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Wooden Satellite Launch, Anthropic's Hackathon,

Building wooden houses on Mars? Planning has begun.

Author

Charbel Zeaiter
November 07, 2024

Good morning!

While the world (at least my local world) has been nervously paying attention to the USA elections, lots has happened in design, tech/AI, gaming … the world keeps turning.

To my friends near and far, no matter what your preferences, no matter what current reality looks like, let LOVE reign supreme. And let’s work together to improve life, because Good Things Come To Those Who Make.

Yours in wonder,
Charbel
Founder of Velvet Onion, Faster Zebra and more to come …

Today’s Highlights

  • AI: Anthropic’s Hackathon: Top 3 Winners and their Genius Ideas

  • Design: No more Interactive Shows on Netflix: Company’s sight fixed on other advancements

  • Science & Tech: A Wooden Satellite from Japan lifts-off into Space

  • Founding: Software Companies now Charge for Usage instead of Access: Leads to a shift in SaaS ARR definition

  • Product: Evolution of SaaS: Service-as-Software

  • Creativity: How AI Elevates Human Creativity: Beyond Execution to Innovation

  • Today’s AI image: Japanese Wooden Satellite

  • Quote for the day: Dale Carnegie on Fear

AI

Anthropic’s Hackathon: Top 3 Winners and their Genius Ideas

This past weekend, Anthropic teamed up with Menlo Ventures to host a hackathon that drew in over 200 brilliant programmers. The results? Well, here are the top contenders:

First place: A clever idea that has Claude teaming up with a robotic arm—trained just by uploading an instruction manual. No need for manual labor, just pure AI ingenuity.

Second place: A genius "anti-captcha" that can sniff out when Claude is solving a verification puzzle. It’s like having an AI detective on the case.

Third place: A turbocharged PRD generator. This multi-agent debate machine gathers diverse AI personas (UX leads, data scientists, finance experts) for a one-minute rapid-fire debate, presenting them with a PRD to suggest improvements before delivering the final, improved document.

Why does it matter?

The first place hack could massively cut costs for industries looking to program custom robotic behavior.

The second-place idea addresses the pressing need to detect when AI is bypassing security in an age where it can use computers just like humans.

As for the third, it’s a time-saver for product managers, offering quick insights from various perspectives to improve requirements without breaking a sweat.

Also in AI

Design

No more Interactive Shows on Netflix: Company’s sight fixed on other advancements

Netflix is saying goodbye to almost all of its interactive shows and films by December 1st.

Which ones will still continue?

The company's "Interactive Specials" page currently lists 24 titles, but only four will survive the cull: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, and You vs. Wild.

Some Backstory

The era of Netflix’s experiments with interactive content was short-lived hence. Their journey began in 2017 with Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, and of course, Bandersnatch left us all questioning our life choices.

But with only a handful of titles on the list, it’s clear the format didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Still, why?

A Netflix spokesperson, Chrissy Kelleher, put it simply: “The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas.”

Translation? Interactive content wasn’t as shiny as they hoped and re-channelising efforts to other booming tech would be a wiser step forward. Like GenAI in Gaming and much beyond.

Also in Design

Science & Tech

A Wooden Satellite from Japan lifts-off into Space

On Tuesday, the world saw the launch of the first-ever wooden satellite, LignoSat, into space. The mission? To prove that wood can indeed handle the harsh realities of space travel.

A Little Deep Dive

Material: Crafted by researchers at Kyoto University of Japan, LignoSat is made from honoki— a type of magnolia traditionally used for sword sheaths in Japan.

Objective: The team’s ambitious goal is to plant trees on the Moon and Mars within the next 50 years.

Takao Doi, an astronaut studying human space activities at Kyoto, put it succinctly that with timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we’ll be able to build homes and sustain life in space indefinitely.

Origin and process: The experiment is the result of a 10-month study aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where researchers found honoki to be the most suitable timber for space use.

