Quick Bytes – Feb 9th: Computers Inspire SpaceX Rocket Launch

A look at the most interesting startup and business-related news stories of the week.

Latino entrepreneurs a rising force

Quick Byte

Latino-owned businesses have climbed 46% since 2007. While this is a positive trend, particularly among Latino millennial entrepreneurs, it appears to be in spite of difficulties accessing funds. Latino-owned businesses access less bank or government-funded loans than any other ethnicity and California is not one of the top 5 states where Latinos receive VC funding. The newly released Stanford report doesn’t cover off why but there are some interesting hypotheses in this article.

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The growth of Latino businesses has outpaced all other demographic groups, the study found, despite the fact that Latino businesses have the lowest rate of financing via bank loans, the traditional funding mechanism for small businesses. Read the Full Article Here

Similarities between ants & drones

Quick Byte

Using nature in technology is not a new concept but as technology increasingly mimics human behaviour, it’s likely that we’re going to see this a lot more. Robotics, drones and blockchain are all being developed with the swarm intelligence of ants in mind. These little creatures epitomize ‘many heads are better than one’ with collective route selection that uses the kind of efficiency needed in new technologies being developed.

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As a group, simple creatures following simple rules can display a surprising amount of complexity, efficiency, and even creativity. Known as swarm intelligence, this trait is found throughout nature, but researchers have recently begun using it to transform various fields such as robotics, data mining, medicine, and blockchains.

Ants, for example, can only perform a limited range of functions, but an ant colony can build bridges, create superhighways of food and information, wage war, and enslave other ant species—all of which are beyond the comprehension of any single ant. Likewise, schools of fish, flocks of birds, beehives, and other species exhibit behavior indicative of planning by a higher intelligence that doesn’t actually exist. Read the Full Article Here

Computers inspire SpaceX rocket launch

Quick Byte

We could hardly ignore the story of the week. A total of 27 engines successfully launched into space this week, 18 more than any other rocket. Elon Musk likened the technique to stepping away from a single computer mainframe that could easily affect the whole system with a breakdown. Instead small clusters of engines work more efficiently and up to 6 can go down without affecting the rocket’s ability to make orbit. And for the next Space X rocket being engineered in Hawthorne, CA? 31 engines.

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