For the greater part of this past summer, I wore six smart rings at once. I wanted to see which was best, and the Oura Ring Gen 3 was the clear winner. Well, it’s been about two weeks since my experiment ended, and there’s now a new winner: the Oura Ring 4.
Technology
Chip industry faces talent shortage as revenues head to $1 trillion | Deloitte
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In 2022, Deloitte expected that the global semiconductor industry would need to add a million skilled workers by 2030, or more than 100,000 annually. Two years later, that forecast still holds.
But key industry trends continue to compound the talent challenge as the industry races toward $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, according to a new report by Deloitte, the accounting and consulting giant.
The company said that advanced skills driven by demand for Generative AI (GenAI) mean that the talent needed for advancing technologies is often in high demand and can be difficult to attract and retain in a competitive talent market. The report’s timing is interesting, considering the U.S. is reportedly considering limiting sales of AMD and Nvidia AI chips aboard.
The semiconductor industry is facing an aging workforce without a clear plan for succession, which may be further exacerbated by low industry appeal compared to the broader tech industry. I suppose this is because the chip industry isn’t as sexy as working for AI or social media companies.
Global solutions needed for a global challenge
Localization of manufacturing, as well as overall global demand trends, is contributing to a talent and skills shortage that spans the globe. Semiconductor companies are often left competing over the same insufficient pool of existing talent.
And talent outcomes are tied to global chips laws. Both the U.S. and European chips legislation include specific objectives and grant application requirements regarding workforce development that companies should commit to in order to receive funding, remain in compliance, and achieve growth objectives.
Geopolitical concerns and supply chain fragility continue to contribute to the onshoring of manufacturing (advanced node, trailing node, memory) and back-end ATP (assembly, test, and packaging) processes.
A history of cycles
The cyclical chips industry experienced its seventh downturn since 1990, with revenues declining 9% to $520 billion for 2023. As a result, development of some new fabrication capacity has been extended, which has also likely delayed some of the immediate, short-term need for talent.
This downturn is expected to be temporary, with revenue set to grow by 16% in 2024 to an all-time high of $611 billion. With the industry back on track to reach the $1 trillion figure for 2030, talent will be needed to fuel that growth. But now there’s more time to optimize talent forecasts, mix, pipeline, skills and capabilities, and development plans.
A richer understanding of the challenges driving the semiconductor talent shortages can enable semiconductor leaders to deploy targeted strategies to help address their looming talent needs.
Advanced skills being driven by demand for GenAI
According to Deloitte’s 2023 Smart Manufacturing: Generative AI for Semiconductors Survey, 72% of industry leaders surveyed predict that GenAI’s impact on the semiconductor industry will be “high to transformative.”
Respondents saw high potential for Generative AI’s use throughout their business, with heavier value realization expectations within core engineering, chip design and manufacturing, operations, and maintenance.
Although GenAI may help alleviate some engineering talent shortages by addressing routine tasks and giving engineers more time to perform their core jobs better and faster, the GenAI skill set scarcity remains.
The semiconductor workforce is expected to need to exponentially grow its GenAI skill sets due to their shortage in the market. And leaders in the field are often in high demand across most sectors of
the economy. Semiconductor companies should consider offering more novel benefits beyond competitive compensation, such as having a seat at the table, to better attract AI talent and leadership.
Having proficient GenAI talent is key in driving the industry’s ability to innovate and reap the benefits of this transformative technology.
Looming talent cliff and low industry appeal
An aging workforce, regulatory changes, newly required skill sets, and shifting employee expectations are changing the landscape of semiconductor talent. The lack of brand awareness and appeal in the semiconductor industry compared to better-known technology brands can make addressing these challenges more difficult for the industry.
Semiconductor companies seem to recognize that attracting and retaining new and diverse talent is more important than ever, yet it continues to be a challenge for many organizations. Building diversity can be difficult; currently only one-third of the U.S. semiconductor industry employees identify as female and less than 6% as Black or African American.
The U.S. semiconductor workforce is also older than other technology industries: As of July 2024, 55% of the U.S. semiconductor workforce is 45 or older, with less than 25% under the age of 35.11 In Europe, 20% of the industry is 55 or older, with Germany expecting about 30% of their workforce to retire over the next decade.
Inconsistent knowledge management, and the lack of new talent to adopt institutional knowledge, presents an additional workforce barrier for many semiconductor companies.
Relative to other sectors of the technology industry, semiconductor organizations can offer a sense of trust, stability, and projected market growth—attractive qualities to the most recent college entrants.
While semiconductor companies may have struggled with brand recognition and a competitive employee value proposition, investing in recent high school graduates could help reinvigorate talent pipelines that may be more attracted to stability and flexibility over rapid advancement.
