IRL Tony Stark

October 9, 2024

💖 IRL Tony Stark: A 35-year-old man just became the second person with a titanium heart transplant. With severe heart failure and fluid in his lungs, doctors used a magnet-powered artificial heart as a last resort. The result? Normal circulation, blood flow and blood pressure. The only downside is he says it feels a little “heavier.” This is one great way to deal with organ shortage.

Tags: heart health, medical devices, organ transplants

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A small town in Texas will soon house the world’s biggest bitcoin mine

Corsicana, Texas is a small town an hour away from Dallas. They kicked off the oil boom in the South 130 years ago, turning their land into a money-making machine. Today, it’s the kind of dreary town you don’t stop in because there’s nothing memorable.

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'My heart was gone': Second person to receive a titanium heart shares experience

25 times faster

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is scraping info off the web so much faster than OpenAI. Its Bytespider tool (paywall link) is gathering data to feed a new large language model, aka chatbot. Don’t let anyone tell you this company is harmless.

$300 billion industry

Online advertising is huge, and Google is losing its chokehold to AI. Next year, Google could control less than 50% of the search ad market in the U.S. That hasn’t happened in over a decade (paywall link). Times are a-changin’.

80 Gbps speeds

In the next USB cable standard. USB4 2.0 offers double the transfer speeds and charging power of the USB4. They’re coming to Japan in December, and we should see them here in the U.S. once Big Tech companies update their gear to be compatible. Bring on the super-duper-fast charging!

29,032 feet and growing

Mount Everest’s steady elevation gain can be traced back 89,000 years. Now, it rises about 2 millimeters per year. That’s only 0.08 inches, but it all adds up when you’re getting high.

7 days

How early election officials suggest you send your mail-in ballot. Massive delays in the U.S. Postal Service could mean thousands of ballots won’t make it into the official account. I’m not taking any chances; I’m voting in person.

$12,000 to $800,000

Range in value of the watches in Tom Brady’s collection. They’ll be auctioned off by Sotheby’s. The white gold and diamond watch he wore during his Netflix special, “Greatest Roast of All Time,” is the hot ticket, and it’s expected to go for $400,000 to $800,000. Yeah, I hear you — my $30 Timex does the same thing.

$157 billion valuation

For ChatGPT maker OpenAI. They just raised $6.6 billion in funding. Some of the biggest investors include Thrive Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank. This surprised me: OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion in 2024. They have a heck of a lot of Nvidia GPUs to buy to power their models.

$400 million

Pink Floyd’s payout for selling the rights to their recorded music, name and likeness. Sony now owns the British rock band’s catalog. I smell a virtual concert coming to a city near you, where you can be comfortably numb. Btw, digital avatars of ABBA do concerts seven days a week in a custom-built London arena with a 3,000-seat capacity. They make $2,000,000 per week!