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Week in Review: Meta Reveals Its Oakley Smart Glasses
Welcome back to Week in Review! Lots in store for you today, including Wix’s latest acquisition, Meta’s new smart glasses, a look at the new Digg, and much more. Have a great weekend!
Meta and Oakley have teamed up on a new pair of smart glasses that can record 3K video, play music, handle calls, and respond to Meta AI prompts. They start at $399 and have double the battery life of Meta’s Ray-Bans. A limited-edition Oakley Meta HSTN model will be available starting July 11.
Unicorn watch: Wix bought a 6-month-old solo startup Base44 for $80 million in cash after it quickly gained traction as a no-code AI tool for building web apps. Created by a single founder and already profitable, Base44’s rapid rise made scooping it up irresistible.
Sand to the rescue: Finland just turned on the world’s largest sand battery – yes, actual sand – which stores heat to help power the small town of Pornainen’s heating system and cut its carbon emissions. The low-tech, low-cost system is built from discarded fireplace soapstone, housed in a giant silo, and can store heat for weeks, proving you don’t need fancy lithium to fight climate change. You just need a pile of hot rocks.
We’re back, baby: VanMoof is back from the brink with the S6, its first e-bike since bankruptcy – and it’s sticking to its signature custom design, despite that being what nearly killed the company. Backed by McLaren tech and a beefed-up repair network, the new VanMoof promises smoother rides, smarter features, and (hopefully) fewer stranded cyclists.
Space lasers: Baiju Bhatt, best known for co-founding Robinhood, is now building lasers in space. His new startup, Aetherflux, has raised $60 million to prove that beaming solar power from orbit isn’t a fantasy, with a demo satellite set to launch next year and early backing from the Department of Defense.
Oh no: One of SpaceX’s Starship rockets exploded during a test in Texas, likely pushing back the vehicle’s next launch, which had been tentatively set for June 29. SpaceX says the blast, caused by a pressurized tank failure, didn’t injure anyone, but it’s yet another setback in a rocky year for the company’s ambitious mega-rocket program.
That lossless feeling: Spotify’s long-awaited lossless audio tier still hasn’t launched, but fresh hints buried in the latest app code suggest that it’s under active development and could be closer than ever. But with years of delays and no official timeline, fans might want to temper their excitement until Spotify confirms the rollout.
Digg’s reboot has entered alpha testing with a fresh iOS app aimed at becoming an AI-era Reddit alternative.
Source: techcrunch.com
