2nd magazine!!
Steve Jobs once said the difference between competing computers and the Mac was that the former involved people who wanted to do something great, but the Mac involved people who wanted to do something “insanely great”, and per Jobs “the difference showed”
The value of the top 20 US stocks is nearly as much as the next 480 largest companies (one of multiple reasons why you should probably be investing in an S&P 500 index fund to ensure you benefit from the top companies rather than hoping you choose the top 4% from the top 500).
From a recent study per Outside Magazine:
“The best predictors for how to live longer? Physical activity, followed by age, mobility problems, self-assessed health, diabetes, and smoking. Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of the years you've got left.”
Quantum Computing progress, though just a milestone (not any near term practical outcomes from this milestone yet):
“Researchers at Google reached a major milestone in the race to build practical quantum computers, revealing a device…which performed a calculation in about 5 minutes. In contrast, a supercomputer would take 714 trillion times longer than the age of the universe, which is about 14 billion years old, to perform the same computation.”
The unfolding impact of increasing food delivery:
“Nearly three-quarters of restaurant meals are now consumed offsite…Casual restaurants are expansive, many with dining rooms big enough to accommodate 200 diners. The leases become burdens when no one is sitting in them-and spending on alcohol, which is a significant source of revenue for these places.”
2024 Progress: As Morgan Housel wrote in his book “What Doesn’t Change”, the news often creates a false impression of the ratio of bad to good developments, partly because good things usually take time while bad things usually happen very quickly.
Thus we get steady progress amid a drumbeat of bad news is the normal state of affairs (the perpetually missing headline: “capitalism worked ok again today and most people got a little better off”). For example, doubling real wealth in US over 50 years sounds like a lot, but it means 1.4% GDP growth per year. The continued improvements year after year add up.
Here are some improvements in 2024 you may have missed.
Health 2024 Progress:
Energy & Climate 2024 Progress:
Society & Culture 2024 Progress:
Science 2024 Progress:
Middle Age Innovations: If you read my November bulletin, you probably noticed there were no posts about the Middle Ages. “How could there be zero Middle Age posts!?” you probably thought to yourself. Don’t worry, here is a Middle Ages post. Specifically about the many significant innovations that set a stronger foundation for the acceleration of progress from ~1800 on. I had thought of the Middle Ages as “the dark ages” with little progress for nearly a millennium, but the below convinced me I was wrong and may convince you of the same. Inventions from the Middle Ages:
In spite of the lack of AR/VR callouts, one of 2024's most significant technical accomplishments came from Apple in the form of its long-rumored Vision Pro headset. The below tweet from Benedict Evans captures the combination of the Apple Vision Pro’s simultaneous amazingness while lacking many if any ‘killer apps/experiences’ that will get the general public to buy and frequently use VR.
Areas called out by both a16z & YC
Interesting areas called out by 1 of the 2 VCs
Area not called out by either VC
Following up on last month’s transportation post that “the future of self driving cars are here but not evenly distributed”, the speed of rollout from SF, LA, and Phoenix to the next set of cities looks like it will be over a year out. This will still take some time…
It takes a long time to build things in certain places, but this extended time is not a law of physics. In fact it seems to be something humans at least in the US have made colossally slower over time, and a trend that we should be trying to reverse