They then used a traditional Japanese crafting technique to assemble the satellite, steering clear of screws and glue for a more organic construction method.

Why Wood over Metal?

  • Unlike metal, which creates oxide particles upon re-entry, wood is expected to burn up with less pollution.

  • Besides, wood is more durable in space due to the lack of moisture and oxygen.

A Strong Drive of Passion

This statement made by Doi well summates Kyoto’s visionary mindset -

"If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk's SpaceX".

Founding

Software Companies now Charge for Usage instead of Access : Leads to a shift in SaaS ARR definition

Traditionally, we used to pay a fixed charge to buy access to a software model. However, with a noticeable market shift in the SaaS industry (mainly AI), companies now tend to charge for how much we used the product/ what they delivered. 

Instead of an access-based fixed pricing model, they’re adopting a consumption-based (based on produced result) pricing system. 

Why is ARR irrelevant now? 

With the conventional metric of Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), a SaaS firm predicts a definite amount of recurring revenue to be earned from the product. Therefore, the scaling formula remains quite simple - “Convert more customers!”

But with the outcome-oriented charging, the revenue graph will behave more upsy-downsy than before. Thus, the apparent number of ARR would not suffice for up-to-the-mark revenue forecasts and planning.

Product

Evolution of SaaS: Service-as-Software 

SaaS products have evolved in broadly three phases-

Phase-1: Human Autonomy, Supplementation from Software

Human control + Software Assistance

In this phase, humans are the boss, with software playing the role of a trusty assistant. It handles the boring stuff, processes data, and offers insights, but the final decision—and responsibility—rests firmly in human hands.

Phase-2: Human Stewardship, Total Delegation to AI

AI-driven automation of work + Human supervision

Here, AI takes the reins in automating processes, performing complex tasks, and driving operations. Humans move into a supervisory role, overseeing AI activities, ensuring ethical implementation, and stepping in when necessary.

Phase-3: AI-Human Autonomy, Complementation to each other

Independent AI agents + Human Collaboration

AI goes solo, handling tasks on its own, but teams up with humans to fine-tune results. While AI focuses on the specialised tasks, humans bring in the creativity, judgment, and context to make collaboration truly effective.

Creativity

How AI Elevates Human Creativity: Beyond Execution to Innovation

So this is how a common creative process goes:

Abundant Ideation- It all begins with a huge messy bundle of vague ideas. We slowly cocoon each idea and expand on them one at a time. 

↓

Sufficient Execution- When done manually, this calls for a hell lot of time, effort and money costs to execute an adequate amount of ideas to choose from. 

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Choice of the best- Lastly, you define, refine, merge and fuse executions to solidify a presentable and marketable creation.

But humanity has evolved and has given birth to an offspring intelligence. And it has grown to the extent that now it can successfully assist humans in creative activities. This quite modifies the process:

Reallocating Execution Efforts to Abundant Ideation - With AI-driven automation in the picture, human creatives are left with only one extremely essential task that can be best carried out by honing in on pure creative energy of the brain - It is Ideation.  

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Sufficient Execution without boundaries- Now, the most cost-sucking step of the creative process can thankfully be made efficient by AI generation and automation tools. Besides, the silver lining is we can iterate and reiterate multiple times, blessing us with more choice.  

↓

Choice of the best- Though not so much of a tedious task, we can make it more effective with AI-powered data analysis and market research. 

Today’s AI Image

Japanese Wooden Satellite

Quote of the Day

Dale Carnegie on Fear

"If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."

Dale Carnegie

What we’re working on

Velvet Onion & Friends

We’ve been building a complex, enterprise wide, data-rich, AI-enabled product for our friends at IAG.

As their product development partners, our process with their great team has been faster, leaner and more cost-effective for the company.

We’re redefining the way students learn skills in Strategy, Business, Product Development, Design, RevOps, Marketing and Pitching.

We’re soon launching our flagship program where students learn everything from strategy to pre-launch. The winners get their idea built by Velvet Onion.

🧞Your wish is my command

Charbel

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