A global shortage
The need for semiconductor talent is a global issue. Countries are not producing enough skilled talent to meet their workforce needs. And companies can’t continue to tussle over the same finite talent pool while still expecting to successfully grow the industry, launch new (and expand existing) fabs, and keep up with rapid technological advances.
In the United States, where the majority of annual graduates with a master’s degree in semiconductor-related engineering fields are foreign students, 80% of those graduates do not stay in the United States post-graduation.
According to Deloitte China and Asia Pacific’s most recent APAC Semiconductor Industry Trends Survey, 90% of companies surveyed highlighted talent acquisition and development as a top priority to sustain industry growth and competitiveness, while 63.3% highlighted talent capability and retention as major industry risks.18 As Asia looks to expand its semiconductor industry beyond key historical players, significant shortages can also be expected.
For example, India’s semiconductor industry is looking at a potential deficit of 250,000 to 300,000 professionals by 2027.19 For the European Union to achieve its goal of doubling its market share by 2030, an ambition set in the European Chips Act, it is estimated that the industry will need 400,000 additional workers.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that of the more than 100,000 new industry jobs in manufacturing and design expected by 2030, 67,000 are at risk of going unfilled.
Talent outcomes tied to global chips laws
For companies applying for, or having received, U.S. CHIPS and Science Act funding, their workforce strategy, planning, development, and activation can be critical components for both grant eligibility and ongoing compliance. Funding opportunities require a clearly documented workforce strategy, commitments to training programs in concert with state and local educational entities, and expanded education and employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged individuals.
For the European Chips Act, applicants are asked to include information on their plans to invest in education, skills, and pipeline development, including differentiating between their normal workforce training activities and those targeting specific industry needs in the region.23 As funding continues to be released, and fab expansion ramps up, the need for construction and facilities employees are expected to grow, further challenging the already constrained talent market.
Repatriation of manufacturing and back-end processes Localization of manufacturing and regionalization of supply chains are compounding the semiconductor talent shortage. And there have been communications that talent challenges are contributing to delays in opening new plants.
Seeking to increase their individual shares of overall chip manufacturing from 10% to 20%, the United States and Europe have already allocated nearly $100 billion in government funding. For advanced node manufacturing specifically, Asia—predominantly Taiwan—continues to lead globally with well over 80% of the market share.26 The United States is expected to increase its advanced node manufacturing share to 22% by 2027.
Europe is also looking to increase its market share through the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC), a joint investment by several semiconductor companies with the goal of bringing advanced node manufacturing to Europe.
In Asia, there is also investment to increase manufacturing outside of Taiwan. Japan has committed $13 billion to reinvigorate manufacturing in the region, including funds to support a joint venture founded
in 2022 between several major Japanese companies with the goal of mass-producing the most leading-edge chips.
Malaysia, already strong in testing and packaging, is looking to invest more than $100 billion to increase its design, advanced packaging, and manufacturing capabilities.31 India has also approved more than $15 billion in investments to expand manufacturing capabilities in the country’s growing industry.
Even with recent announcements of ATP capacity in Poland and Arizona, more than 80% of all ATP capacity still resides in Asia, creating long and often fragile supply chains. Without additional investments beyond the current US and European Chips Acts, the lack of ATP capacity outside of Asia could continue impeding U.S. and European goals of semiconductor manufacturing self-sufficiency.
The United States and Europe should invest in increasing their ATP capacities and work to develop and attract the necessary skilled talent.
Geopolitics rears its head
The evolving and complex geopolitical landscape is likely to further affect the availability of talent supply globally and may continue to introduce artificially created imbalances, Deloitte warned. The United States has not only restricted export of advanced node AI chips and chipmaking equipment, but also limits US persons from performing work for certain Chinese chipmakers without special licensing.36 In addition, the US government is working with allies across Europe and Asia to similarly control their exports to China.37 To counteract, China has been aggressively recruiting expatriate talent—and is continuing to do so with high salaries, free homes, and more—creating a potentially more appealing job market compared to other semiconductor markets.
While the onshoring or reshoring of manufacturing can be critical to supply chain security, there are also benefits through “friendshoring”—partnering with suppliers from friendly countries— to provide more stability, while also increasing economic resilience of the global supply chain.39 One example of this “friendshoring” can be found in the economic alliance between the United States and Japan to reduce reliance on single suppliers and stabilize the supply of essential electrical components. This means adding production in places where it does not exist today, requiring talent with the right skills to help meet new capacity demands.
Solutions?
Deloitte said that to help mitigate the challenges outlined above and create new opportunities, semiconductor companies—and the industry as a whole—should consider these priorities across workforce planning and access; workforce skills, development, and retention; and technology enablement:
Workforce planning and access: Companies should enable agile workforce planning by implementing talent strategies with a workforce mix that can help address their immediate operational needs while also allowing them to adjust to market fluctuations. And, in addition to improving brand marketing and job attractiveness to better recruit talent, semiconductor companies should have comprehensive pipeline development and recruiting strategies. These should be defined and implemented in coordination with other semiconductor companies, educational institutions, and industry and community organizations, prioritizing underrepresented populations for a more comprehensive global solution.
Workforce skills, development, and retention: A right-skilled workforce starts with a skilled pipeline. While the pipeline is under development, companies should have a comprehensive view of their current skills and gaps, strategic knowledge management tools and processes, and flexible upskilling/reskilling programs that can allow for career path flexibility strategies and solutions as technology advances and skills requirements change.
Semiconductor companies can improve industry appeal and talent retention through a shared value proposition with an attractive and supportive culture, total rewards strategy, and comprehensive DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and sustainability strategies. More clearly defined and attainable career paths can also help improve brand perception and meet the expectations of today’s workforce.
Technology enablement: HR organizations should have the capabilities, tools, technology, and data insights to assess their organizations’ workforce supply, demand, and current and projected spend—enabling successful implementation of enterprise workforce strategies. With AI-enabled tools that span the talent life cycle, capabilities such as complex workforce scenario modeling can be more effectively leveraged. Changing workforce technologies also require comprehensive change management strategies to upskill employees, increase adoption, and optimize technological capabilities.
Workforce planning and access
To better attract new talent as opposed to continuing to compete for the same existing talent pool, the semiconductor industry should increase efforts to develop viable and long-lasting talent pipelines—including identifying and accessing more diverse and underrepresented talent—and address the lack of industry appeal.
While there are company- and region-specific efforts to address semiconductor talent challenges, there currently is no comprehensive industrywide approach designed to address these issues while also providing long-term talent stability for the industry.
Workforce planning strategies
Workforce planning and talent strategies should enable optimal ways of working through a data-driven approach to innovation and human-centered solutions. Talent mix strategies should identify and leverage a diverse workforce mix across build, buy, and borrow models to help fill short- and long-term talent needs within target functions.
To optimize their workforce planning, semiconductor companies should leverage the industry’s robust ecosystem of partners—including trade organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits—to act holistically and better address the global talent pipeline shortages.
They should also be mindful of talent integration across vastly different corporate cultures as companies expand their global footprint. When talent integration isn’t managed in a deliberate fashion, long-term retention can be at risk, potentially wasting pipeline development and talent attraction efforts.
And Deloitte said they should address the lack of industry awareness and appeal through targeted marketing using a variety of media to help reach new and underrepresented populations and across adjacent industries. A publicly marketed value proposition can focus on global sustainability and reduced environmental impact, technological innovation, and creation of shared economic and social value— all of which can be very attractive to new talent.
And they should increase investment in younger generations, as well as underrepresented populations, as targets for roles outside of traditional four-year education programs. Multiple semiconductor companies, as well as government and educational institutions, have already implemented training programs aimed at developing semiconductor facility technicians, Deloitte said.
Workforce skills, development, and retention
Workforce strategies and career models should target specific skill development, increase workforce agility and mobility, and improve job appeal—with the goal of prioritizing needed capacity, addressing the aging workforce, and better attracting and retaining talent for long-term sustainability. Attracting a talent pipeline and retaining talent once onboard should be supported by a robust DEI strategy, total rewards strategy, and culture-to-values alignment to help improve workforce agility and mobility.
Companies should have a shared value proposition with their employees that can both enable business objectives and support personal growth and priorities. Understanding existing talent skill sets using market intelligence can identify skills gaps that are often exacerbated by rapid market growth. Building a talent strategy around a skills-based organization can match talent gaps with adjacent-skilled workers who can be great candidates for upskilling or reskilling.
Companies should also integrate internal supply and demand data with external staffing procurement to make better-informed talent decisions.
They should utilize workforce data integration to remove manager bias evaluating the full-time/contingent/gig worker mix, helping to couple talent decisions with the overall business strategy. Firms should leverage workforce planning and modeling to help improve workforce planning, management, and efficiency.
Industry should address skills gaps through targeted solutions such as upskilling existing manufacturing and design talent or prioritizing specific pipeline segment development. They should identify adjacent skill sets, as workers may already possess skills that they may not be using today but can be fast-tracked to take on roles within semiconductor design and advanced manufacturing processes.
It’s also important to invest in regional cross-training and upskilling advanced node fabrication talent, creating a more flexible talent pool and broader career path options. And companies should create comprehensive knowledge management tools and processes to improve organizational skills retention, Deloitte said.
Technology and HR enablement
As business leaders contend with new technology, it’s important to understand the pulse of adoption and how to accelerate engagement, change management, and upskilling of the workforce. This can be especially true with advanced AI capabilities, which can augment talent and generate significant value.
