhere.
This is part of a larger global trend of wealth and income inequality that’s troubling no matter how you look at it.
Even the most strident market capitalist will agree there’s a problem when there’s no one left at the bottom of the pyramid to buy up the goods produced by the CEOs at the top.
All this while embattled Prime Minister Boris Johnson deflects attention by focussing on -get this- bringing back imperial weights and measures…
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I can’t believe this podcast is free 🤯
If you’re a history nerd like me, you probably know who Dan Carlin is.
He’s the host of the Hardcore History podcast, and it’s fantastic.
His episodes take are very long form. The one about World War I was six episodes long totaling around 30 hours. But they’re worth it. Even if you’re not into history, you’ll love these.
Start with a short one – the Celtic Holocaust, and learn how Caesar wiped out an entire race of people.
Uber bad
Uber took us all by storm ten years ago. Cheaper than taxis, always available, clean cars, simple, effective… And even better, there was less road congestion because fewer cars were required.
Except not.
It turns out that people didn’t swap out their cars for Ubers. They swapped out public transport.
And this is causing a “state of emergency” for public transportation in the US. Experts predict a 13% drop in ridership over the next eight years. Doesn’t sound like much, but for an industry heavy on fixed costs that struggles with tiny margins, that’s enough to sink the whole thing.
What’s worse, Uber and Lyft aren’t even cheap anymore. Since 2009, Uber has funnelled $30B away from venture capitalists and toward ride sharers to subsidize the cost of what’s actually a very unprofitable business. And now they’ve got to hike the rates to stay alive.
Average rates have already nearly doubled since 2019, and a cynic might say that Uber’s got us right where they want us. All the competition’s killed off – now it’s time to jack up the rates…
What caught your eye this week? Respond to this email to share it. We always read our inbox. Cheers, Wyatt
