Business
CPO Supply Chain 101. If you are not familiar with Co-packaged Optics yet interested in the AI supply chain, give it a try. This article is a great start.
How Delta Steered Around Airline Industry Chaos. Betting on premium customers shortly after coming out of bankruptcy is a gutsy bold move. Delta is still the number 1 airline in the US, but United has momentum and is not an easy competitor to deal with. United has arguably the best mobile app in the industry. It also has an extensive collection of lounges and international flights. It has Starlink, which Delta does not. The next contract with Chase should put United very close to Delta in terms of profits. How long can Delta stay ahead?
Where Are the Economies of Scale in Homebuilding? I did not expect the largest homebuilders in America have modest economies of scale. Fascinating
Meta has struggled at selling anything other than ads. Will AI be different? Facebook is world class at building social networks at scale and selling targeted ads. No question about it. That’s the company’s strength and unfortunately weakness too. Facebook has not proven it can pivot to another consumer product. The Ray Ban glass looks promising, but it’s not on the same level as AirPods or Apple Watch, let alone the iconic iPhone. The company just doesn’t have the capabilities. Moreover, the ads business brings baggage. Consumers do not want to surrender data through hardware to a company that has scandals in the past in mishandling consumer data and privacy. Nothing has ever changed, simply because personalized ads requires a lot of data. As long as it’s still the cash cow for Facebook, that baggage remains.
Corporate America Is Starting to Ration AI as Cost Skyrockets. Some of the biggest firms in the world focus on maximizing AI input instead of AI output. As the cost of tokens increases while the incremental gain lags or barely exists, companies are asking tough questions and reining in the use of tokens.
Other Stuff I Find Interesting
Americans Are Falling Behind on Their $1.25 Trillion Credit-Card Bill. There will be folks who are backed into a corner and really have to carry a credit card balance. I get that. Life is tough and such situations are unfortunate. However, if you earn $194,000 in annual salary and still have $15,000 in credit card balance, your credit card is not a problem. Your financial planning and management is. It’s concerning that credit card debt is rising. Even though gas prices skyrocketed, issuers and retailers still reported a resilient consumer spending. But when you couple that with unemployment and lack of wage growth, nobody knows when the music will stop.
Inside the Ebola Epicenter, the Virus Rages With Little to Stop It. It’s mad that health care workers and patients’ family members have no protection in the danger zone.
Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the darkest places on Earth. But now the light is intruding. “Every year, artificial light from nearby cities, industrial complexes and mining operations are clouding the sky. Researchers are fighting to preserve the view, but unless something changes, one of the last places on Earth untainted by human light pollution may soon become too bright for new discoveries. In short, a lighter world is not necessarily a brighter one. The biggest imminent threat for Paranal and other observatories, though, is industry: mining and energy facilities are moving ever-closer. In 2025, the International Astronomical Union updated their guidelines, significantly lowering the 10% threshold, by calling for an upper limit for each site based on its situation. Since Paranal is one of only six professional observatories left globally with a light contamination level less than 1%, the guidelines recommend extra effort to preserve this darkness.”
He Invented the Basque Cheesecake. He Prefers Chocolate. “He ended up training as an electrician but struggled to find regular work. In 1987, he reluctantly took a job behind the bar his family had started in 1959. Over time, he saw it as an opportunity to experiment as a chef. While Mr. Rivera’s four cousins showed less commitment to the family business — “they wanted to eat ham and drink wine,” he said — he made his move, turning La Viña into a test kitchen. He experimented with chocolate mousse, meatballs and, one fateful day, cheesecake. Nearly 40 years ago, Mr. Rivera, then a young and floppy-haired barman, used his days off to experiment with recipes, including for a version of a New York-style cheesecake. In his tests, he stripped the cheesecake of its bottom crust to save time and counter-space in a tiny kitchen, and cooked it at a higher temperature to give it a scorched, caramel-colored top. His father, despite losing his sight, nevertheless observed the satisfaction his son’s concoction brought to customers.”
Stats
57% of consumers said that the current high prices were eroding their finance.
Minh Quang Duong 
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