AI can be used as an integral part of talent acquisition and management, providing insights such as quantifying the potential impacts of AI on human roles or modeling complex workforce scenarios to drive strategic talent decision-making. Skills-based job architectures can be analyzed for opportunities to increase capabilities and efficiencies using AI, consolidating workforce gaps and reducing the total workforce spend.
Additionally, bringing technology and AI into workforce planning can help enable actionable plans for addressing skills-gap hotspots, identifying hiring and internal mobility target areas, and defining upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Deploying predictive analytics via AI-enabled tools to better forecast retention, performance, and longevity can optimize talent acquisition pipelines and internal
mobility, leading to more clearly defined and attainable career paths.
The semiconductor industry is at an inflection point: Revenue is forecasted to reach $1 trillion by 2030,
but the industry continues to face widespread talent challenges, as outlined above. It is important that
semiconductor companies look holistically across their current maturity, capabilities, and pain points to develop talent roadmaps enabled by robust technology solutions.
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Technology
Concourse is building AI to automate financial tasks
In a typical organization, finance is one of the most important functions. Yet teams are often bogged down by manual workflows. According to a survey by Paylocity, an HR software provider, 38% of finance teams spend more than a fourth of their time on manual jobs, like reviewing invoices.
Matthieu Hafemeister, an ex-fintech investor at Andreessen Horowitz, says he’s seen many finance orgs struggle to scale up as a result of all the work they’re doing by hand.
“The status quo for finance is countless point solutions that are cobbled together within the finance department,” Hafemeister told TechCrunch. “Excel continues to be the lowest common denominator, limiting the promise of automation.”
To Hafemeister’s point, most finance departments are indeed heavily reliant on spreadsheets. One survey found that 82% still use Excel files for budgeting, forecasting, and other core financial planning activities.
After experiencing these frustrations firsthand while leading growth at fintech firm Jeeves, Hafemeister decided to team up with Ted Michaels, Jeeves’ previous head of finance and an old friend, to launch a platform to automate financial tasks.
Called Concourse, the platform connects to a businesses’ financial systems to let finance teams retrieve and analyze data, generate charts, and ask ad-hoc questions such as “What’s our non-GAAP revenue?”
“Concourse can proactively surface insights that allow finance teams to be better prepared by enabling them to stay ahead of trends,” Hafemeister said. “Instead of a tool that tries to improve the speed or efficiency of completing a task, Concourse can be given discrete tasks to do entirely on its own.”
Now, finance automation isn’t exactly new technology. Linq recently emerged from stealth with AI to automate aspects of research for financial analysts. Ledge and Doopla are also building a range of finance-specific generative modeling tools.
But what makes Concourse different, according to Hafemeister, is its ability to execute financial workflows with “complex, multi-step operations.” For example, the platform can retrieve data from a company’s NetSuite dashboard to download CSV files, then copy that data to an Excel spreadsheet.
“We leverage large language models to do what they are best suited for and pair them with more traditional methods of data analysis,” Hafemeister explained.
There’s great interest in AI for finance. One poll found that 58% of finance teams are now using some form of AI technology, up 21% from 2023. Grand View Research estimates that the “AI in fintech” segment, worth $9.45 billion three years ago, is growing 16.5% annually.
But to stand a chance of making a dent in the market for finance automation tech, Concourse will have to demonstrate its product’s ROI — a challenging feat. Per Gartner, showing or estimating the value of AI is a top barrier to adopting it for close to half of companies.
Concourse will also have to assuage potential customers’ fears of AI-introduced errors and hallucinations. In a poll of U.K.-based executives by HR specialist Peninsula, 40% said inaccuracies from AI tools were a key concern, followed by concerns around data confidentiality.
Hafemeister said that Concourse employs “a variety of tools and techniques” for fact-checking and validation to try to ensure its AI performs tasks as intended. He added that Concourse doesn’t use companies’ data to train its AI models — at least not without explicit permission — and that the platform only collects data customers share with it.
“Data accuracy is paramount in finance, where answers are typically either entirely correct or entirely incorrect,” Hafemeister said. “As such, at Concourse we’ve spent a lot of time and effort on delivering AI that can accurately perform the task it’s been assigned. We also take data privacy and security very seriously, and have built Concourse using industry best practices.”
Folks seem willing to be take Hafemeister at his word.
Concourse, which is still in beta ahead of a broader launch planned for next year, has several customers, including Instabase and Shef, and $4.7 million in capital. Hafemeister’s ex-employer, a16z, has invested in the startup, along with Y Combinator, CRV, and Box Group.
Hafemeister says the focus at the moment is product development and growing New York-based Concourse’s six-person staff.
“We raised money to hire more engineers, build out more workflows that our AI can take on, increase coverage on data integrations, and start to scale our go-to-market function,” he said. “The strong focus on engineering recruiting is to hire backend, machine learning, and AI engineers.”
Science & Environment
Kamala Harris got $1 million from Ripple’s Chris Larsen, crypto warms
Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple.
