The car you drive may indicate type of voting district that you live in.
A group of Stanford scientists used Google Street View to show that, if your neighborhood is filled with sedans, you most likely live in a district that votes Democrat. But if your ride’s an extended-cab pickup truck, chances are you live in a Republican district.
Steve Lohr from The New York Times tells Cheddar exactly how the scientists figured that out. They analyzed 50 million Google Street View images, and location data that pulled vehicle information, including make and models.
“So you train on the subset, still on millions of these pictures, then you get the machine algorithms working on A.I.,” Lohr explains. “Then you link this to voting results in the past, income by neighborhood, and you link these to government and public database.”
The study reportedly helps in proving the concept that data can be extracted from visuals. The scientists also say that this method can supplement research conducted by the Census Bureau.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/google-street-view-gives-a-glimpse-into-power-of-a-i).
Facebook parent Meta’s miss on Q4 earnings raised alarm bells amongst investors. The tech giant lost users for the first time as it invests a lot into the metaverse, its virtual realm, in the hopes that consumers will move their social media consumption there. The stock dropped around 25 percent on the report, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg chalked it up to people flocking toward apps like TikTok, even as his own platform attempts to make a big pivot to the metaverse future. "It's gonna take a long time to develop and it's gonna take a long time to bring to fruition," Rebecca Walser, president of Walser Wealth Management told Cheddar. "In the meantime, the world is moving on. We have a very short attention span, especially on social media, and we want the short little videos. And Tiktok has just taken off."
Just this week, Facebook's parent company Meta released an update for its 3D avatar creation on Facebook and messenger. This update is encouraging users of Instagram to create their virtual selves, and it is an early step towards making the metaverse vision a reality. David Ewalt, editor-in-chief at Gizmodo joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Ed Butowsky, managing partner at Chapwood Investments, joined Wake Up With Cheddar to break down the disappointing takeaways from Spotify's Q4 earnings report, which sent the stock plunging.
Google parent company Alphabet saw yet another successful quarter reporting its final earnings report for 2021 on Tuesday. The tech giant beat Wall Street expectations across the board with much of that success owed to not only the growth of its cloud business, but also its multi-platform advertising. Joanna O'Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester explains why advertising may be one of the keys to Alphabet’s future success.
Solid-state battery maker Factorial Energy recently raised $200 million in a Series D round led by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis. Factorial says the funding will be used to accelerate commercial production and deployment of its solid-state battery technology, which the company says is safer, and offers up to 50% more driving range than current lithium-ion technology. Factorial also has joint development agreements (announced in late 2021) with Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Hyundai, three of the top 10 global automotive manufacturers, to commercialize its batteries. Factorial CEO Siyu Huang joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.