In today’s issue we discuss Mark Cuban is leaving Shark Tank, Amazon rolls out their AI chatbot named Q, a new 3D interior design game named Rooms is about to take over my house, LeBron James old house just sold for a 44% increase over the previous price he sold at, and SETI just landed a $200 million dollar donation.

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Lionel Messi Is Shooting His Shot In The MLS

Business

It seems everyone and their brother has an AI chatbot these days, so why shouldn’t Amazon announce their own? Well, that’s exactly what they did. Amazon introduced Q their AI chatbot for business (because what could possibly go wrong when you unleash an AI chatbot on business users?!?!).

Amazon was being a bit clever when they named their AI chatbot Q, which is the “same name in the James Bond movies or the Q character in the Star Trek television shows, depending on which AWS executive you ask.”

Q will cost $20 per person per month, so don’t expect big companies to roll this out to all of their workforce at once. Want a little more juice under the hood, well there’s a version for developers and IT workers will cost $25 per person per month. Starting to get a little pricey you might think, but both “Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace for business workers both cost $30 per person per month.”

Amazon announces Q, an AI chatbot for businesses

Tech

There’s a great new 3D interior design game that’s available on the web and in the Apple app store, and I can’t wait to try it out with my daughter who wants to grow up to be an Interior Designer.

It’s tough to describe the game, but here’s my best shot. It’s a Roblox-type of interior design game that you can design and decorate your “room”, and then you can use Roblox’s Lua coding language to customize things in your room.

“[Rooms users] want to decorate a room for the calming effects of just placing things and editing it. There’s this whole movement that I’ve learned about… cozy games,” Toff explains. Cozy games are those that people play without an end goal, they’re just for relaxing and unwinding. “People are making the rooms for the sake of making the rooms.”

I think this could be a great coding-gateway drug to get more kids interested in software development while having fun decorating their “rooms”. I know I’m going to lose endless hours of my life playing this game!

Rooms, an interactive 3D space designer and ‘cozy game,’ arrives on the App Store

Entertainment

Sad face. Mark Cuban is leaving the show he co-founded,‘Shark Tank’, after 16 years.

Mark mentions how he has entrepreneurs come up to him saying they first started watching his show when they were 10, and now they’re pitching him. After all these years he shares that on an investment basis he is down, but as far as companies that he’s invested in that are still operating he is way up.

Shark Tank has a rotating group of investors like Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec and Kevin O'Leary. As of 2022 an insane $207 million dollars has been invested through the show to date.

Mark Cuban is leaving ‘Shark Tank’

Real Estate

You know how much we love to talk about real estate. I came across this news that LeBron James old Coconut Grove mansion sold for $18.5M. Why is this interesting? Well, it’s 44% more than what LeBron sold it for in 2021 when he unloaded the property for $12.8 million back in May of 2021. I don’t think this is a case of inflation. It’s more likely a case of celebrity ballin’ that caused the house’s price to appreciate. They don’t call him the GOAT for nothing!

LeBron James’ former Coconut Grove mansion sells for $18.5M

Space

OMG I was crazy about SETI growing up, and actually I still am! I had the SETI screensaver installed on all of my family’s computers so that it would crunch signal data while the screensaver ran. We never did find any signs of intelligent life via the SETI screensaver, or in my family for that matter, but it was a lot of fun to dream about alien civilizations.

Now the SETI Institute has received a $200 million donation to seek out evidence of alien life. I’m not going to listen to the naysayers who think we should focus on helping people here on planet Earth first instead of searching for aliens that are probably not even out there. There are countless inventions that have been made as a result of our country’s investment in space, and I for one am all for investing in SETI.

SETI Institute gets $200 million to seek out evidence of alien life

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris