Framing It: 2.25.2020
The Startup Boom Has Bust, The Internet of Things is Terrible, Baby Yoda LED Wall, We Might Be Done With Coronavirus!
The Startup Boom Has Bust
For those of you who weren’t around in the late 90s, here’s a quick refresher. Sears didn’t think that whole ‘Internet’ thing would work out, but let me tell you about Prodigy. Pets.com was shipping kitty litter (heavy!) at a loss. There was a unique, online currency that somehow wasn’t money called ‘Beenz’. There was also an ‘Internet Time’ that didn’t correspond to any existing calendar, and I think the time was words or something. The iPod would arrive in 2001, with no wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame. In short, the dot-com boom was filled with hubris until it wasn’t.
Now, we may be seeing the end of the latest boom. The startup boom is deflating, writes the New York Times. Robot pizza startups are folding, and even Uber and Airbnb are not immune. Even weed startups are culling their staffs.
A Bricked Stationary Bike
If anything you own requires a connection to the Internet, you don’t own it. The company that built it can shut it down. The latest evidence for this is Flywheel, a ‘smart’ stationary bike. They’ll all be shut down.
- Flywheel, a maker of ‘smart’, Internet-connected stationary bikes, will shut down after losing a patent infringement case with Peloton. While not great for Flywheel owners, it’s just a stationary bike, right?
- Thanks to that judgement, all Flywheels will be ‘bricked’ on March 1st. The bike will still work, but you won’t get your spin classes on the shiny LCD between the handlebars.
- While Peloton will offer replacement bikes to Flywheel owners who are not financing their bikes, here’s a neat hack that turns every ‘dumb’ stationary bike into a ‘smart’ bike:
Baby Yoda LED Wall
If you thought gigantic LED displays were only useful for electronic billboards, this is the one for you. The Mandolorian, also known as the only reason to have a Disney+ subscription, is using a gigantic LED wall for the sets of cloud cities and desert planets.
- American Cinematographer has a profile on this sound stage, called, ‘the volume’. It’s basically what it looks like; a 270° semi-circular room, with a gigantic LED display wrapping around the perimeter.
- This sort of technique had previously been used in the Star Wars universe; Rogue One used LED panels for dynamic lighting and reflections. This technique was first notably used in Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
- This goes a step beyond, playing rendered landscapes in real time on the display. That means settings are rendered in the computer, played on the LED wall, and everything happens in camera. It’s a long way from rear-projection techniques.
- The question is, who was the first person to play Smash Bros. on this gigantic display?
Coronavirus Sales Slump
So how’s that coronavirus doing? Quite good! Over the last few days, the number of cases has been leveling out and slightly decreasing. There is, however, about a two-week incubation time, so we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
- But there’s bad news on the tech front: PC sales are expected to drop this year because of coronavirus. In the best case scenero, PC sales will be down 3.4%.
- The reason for this is a drop in production; coronavirus extended the official Lunar New Year celebration in China, reducing output. There was also a shortage of components related to this, and longer wait times for stock.
- But things are looking up! Seeed Studio (in Shenzhen) is back up in operation, and manufacturing isn’t just limited to medical devices.
- There are backlogs, and coronavirus may have threatened the launch of the next iPhone. Maybe global pandemic was the better option.
