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Home robotics’ gain might benefit from Apple’s electric vehicle deficit

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With the Apple Car firmly in the rearview, the company is reportedly exploring yet another notoriously difficult path: home robots. In spite of those efforts, however, the company has fared best when it focused its resources back into its robot vacuum. The hockey puck design that’s prevalent across robot vacuums isn’t ideal for anything beyond the core functionality it’s built for. That’s likely a big part of the reason the company is selling it as a development platform. There’s nothing wrong with teleop in many scenarios, but it seems unlikely that people are going to flock to a home robot that’s being controlled by a human somewhere far away.

Turkey’s Gaming Scene Gains Momentum with Emergence of Innovative VC Fund

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Turkey has gained a well-earned reputation as a veritable cauldron of mobile games startups, leading to the rise of VCs dedicated to the sector. The latest to join this coterie is Laton Ventures, a new gaming-focused VC that has raised a $35 million fund. Indeed, between 2018 and 2022 Turkish gaming start-ups raised more than $1 billion in funding. There are now at least 25 VC funds that invest in video games startups based out of Turkey. “We’re positioning as a bridge between the Turkish gaming ecosystem, which is booming, and the international gaming ecosystem.

“Elon Musk Announces: AI Chatbot Grok Will be Available for All Premium Subscribers on X Starting This Week”

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Following Elon Musk’s xAI’s move to open source its Grok large language model earlier in March, the X owner on Tuesday said that the company formerly known as Twitter will soon offer the Grok chatbot to more paying subscribers. In a post on X, Musk announced Grok will become available to Premium subscribers this week, not just those on the higher-end tier, Premium+, as before. Previously, Grok was only available to Premium+ subscribers, at $16 per month or a hefty $168 per year. Most notably, Grok has the ability to access real-time X data — something rivals can’t offer. Of course, the value of that data under Musk’s reign may be diminishing if X is losing users.

Teamwork versus Individualism: Embracing Collaboration over Competition – Insights from Five Deep Tech Financiers

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“The need for partnerships for deep tech investments, and the need to work together, it seemed obvious,” Hyuk-Jeen Suh told TechCrunch. Initially, Greentown’s founders were looking for lab space, but they quickly realized the benefits of the shared space went far beyond lower rent payments. The fact that the collaborative emerged among deep tech investors isn’t surprising. The sort of problems deep tech startups face favors cooperation over cutthroat competition. For investors, there’s so much blue sky in deep tech that Suh doesn’t think secrecy and jealousy gives anyone an edge.

High-Speed Rail Prevails as Hyperloop Falters

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The idea “originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” according to his biographer Ashlee Vance. And the news of its demise broke less than two weeks after the Biden administration announced $6 billion in funding for high-speed rail projects across California. It’s a big win for public transit advocates, many of whom have spent decades stumping for not just high-speed rail, but better rail service overall. Thankfully this country was already building momentum back up for investing in its rail system, with a focus on faster trains. Brightline is also building what it calls “the nation’s first true high-speed rail network” between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.