Good morning. In this edition:

• 🚘 Data shows Americans want dumber cars
• 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s $1+ trillion megacity is facing challenges
• 🔢 This past week by the numbers

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.44-minute read (1,180 words).

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“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”

–Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Automakers should pump the brakes and stop feeding their vehicles Limitless pills, according to a growing number of US consumers.

The share of Americans with positive feelings about the intuitiveness of their car’s tech and overall controls has fallen from 79% to 56% between 2015-2024, per recent data from market-research firm Strategic Vision.

• Similar declines in sentiment have also been recorded for vehicle dashboard displays, screen interfaces, and the layout of the instrument panel.

Too smart for their own good?

Overall, drivers are still happy with the current technology in cars. But new features are becoming less intuitive and easy to understand compared to something like the iPhone, says Strategic Vision President Alexander Edwards.

There’s also a bevy of other issues:

• Price & resale value: Cars with pricier technology cost more up front and also carry less value in the used market compared to base models, with an average depreciation of ~$50/month according to J.D. Power.
• Bugs & glitches: The rate of issues with EV owners’ door handles – which are increasingly equipped with sensors – has risen from 0.2 per 100 vehicles in 2020 to 3.1 per 100 vehicles last year.
• Repair costs: Relatively minor accidents can carry outsized repair bills when high-tech cameras and sensors are involved. ~25% of all car repairs last year involved a sensor recalibration, at an average additional cost of ~$600, per auto insurer technology provider Mitchell.

🤩 Not all tech is considered bad. Drivers are most enthusiastic about vehicle features like wireless phone-charging pads, rain-sensing wipers, heated and ventilated seats, and built-in vacuum cleaners, according to recent surveys by market-research firm AutoPacific.

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Rocket Companies, owner of Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Money (formerly Truebill), and Rocket Loans, is buying real estate listing platform Redfin in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.75 billion, the companies announced yesterday. The deal attaching a Redfin to a Rocket is expected to be completed in Q2 or Q3 of 2025.

All for one, one for all

With the move, Rocket can now plug Redfin, which boasts 50+ million monthly website visitors and a network of 2,200+ real estate brokers spread across 42 states, into its existing web of mortgage origination, title, and servicing companies – creating a single platform that can potentially streamline an often time-consuming and burdensome process for homebuyers.

Zillow wants to do something similar. In 2022, the real-estate tech company said it was working to create a “housing super app.” It‘s since rolled out a smoother process for buyers to connect with agents, home tours, and mortgage financing in 40+ markets, the Wall Street Journal reports.

🏡 Zoom out: The push for vertical integration comes as home sales in 2024 fell to their lowest level since 1995 for the second straight year. And don’t expect much growth this year – JPMorgan expects the US housing market to “remain largely frozen through 2025.”

Saudi Arabia’s Neom, an ambitious metropolis in the desert defined by cutting-edge technology and architecture, is running into major issues shortly after breaking ground, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

Some quick background: Plans for Neom, first announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017, are headlined by a project called The Line – a pair of Empire State Building-height skyscrapers stretching 106 miles long (the length of Delaware) that would represent the largest modern structure in the world.

Other planned features of the city include a mountain ski resort, a business district floating on the Red Sea, and a massive all-inclusive coastal resort.

But the dream of Neom is colliding with reality. The new WSJ report details how the project has been plagued by soaring costs and ever-present delays, many of which were shielded from the Saudi crown prince by Neom executives and their McKinsey consultants.

• Saudi officials started out with total cost estimations of ~$500 billion and a projected completion date of 2045.
• But, after spending $50+ billion on Neom’s construction, officials now project the city will require $8.8 trillion to build to its “end-state” by 2080.

👀 Looking ahead…Saudi Arabia’s current aim is to open the first half-mile chunk of The Line – topped by a sports stadium – in time for the nation to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup.

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The new 10x engineer wears an employee nametag reading: “AI” (not to be confused with Al, as in Pacino).

One-quarter of Y Combinator’s current Winter 2025 class – which contains 165+ total startups – have codebases ~95% generated by artificial intelligence, YC managing partner Jared Friedman recently revealed.

But…AI isn’t a silver bullet to creating a billion-dollar company. Among YC’s new startups that rely heavily on AI, the founders are all capable of building their product from scratch, according to Friedman – it’s simply quicker and easier for AI to do nearly all coding work, thanks to recent technological advancements.