Source: YouTube
SAN FRANCISCO — For months, crypto companies and their executives have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into Donald Trump’s effort to win the White House. Chris Larsen isn’t one of them.
The co-founder and chairman of Ripple recently contributed $1 million worth of XRP tokens, the currency created by Ripple in 2012, to Future Forward, a super PAC that’s supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Larsen, who’s backed candidates across the aisle for the last few years, told CNBC in an interview on Monday that his comfort level with Harris comes from conversations he’s had with people inside the campaign and what he’s seen from the vice president since she replaced President Biden at the top of the ticket in July.
It helps that Harris is from the Bay Area.
“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy her whole life,” Larsen said. “So I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to, or maybe just didn’t make the connection between empowering workers and making sure you have American champions dominating their industries.”
Larsen’s affection for the Democratic nominee isn’t brand new. In February, he gave the maximum personal contribution of $6,600 to Harris (which would cover the primary and general election), about five months before she became the Democratic presidential nominee, FEC filings show. At the same time, he contributed $100,000 to the Harris Action Fund PAC.
In total, Larsen has given around $1.9 million to support Harris’ campaign directly and through PACs, according to FEC data compiled by crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and independently verified by CNBC.
Larsen, 64, has a net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership of XRP and involvement in Ripple, which provides blockchain technology for financial services companies.
He’s part of an industry that’s become suddenly prominent in political fundraising, though more heavily in support of Republicans. Nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into the election has come from the crypto industry, according to a recent report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.
Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she arrives at Erie International Airport ahead of a campaign rally, in Erie, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 14, 2024.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The sum was raised from a mix of contributors, with Coinbase, Ripple, and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz accounting for most of those business donations. The industry has raised roughly 13 times the amount it brought in during the last presidential election year.
Close to two-thirds of crypto contributions have gone either to supporting Republicans or opposing Democrats, according to Delmore’s compilation of FEC data. Trump has received more than $4 million in virtual tokens, an FEC filing shows, and in July, the ex-president keynoted a major bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
‘More pragmatic approach’
Larsen’s recent contributions include $1 million to Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in December, and almost $7,000 in February to John Deaton, the Massachusetts Republican who’s taking on Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a vocal crypto critic. He also donated $250,000 in 2022 to the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund and contributed to a pro-Biden PAC in 2020.
Larsen told CNBC that he’s “really confident” that Harris will bring a “more pragmatic approach and clear rules” to the crypto industry, in contrast to the current situation with Gary Gensler running the SEC. Gensler’s open hostility towards much of the crypto industry and his aggressive crackdowns on companies, including Ripple, is a big reason why many in the space say they’re supporting Trump.
In January, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has also donated to members of both parties, called Gensler a “political liability.”
“What we’ve had to date has been almost like purposeful chaos by Gensler to kind of crush the domestic industry,” Larsen said. That “has only empowered sketchier foreign operations. It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, adding that “Gensler must be the most unpopular person in Washington, D.C.”
CNBC reached out to Gensler’s office for comment and didn’t hear back.
Ripple’s legal chief said in June that the company has spent over $100 million on litigation to defend itself against civil charges brought by the SEC. In 2020, before Biden took office, the SEC accused Ripple, Garlinghouse and Larsen of violating securities laws by acting as unregistered brokers of digital currency tokens, which the SEC regulates as securities. The SEC later dismissed the charges against the two Ripple executives, and the company has denied it broke securities laws. They remain in active litigation.
Earlier this month, the agency filed a notice of appeal in its multi-year case with the Ripple.
Ripple has given about $50 million to the pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake, which has been contributing to candidates up and down the ballot, and on both sides of the aisle.
Harris has been gaining momentum within the crypto community.
Two days after Biden dropped out of the race, Marvin Ammori, legal chief at decentralized exchanged Uniswap, gave money to the Harris Action Fund. Uniswap is also battling claims it violated U.S. securities laws.
Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 11 days as White House communications director under Trump, has given more than $36,000 to two PACs supporting the Democratic nominee. Scaramucci says he’s among a group of crypto advocates working with Harris to develop her campaign’s policies on digital assets and to help the vice president distance the Democrats from Sen. Warren.
And then there’s venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who maintains a sizable portfolio of crypto companies. The Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and his partner Marc Andreessen said in July they were planning to make significant donations to PACs supporting Trump’s run for president due to what they characterized as his friendliness to the “little tech agenda.”
That was when Biden was the nominee. By early October, Horowitz appeared to have had a change of heart. He told employees at his firm that he would be making a “significant” personal contribution to Harris’ election bid. Horowitz said that he and his wife, Felicia, “have known Vice President Harris for over 10 years and she has been a great friend to both of us during that time.”
A couple weeks earlier, in late September, Harris finally gave a nod to cryptocurrency in a public address.
