Feb 02, 2025 Dispatch

Edition 28 – Boom's Flight, Sal's Tutor, Swiss domains, and Uber's Drivers

The big stories

In a historic achievement, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 demonstrator aircraft has become the first independently developed supersonic jet to break the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.122 over California's Mojave Air & Space Port. This achievement signifies a shift from government-led to private sector innovation in supersonic flight. The XB-1's technologies, such as carbon fiber composites and augmented reality vision, are crucial steps towards Boom's future Overture airliner, which aims to carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7 on over 600 routes by 2029. With 130 orders from major airlines, the Overture aims to revolutionize air travel with faster speeds and 100% sustainable aviation fuel, marking the return of commercial supersonic travel since Concorde's retirement in 2003.

Khan Academy has developed Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor that uses GPT-4 to provide personalized education support to students and teachers. Drawing inspiration from Socrates' teaching methods, this tool engages students in dialogue-based learning rather than simply providing answers, while also helping teachers with lesson planning and student assessment. The platform, currently available for $4/month to individuals and through school district subscriptions, has been piloted in over 260 U.S. school districts and is now expanding to 40+ countries through a Microsoft partnership. Despite concerns about AI limitations like occasional errors, Khan Academy's founder believes this technology represents education's biggest potential transformation, with plans to make it freely available as computational costs decrease.

The Swiss tax authority of Basel-Stadt faced an unusual challenge when they discovered a critical domain suffix typo in tax filing flyers distributed to over 100,000 households. Instead of the Swiss ".ch" domain, the flyers mistakenly listed a ".bs" suffix, which happens to be the Bahamas' country code. Rather than spending $100,000 on reprinting flyers, officials opted for an elegant $1,000 solution by purchasing the Bahamian domain and redirecting it to the correct ".ch" Swiss tax portal domain. The creative fix demonstrates how government agencies can adapt to digital mishaps with cost-effective solutions.

Self-driving cars will replace human Uber drivers within the next two decades, according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who believes autonomous vehicles will ultimately be safer and more reliable than human drivers. While Uber's network currently supports over seven million drivers earning $18.1 billion in Q3 2024 alone, the transition to autonomous vehicles will be gradual, starting with easier routes over the next 10 years in a hybrid human-machine system. To prepare for this shift, Uber is developing alternative income opportunities for drivers, including map labeling and AI algorithm development.