Hump Day Spice

TIME TO READ: 2 min 43 seconds | February 28, 2018

Good morning squad,

Spent the weekend ripping lines…of powder…with my skis. I know what you were thinking. Also, this is going to sound crazy, but I think bobsledding might be my new favorite Olympic sport.

Here’s a week’s worth of stuff to know.

The hot take…any hope for gun control depends on our ability to move a majority of people beyond these psychological barriers. In the case of Parkland, it might be able to overcome some of the obstacles. Here’s why:

Waymo gets approved for driverless ride-hailing service. Arizona’s Department of Transportation approved a permit allowing Waymo to deploy the first driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix, AZ. The company plans to roll the service out over the next year and will add several thousand cars to the current fleet of 600.

The hot take…you probably won’t be riding in a self-driving car this year. Phoenix is low-hanging fruit for the car’s AI — light traffic, wide streets, and not a lot of alternative traffic (e.g. bikers, cabs) — and deploying in more complicated urban areas will take a lot more testing. Still, an autonomous world is not far on the horizon.

S&P 500: (+1.03%)
DJI: (+1.78%)
BTC: (+0.08%)

Telegram raises $850M in ICO…messaging giant Telegram announced that it raised $850 million from investors in the pre-sale stage of its ICO (initial coin offering). The company has been working on plans to use the money to build a Telegram Open Network (TON) that will essentially serve as the Amazon Web Services for blockchain/distributed services. Some of these products include:

The hot take…if this works, Telegram could soon be one of the world’s most valuable companies. As more databases get hacked, more credit card numbers get stolen, and more money flows through the interwebs, people are turning anywhere and everywhere to find security. Telegram’s suite of decentralized services could provide this cybersecurity on a scale nobody has seen.

Spielberg documentary. HBO’s recent documentary Spielberg documents the career of Steven Spielberg and takes you behind the scenes (pun intended) and into the mind of one of the most brilliant directors in the history of cinema. If you have a couple hours over the weekend, it’s worth checking out just to hear the story of how he got his first gig and how he shot Schindler’s List.

TB12 takes on a new venture…Tom Brady, Michael Strahan, and Gotham Chopra are teaming up to launch a new sports media start up called The Religion of Sports. The idea is essentially to source the best stories in the business — across sports — and distribute them on various platforms. Their most recent project, Tom vs. Time, racked up more than 42 million views on Facebook.

The hot take…it doesn’t quite feel like they know what they want The Religion of Sports to be. But if Tom vs. Time is any indication, The Religion of Sports is looking to tell a wide range of documentary-type stories meant to pull at your heart strings and deepen your reverence for sports and competition. This is ESPN Classics but better.

Be well and do good work.

- Danny

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