“We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors,” she said at a $27 million fundraiser in New York.
On Monday, the Harris campaign unveiled its “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” in a report. The plan explicitly mentions creating a framework for cryptocurrency in the U.S. designed to safeguard those assets. The campaign said more than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned digital currencies.
Despite Larsen’s track record of donating to Democrats, he took heat on social media after his latest contribution was reported on CNBC on Friday.
“The Ripple community and even the crypto community in general has a lot of skepticism toward Kamala’s candidacy and what policies she would put into place,” Delmore said, reflecting much of the online sentiment
Larsen blew off the criticism, and said he doesn’t pay attention to social media.
Technology
Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now
Oura has been the top dog in smart rings for the past decade. Sure, there’s been a smart ring renaissance this year, but its rivals are mostly either just getting into the game or launching a second version. This is the fourth Oura Ring. Oura has spent years collaborating with researchers and conducting its own studies. It’s the most readily available at third-party retail stores in the US; it’s the one wellness influencers keep flaunting in TikToks; and it’s seen on the fingers of A-list celebrities. In response to increased competition, Oura has launched half a dozen new features in the past 12 months. And now, Oura is closing out 2024 with several hardware and software refinements.
The Oura Ring 4 extends the company’s lead over the competition. The question is how long Oura can maintain it when its rivals cost less, eschew subscriptions, and have started innovating in new directions.
Slightly better in every way
Wearing the Oura Ring 4 is better than the Gen 3. Just not by much.
The Oura Gen 2 and Gen 3 rings had resin interiors with domed sensor bumps. The fourth-gen ring is made entirely of titanium, and the inside is flatter, with recessed sensors. It might not seem like it, but this is impressive engineering for a device so small. Compared to titanium, the resin in older rings diffused light from the sensors in a less precise way. Since rings naturally rotate during the day, it’s also easy for those sensors to move out of proper alignment. That’s partly why the previous Oura Rings had raised sensor bumps — they ensured good skin contact to mitigate those factors.
This time around, Oura’s introduced a new Smart Sensing algorithm that increases the number of sensor signal pathways from eight to 18. The sensors are placed asymmetrically to allow for a variety of distances and measurements. Basically, it now matters less if your ring rotates and better accounts for the fact that everyone’s fingers are different. This also means you don’t need those sensor bumps anymore.
My brain appreciates all the engineering sweat and tears that went into making this possible. Technologically speaking, Oura is flexing on its rivals. But practically speaking, it means close to diddly squat for the average wearer. Ninety-nine percent of the time, wearing the Oura Ring 4 felt the same as the Oura Ring Gen 3 and the Gen 2 before that. The only time I noticed a difference was when I felt bloated. I have knobby knuckles, and the sensor bumps on older Oura Rings could be painful when trying to take the ring off. It was a relief to not have that problem this time around.
Design-wise, this all-titanium ring is nice but not dramatically different from other premium options like the Samsung Galaxy Ring or the Ultrahuman Ring Air. You’ll notice more of a difference if you’re coming from older Oura models with flat or angled tops. All of the fourth-gen rings are fully round. This isn’t new — Oura introduced fully round versions of the Gen 3 in 2022 — but I’ve found it to be more comfortable. If you are mulling an upgrade, I highly recommend trying the new sizing kit first. I was a size 8 in the old rings, and now I’m a size 9. Plus, Oura’s size range has four new options, spanning sizes 4 to 15. If you were previously a size 6 or 13, you may find one of the newer sizes fits you better.
Another improvement: battery life. You can now get up to seven or eight days on a single charge. I’ve been able to get about 6.5 days, even with the power-guzzling blood oxygen sensing feature enabled. With a Gen 3, I got three to four days. Again, your mileage will vary depending on ring size. (Larger size, larger battery.) This is a significant bump, though I did get longer with the first-gen RingConn and from the Samsung Galaxy Ring when it was paired with a smartwatch.
Speaking of battery, Oura’s updated the charging dock. It’s larger, metal, and looks sleeker than previous docks. Unfortunately, my hangry cat had no problems knocking it off my nightstand. I wish Oura had opted for a more convenient charging case like many of its rivals, but alas. Maybe next time.
Software and science
Oura’s hardware isn’t that much better than the competition. I maintain the Galaxy Ring’s concave shape is more comfortable, and its charging case more convenient. The Evie Ring’s open-gap design is also fetching and clever for those of us prone to bloating. But where Oura trounces everyone else is software and its commitment to science, both in conducting and communicating it.
Let’s start with software. The app has had a much-needed redesign. Oura released several new features and metrics in the past year, turning the dashboard into a cluttered mess. Now everything’s been streamlined into three tabs: Today, Vitals, and My Health.
