Five-dollar chocolate bars and $15 bottles of olive oil. What gives?

Chocolate prices hit record highs in 2024 due to dry weather in West Africa. Extreme droughts in Spain and Italy caused the price of olive oil to double. Could AI help?

You bet. Just as ChatGPT was trained on billions of words, “Botanic,” offered by Living Models, is trained on DNA, the language of plants. It may sound corny, but Botanic “gets” corn. It also acts as a bud to your spud. For example, drought and rising temperatures in Idaho and Washington led to smaller yields and lower-quality potatoes. Botanic can help with that.

Currently, it takes about eight years of trial and error to develop a new drought-resistant crop. But executives from Living Models say that with Botanic, it will take just two or three years.

That’s crucial. Otherwise, some crops are in danger of winding down. For example, California farmers are planting less rice due to water shortages. Botanic can help by developing rice that matures before summer’s peak heat. It can also create varieties that tolerate the salt water in coastal farms.

According to a report published in bioRxiv, Botanic can predict plant traits and identify genetic markers for drought tolerance, heat resistance and more. What’s more, with their Nvidia-based equipment, it can scale up for big projects.

Online Betting

A Parisian earned $34,000 by betting on hot weather. After gambling at Polymarket.com, he walked over to the temperature sensors at De Gaulle airport and held a portable hair dryer up to them, causing the weather reports to announce heat spikes, just as he predicted. Similarly, a US solider who helped capture the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro used his insider’s info to make nearly $410,000. Unfortunately for him, he was arrested.

The total value of Polymarket’s trades executed in the past 365 days surpassed $25 billion according to tokenterminal.com. When I visited the site, people were betting on the odds of a peace deal with Iran in May, among many other topics.

Woman’s Fidelity Account Shows Zero Funds

When customer service representatives at Fidelity tried to help a long-time customer, they revealed zero funds in her account. What happened?

According to recent reports, Fidelity hadn’t merged her identity profiles. First, she had registered with her tax identification number. Later, she had registered with her Social Security number. A glitch made it seem as though all her money had vanished. It took five days of investigation before her life savings were restored. In the meantime, she had no access. Fortunately, she’d saved a paper version with her old account number.

The lesson? Either print out or save a PDF of your monthly statements, trade confirmations and annual summaries.

AI FOR TECH SUPPORT

Recently, my TV gave me an error message in German. So I asked Google Gemini.

First it suggested I check the network settings. There I saw that the TV wasn’t connected to WiFi. It turned out that the necessary “handshake” between the TV and the router was more like a slap. “Turn it off with the power button and wait for two minutes,” Gemini advised. But since my TV doesn’t have a power button, I used the remote control, and that didn’t work. Gemini said using the remote to turn off a TV is like closing a laptop lid. It only puts the device into sleep mode. So I unplugged the TV from the wall and waited. Voila. Two minutes later, after plugging it back in, everything was back to normal. In short, AI tech support works.

Next I asked Gemini whether Google Play or Amazon Prime would be best for watching the movie “Hamnet.” “Amazon,” it said, going against its own Google parent. “The Google Play/YouTube movie player is notoriously heavy and can be sluggish or prone to buffering on older sets.” It also said that the picture is sharper on Amazon Prime.

Flight Updates on Your Lock Screen

Android users who store boarding passes in Google Wallet will soon see flight updates directly on their lockscreens. They’ll also see updates on their departure, destination and arrival time. Once on the plane, a progress bar will tell them how far along they are in the flight. Alternatively, Apple iPhone users can use the Apple Wallet app to store their boarding passes and get built-in flight tracking, progress bars and gate updates on the lock screen.

Becoming SuperFluent

The new version of Superfluent, the language-learning app, is fantastic. Their previous version was good too, but this one takes you on a virtual tour of the country whose language you’re studying.

Since I’m learning Spanish, I’m virtually strolling through major museums, restaurants and attractions in Mexico. Previously, I often felt dumb with Superfluent’s classic version, but this one adds multiple-choice quizzes, which are a lot easier. I feel like I’m right there.

My other favorite language app, Duolingo, is incredibly addicting and a great vocabulary builder. But Superfluent is better for AI-generated conversations.

Ping Pong Playing Robot

According to an AP story, Ace, a robotic arm built by Sony, has become a great ping pong player, defeating some of the best human players. It has nine camera eyes positioned around the court and can follow the ball and measure its spin. It was trained on an Olympic-sized table tennis court in Tokyo.

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