• Friedman also notes that startup founders and/or their tech leaders still need classical coding training and should be skilled at reading code and finding bugs, regardless of how much AI is involved.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉 US markets took a dive yesterday (S&P: -2.7%; Dow: -2.1%; Nasdaq: -4.0%). | 🚘 Tesla shares fell 15%, their worst single-day performance since September 2020.
• 🏬 Hudson’s Bay, the Canadian department store chain founded in 1670, is reportedly preparing for a bankruptcy filing within days.
• ✈️ Delta Air Lines cut its Q1 forecast, citing weaker US travel demand; shares closed down ~5%.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Autio

• 🎬 Ne Zha 2 surpassed $2 billion at the Chinese box office, becoming the first film ever to reach that figure in a single market; the animated film is now 6th all-time at the global box office.
• ☎️⚖️ Inside the Sean “P. Diddy” Combs Hotline: The Makings of a Mass Tort
• 🏈 NFL free agency’s legal tampering period kicked off yesterday; see all the major deals so far.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🍏📅 Apple reportedly delayed its updated version of Siri that can understand personal context and take action inside of apps.
• 🦈 The megalodon, a massive prehistoric shark long-imagined to be shaped like a great white, may have had a longer, sleeker shape more similar to a large whale, per new research.
• 💻 Cybersecurity researchers found a backdoor in a low-cost, Chinese-made Bluetooth chip that’s used in millions of US “Internet of things” devices; the flaw could potentially be used for cyberattacks. |📱 X experienced an outage yesterday that owner Elon Musk said was due to a "massive cyberattack."

MISCELLANEOUS

in partnership with The Spring Splurge Giveaway

• 🧑‍🎓 Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student who helped lead last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the university, was arrested by federal immigration authorities “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” per a DHS spokesperson; a federal judge halted Khalil’s planned deportation in response to a legal challenge from his lawyers.
• ⚖️🏳️‍🌈 The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a Colorado law that bans “conversion therapy,” or attempting to make minors questioning their sexuality or gender identity align with heterosexual/cisgender norms; similar bans are on the books in 20+ states.
• 🏛️ Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced 83% of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) programs will be canceled. | 💥🚢 A Portuguese container ship collided with a US-flagged oil tanker anchored off the eastern coast of England; both vessels caught fire and were abandoned by their crews.

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👆 You’re looking at some of the 60 photographs selected as finalists for the 22nd annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest.

🤔 Did You Know? Unlike many animal species, humans don't have specific receptors for wetness on their skin. Our concept of wetness is more of a “perceptual illusion” that our brain evokes based on our prior experiences with things we’ve learned are wet.

📰 Worth a Read: What if your worry problem is really a planning problem?

🖱️ Clickbait: Surgeons implant teeth in patients’ eyes to restore vision

Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

• ☀️⌚ More than half of US adults (54%) are ready to do away with the practice of Daylight Savings Time entirely – up from 23% in 1999, when Gallup last asked that question.
• 👶📛 22% of all siblings’ names start with the same letter, per a recent study of ~129,000 parents from BabyCenter.
• 🏘️ The median US home price in January was $418,000, up ~45% from five years ago ($289,000), according to Redfin.
• 🔥💰 A three-inch-long Hot Cheeto shaped like a Pokémon Charizard sold for ~$88,000 this week, per Goldin auction house.
• 💼💼 A record-high ~8.9 million Americans have multiple jobs, per the new February jobs report; that’s 5.4% of employed workers, a level last seen in April 2009.

Yesterday we covered how the number of migrants illegally crossing the US-Mexico border plummeted in President Trump’s first full month in office, according to multiple reports that cited preliminary government data.

❓ Our question to you: Do you personally consider unauthorized immigration to be: a crisis, fairly significant problem, minor problem, or not a problem for the US?

• Crisis: 29%
• Fairly significant problem: 27%
• Minor problem: 32%
• Not a problem: 12%

📊 The results from the last time we asked this question in August 2024:

• Crisis: 37%
• Fairly significant problem: 29%
• Minor problem: 22%
• Not a problem: 12%

Click here to read some of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 2,377 votes and 249 longform responses.

💸 Actor Michael Sheen started a secret company and has since paid off ~$1.2 million worth of other people's outstanding debts.

🖌️🐧 The internet is obsessed with Marley the painting penguin. But her reaction to seeing the completed pieces may be even better than her painting talents.

💪👴 100-year-old Joseph Caminiti works out 5x/week, drives himself around, and lives independently at home with his 98-year-old wife. The secret to his impressive life? Never stop moving.

❓ Question: What was the challenging way in which Mr. Miyagi caught a fly in The Karate Kid?

🎓 True or False? It’s illegal to own a guinea pig in Switzerland. 

🤔 Riddle Me This: What is in seasons, seconds, centuries, and minutes – but not in decades, years, or days?

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❓ Question: With chopsticks

🎓 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: The letter “n”