The Today tab contains shortcuts to specific metrics, a timeline of all your daily activity, and cards that highlight different things (e.g., sleep score, readiness, etc) depending on the time of day. Vitals is where you’ll find all your metrics, albeit in a more digestible format. My Health is where you’ll find longer-term health trends and reports. All redesigns take a hot second to adjust to, but overall, I’ve found this to be a helpful reorganization.
Another needed improvement: automatic activity detection has been expanded to 40 activities. (Oura lists roughly 30 of them here.) This makes the ring a much better standalone activity tracker, especially since enabling location permissions will also generate automatic GPS route maps. It’s flexible for smartwatch users, too. I typically don’t track walks on my smartwatch, but Oura picked them up easily. Start and end times, as well as the route maps, were also accurate. Conversely, I much prefer to record my runs and strength sessions with a smartwatch. For those instances, Oura prioritizes manually tracked or imported activities so I didn’t have to worry about duplicate activity records.
For tracking, Oura cites an external study saying the new Smart Sensing algorithm supports a significant bump in accuracy for signal quality, blood oxygen, and breathing disturbance detection. It also claims users should see fewer occurrences of heart rate data gaps both during the day and at night.
It’s impossible for a single reviewer to definitively test these claims. The general consensus is that consumer-grade wearable sleep tracking is broadly accurate at the basics but should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. All I can tell you is what I experienced in my own testing. The Oura Ring 4’s sleep and wake times align with my own manual testing logs. I still saw occasional gaps in nighttime heart rate, though it’s hard to say after only two weeks whether there were fewer or greater than before. My heart rate metrics, however, were all on par with my smartwatches — which is a good thing. Step counts and calorie estimates can be inflated compared to smartwatches, but that’s been true of every smart ring I’ve tested. What I can say for Oura, however, is its measurements are consistent and its margin of error is on the smaller side. After years of testing wearables, I trust the Oura Ring’s measurements for sleep and recovery tracking — in fact, I use it as a control for evaluating the sleep tracking features of other devices.
A big reason for that is this is a heavily studied device. For example, a recently published peer-reviewed study compared the accuracy of its sleep algorithm to the Apple Watch Series 8 and Fitbit Sense 2. Oura’s algorithm was found to be 5 percent more accurate than the Apple Watch and 10 percent more than Fitbit at detecting sleep stages. You should take all studies, including this one, with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not all studies or meta reviews are created equal, and one of the researchers here is a member of Oura’s medical advisory board. That said, Oura has also consistently made an effort to partner with outside researchers to validate its results for years. It also has a record of publishing these weeds-y findings, even if the results are not the most exciting. You see this from big companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google, but it’s much rarer from smaller companies in niche wearable spaces.
All these things together give Oura the edge among smart rings. The app is polished, I never have to think twice about syncing, the company puts immense effort into continually improving accuracy, and it’s had frequent feature updates in the past year. I’ve no doubt Oura’s competitors will start catching up here. Samsung and Ultrahuman aren’t too far off. But for now, Oura is the one to beat.
The elephant in the room
The weird thing about the Oura Ring 4 is it’s the best smart ring you can get right now. I also think most people don’t need to upgrade.
The hardware experience isn’t drastically different. Oura also won’t gatekeep any of these new software updates or the app redesign to the newest ring. That’s great! But it means there’s little incentive for folks with a Gen 3 to upgrade unless their battery is toast, especially since the starting price has increased to $350, and there doesn’t seem to be a trade-in program. (Current Oura members can get a 10 percent discount, but that’s it.) Really, the Oura Ring 4 is best for new users or people who previously couldn’t find a size that fit them.
For those folks, it’s a matter of whether you can stomach the Oura Ring’s single biggest con: the $6 monthly / $70 annual subscription. I don’t see a point in trying to justify its subscription. You’ll either think everything Oura’s brought to the table is worth it, or you won’t. If you’re the latter, fair enough. My take is that the Oura Ring is worth it if sleep tracking and recovery are your top priorities. Otherwise, a smartwatch is a better investment.
This is and will continue to be Oura’s greatest obstacle. It’s got a substantial lead in this space, but its rivals have made a point of eschewing subscriptions. Samsung, in particular, has large coffers and interesting ideas about how smart rings should interact with other gadgets like phones and smartwatches. For instance, the Galaxy Ring has gesture controls for the Galaxy phone’s camera and gets longer battery life when used with a Galaxy Watch. If Apple comes out with a smart ring, it’ll be a dark day at Oura headquarters. Meanwhile, smaller rivals like RingConn can undercut Oura’s price, even if the tracking is more basic.
Oura is betting that the best is worth paying for. It’s a gambit that will probably hold so long as everyone else is playing catch-up. But ask anyone who races: it’s hard to maintain a lead forever.
Science & Environment
WTI, Brent fall more than 4%
Crude oil futures fell more than 4% on Tuesday, as a looming global oil surplus next year overshadowed the risk of a supply disruption from the conflict between Israel and Iran.
