Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 33

Why Industrial Tourism Is One of the Fastest Growing Trends in Travel

Portugal is one of several countries investing big into industrial tourism – a term that describes experiences where travelers can visit factories to see how products get made. Of course, vineyards and liquor distilleries along with many food manufacturers have long offered this sort of experience. But Portugal is taking it one step further. In São João da Madeira, you can visit a pencil making factory, or a hat factory or facility that makes high end belts. The entire idea is a perfect twist on...

Detroit Rides “Post Bankruptcy Energy” To Become America’s Most Unlikely Boomtown, According to WSJ

About ten years ago, no one would have said the city of Detroit would be sitting at the perfect crossroads of multiple urban trends. Around then, the city was in the midst of declaring bankruptcy. That moment created a new sense of urgency among those wealthy enough to do something about the future of the city, and many of them stepped up. Dan Gilbert, the billionaire co-founder of home lender Rocket Mortgage, moved the company headquarters to downtown Detroit and bought more than 130 buildings ...

Why Amazon Is Filled with Garbage Ebooks and How They Could Fix It

An article from Vox this week explored why exactly Amazon is filled with so many garbage ebooks, and the answer is infuriatingly straightforward. AI makes it easy to generate content, Amazon makes it too easy to publish large volumes of ebooks with minimal quality standards and effective growth hacker marketing makes it easy to promote these ebook to unsuspecting consumers on the largest online retail platform in the world.

Recently Amazon, in a half-hearted attempt to address the problem, limite...

What Would You Put In the “Forever Library” to Archive Human Existence for a Billion Years?

Several million years from now when future civilizations or aliens or whatever is around then look back on human existence, at least they will know how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear back in 1983. That’s just one of the archives of humanity that is part of the Galactic Legacy Archive–a library of humanity that has been sent to the moon where scientists estimate it will last for billions of years barring an unlikely meteor strike.

The entire library is on a disc made of...

The New Luxury Airline for Dogs Called BarkAir Is Not a Joke, It’s a Brilliant Marketing Stunt

Apparently it has been a dream of dogfood subscription brand BarkBox for more than a decade to create an airline dedicated to flying dogs and their human companions around the world. Now they are making it a reality through a partnership with private jet charter company Talon Air and the way they are doing it is actually quite smart.

They are focusing on long haul routes from the east to west coast of America and to London. The seats are all luxury with special amenities for dogs. They ha...

AI Disproportionately Affects Women. We All Need to Fight Back.

This week, the “world’s first Miss AI” digital beauty contest was announced with $5000 prize awarded based on beauty and skill using AI tools. One tech expert predicted that the AI girlfriend industry could hit $1B in revenue soon despite multiple reports of how the creators of these digital companions may be hoarding your private data.

While these issues could adversely affect people of any gender, one report found that 96% of all deepfakes online are non-consensual fake videos of women. Clearly...

Meet Tupperware: The Slowing Fading Brand That Should Have Won the Nostalgia Trend

Tupperware parties were a thing; once so iconic that they symbolized an entire cultural movement of work-from-home (mostly) female entrepreneurs in a time when opportunities for women to run and own their own businesses were rare. Today the company is in rapid decline and the public shift away from plastic food containers is only one reason for it. A larger reason is the brand’s steadfast refusal to update its product line or direct sales-centric business model.

As it stands, the slow dem...

What If There Is No Loneliness Epidemic?

An epidemic suggests that something is spreading over a short period of time and is worse right now than it was in the past. By this definition, should loneliness qualify? The common wisdom today is that our devices are simultaneously making us more anxious and lonelier. This article suggests that perhaps the rise of loneliness isn’t the one-dimensional wisdom we often take it to be.

Yes, people are more disconnected now and are craving human connection perhaps more than in the past. Still, as th...

Playing Happy Reef Sounds Could Bring Coral Reefs Back to Life

A happy and healthy coral reef has a sound. The various “snaps, groans, grunts and scratches that form the symphony of a healthy ecosystem” are not just a symbol of a thriving reef. Underwater scientists have begun testing using these sounds in areas with degraded reefs and are finding the sounds attract coral larvae to settle. When they do, a new reef is formed. 

As the problem of degrading coral reefs continues to spread, this is a story that could have wide ranging implications. With t...

Augmented Reality Comes to Sports, Thanks to Wrestlemania

Last weekend The Rock made his return to wrestling and a “new era” for the sport was on display at WWE’s Wrestlemania 40 event. The event itself was largely what fans of the sport probably expected, but the use of augmented reality technology in the broadcast stood out because of how integrated it has become. While other sports are launching small-scale pilot tests of the technology, WWE seems to be all in.

From the over-the-top introductions to wrestlers where they walk through AR genera...