Oil prices spiked earlier this month after Iran hit Israel with a ballistic missile attack, raising fears that Israel would respond by targeting the Islamic Republic’s oil facilities.
The International Energy Agency said Tuesday that its members are prepared to take action if there is a supply disruption in the Middle East.
“For now, supply keeps flowing, and in the absence of a major disruption, the market is faced with a sizeable surplus in the new year,” the IEA said in its monthly report.
Here are today’s energy prices around 5:30 am ET:
- West Texas Intermediate November contract: $70.28 per barrel, down $3.55, or 4.9%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen 2%.
- Brent December contract: $73.81 per barrel, down $3.65, or 4.8%. Year to date, the global benchmark has declined about 4%.
- RBOB Gasoline November contract: $2.0197 per gallon, down 4.2%. Year to date, gasoline has pulled back nearly 4%.
- Natural Gas November contract: $2.465 per thousand cubic feet, down 1.16%. Year to date, gas has fallen nearly 2%.
World oil demand is expected to grow by just under 900,000 barrels per day in 2024 and 1 million bpd in 2025, a significant slowdown compared to growth of 2 million bpd in post-pandemic period, according to the IEA.
Chinese oil demand is particularly weak, with consumption dropping by 500,000 bpd in August, the fourth monthly decline in a row, according to the agency. Meanwhile, crude production in the Americas, led by the U.S., is poised to grow by 1.5 million bpd this year and next, the IEA said.
OPEC has cut its oil 2024 forecast for the third consecutive month in a row.
Technology
Casio launches AI-powered furry robot pet that wants to replace your dog
Casio’s AI-powered robot pet, Moflin, is now available to preorder in Japan, ushering in the start of a dystopian pet-owner future where you send your furry partner to Casio’s repair center rather than take it to the vet.
Moflin looks like a large Guinea pig, without the mouth, or as Audio Editor, Becky Scarrott puts it, “a Porg from Star Wars, but horizontal.” It’s intended to be held and cuddled, bringing you the emotional connection you’d get with a pet, without the responsibility of looking after a living being.
Moflin was initially developed by Vanguard Industries, first coming to TechRadar’s attention at CES 2021. Now, Casio is manufacturing and distributing the furry friend across Japan for 59,400 yen (roughly $400 / £305 / 600AU$). Moflin will start shipping on November 7th and comes with an optional subscription service to cover any repairs, including a fur replacement.
Casio’s Moflin launch trailer shows a woman interacting with the fluffy robot throughout her day, cuddling with it in bed and even letting it sit on the dinner table as she eats – either a lonely vision of the future or the dream emotional support animal.
Moflin’s official website says, “Just like a living animal, Moflin possesses emotional capabilities and movements that evolve through daily interactions with its environment.” The robot will also “develop its own unique personality and as it gets attached to you”, making your Moflin unique to the experiences it has encountered.
Just like a real pet, Moflin will be happy when you spend time playing and loving it, but ignore the AI-powered fluff ball and it’ll get stressed and anxious, longing for love. You’ll not be able to tell from its body language, though, Moflin’s state of mind is only visible through an app, which seems a bit too robotic for my liking.
Casio says Moflin has a 5-hour battery life on a single charge, slightly less than my French Bulldog Kermit’s 24-hour runtime. If you need to boost its power, Moflin sits in a cute charging bed and requires a 3-and-a-half-hour power boost to help with your emotional well-being again.
Moflin feels like the TikTok generation’s Tamagotchi, but just like in the 90s, digital pets can only go so far. Part of being a pet owner is loving and caring for something that completely relies on you, I’m not sure a notification to say Moflin needs charging is quite the same.
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Technology
NYT Strands today: hints, spangram and answers for Tuesday, October 15
Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.
Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.
How to play Strands
You start every Strands puzzle with the goal of finding the “theme words” hidden in the grid of letters. Manipulate letters by dragging or tapping to craft words; double-tap the final letter to confirm. If you find the correct word, the letters will be highlighted blue and will no longer be selectable.
If you find a word that isn’t a theme word, it still helps! For every three non-theme words you find that are at least four letters long, you’ll get a hint — the letters of one of the theme words will be revealed and you’ll just have to unscramble it.
Every single letter on the grid is used to spell out the theme words and there is no overlap. Every letter will be used once, and only once.
Each puzzle contains one “spangram,” a special theme word (or words) that describe the puzzle’s theme and touches two opposite sides of the board. When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted yellow.
The goal should be to complete the puzzle quickly without using too many hints.
Hint for today’s Strands puzzle
Today’s theme is “Beast mode”
Here’s a hint that might help you: aspects of a monster
Today’s Strand answers
Today’s spanagram
We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:
Today’s Strands answers
- HAIR
- HORN
- TAIL
- WING
- SCALE
- SHELL
- FEATHER
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