Feeling a chill? Blame those winds of change, pal. Cherish this Sunday’s Hustle email because after this one, we’re going to try something new. We’re trading the weekly Sunday cadence for something a bit more intentional: a monthly long-form newsletter. Same ambition, same great reporting, more flexibility to go deeper, weirder, and better. And more energy for original journalism spread across the week. Stronger stories await, at the price of one fewer email crowding your inbox on a Sunday morning. Oh, the horror.
NEWS FLASH
🛥️ Some ferry interesting news: Silicon Valley startup Navier signed a $100m long-term deal with developer JIH Global to deploy 100 all-electric hydrofoiling boats across the Maldives over the next three years. The boats’ underwater wing-like structures lift the hulls above the water to reduce drag, conserve energy, and make rides smoother. The electrified transportation network would be one of the world’s largest, connecting airports, resorts, and inhabited islands in the Indian Ocean and helping the Maldives to reach net-zero emissions by 2030.
📱 Can you build your dream app? All this talk of vibe coding may have you wondering. Business Insider spoke with Lisa Lin, a new mom who used Lovable to create Nutribabe, a nutrition app for babies that performed all the functions she wanted and couldn’t find in similar apps already on the market. It took her about a month to build with tips from her tech-savvy husband. She now uses it daily and hopes to add a mobile version and open it to the public in the future.
🤖 Bad guest: San Francisco Airbnb host Sean Donovan is suing Bot Company, a startup developing robots to perform domestic chores. Donovan claims the company turned his home into an R&D lab where it tested its “robotic prototype,” damaging heirlooms, appliances, and flooring. Donovan also accused the company of moving everything. “They came in and put everything back in a new place," he told SFGate. "Silverware in a new drawer or a different room.” Uh, if true… what exactly is this bot supposed to do?
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
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Pay up: Chinese online retailer Temu was fined $232m by the European Union for selling illegal products, including unsafe electronics and toxic toys, and putting consumers at risk.
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Not so alpha after all: A Google engineer under the username AlphaRaccoon made $1.2m from insider trading on Polymarket. He’s since been charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and violating the Commodity Exchange Act.
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That has a nice ring to it: Oura unveiled the Oura Ring 5, an updated smart ring that starts at $399 and is 40% smaller with new sensing capabilities that can detect signs of high blood pressure and sleep apnea.
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Excelsior? AI voice cloning company ElevenLabs made a deal with Stan Lee Universe to use the iconic comic creator’s voice and likeness. It’s also launching a Stan Lee book club, offering one public domain audio book per month. Lee died in 2018.
MAKE MORE BREAD
Psst… Want to earn more income?
If we started ripping open the files in the back of your brain, we’re pretty sure we’d find one explaining why you want to start a side hustle.
Money, freedom, ownership… Obvious reasons. Fine reasons. But there’s also that secret, beautiful feeling when you’re gearing up groggy after work, already on another quest, worried about what’s coming next, yet you love it all anyway.
Find your smile-worthy side hustle — 100 (new and improved!) ideas are right here.
THE BIG IDEA
The metal detectorists saving marriages
“He was like a knight in shining armor,” one British tourist, who was in Mauritius last year for her friend’s wedding, told The Wall Street Journal. But she wasn’t talking about the groom on his big day.
Instead, she was referring to Zoël Manguillier, a 61-year-old Speedo-wearing metal detectorist, who’d found her friend’s wedding ring after it went missing on the beach.
On the island, Manguillier is the go-to guy for this exact predicament, which is actually pretty common — an estimated 10%-40% of men lose their wedding rings at some point, per Business Insider — especially around honeymoon/wedding hotspots.
- (It’s not that hard to imagine a ring slipping off the sunscreen-slicked finger of a cocktail-wielding newlywed.)
In fact, it’s common enough that he and others like him have made careers of it as professional wedding ring finders. And with gold prices surging, the niche gig is reportedly becoming more popular.
Trouble in paradise
In Mauritius, Manguillier has located ~1k rings over the past 30+ years by wading through sea and sand, equipped with his submersible metal detector and yellow headphones.
- He charges based on the length of the search — in one case, $400 for a couple hours of scanning the ocean floor at night — but only requests gas money if he’s unable to find it.
In Antigua, Winston Merchant, who’s been at it since 1998, claims a 95% success rate, per BI.
- Using a metal detector and a sort of colander, he fished out one man’s wedding band in under two hours, charging a flat rate of $200 for the service.
The services aren’t necessarily cheap (neither is the equipment, which can add up to well over $1k), but you can’t always put a price on sentimental value.
As for the people losing jewelry elsewhere…
… and the growing number of metal detectorists who lack the local notoriety of word-of-mouth references, there are platforms making it easier to connect the two.
- Ring Finders boasts a network of 400 reward-based metal detectorists, who pay $195 annually to be listed on the site’s directory.
- Meanwhile, the UK’s National Ring Recovery Service, whose 5k+ members take the whole “sentimental value is priceless” thing more literally, offers free jewelry hunting for those who can’t afford to pay for it.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
What's your thing? If that question gave you pause, give this a listen and learn how to follow your bliss.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Price of Hypershell’s X Ultra S, a 1k-watt AI-powered exoskeleton meant for hiking and biking that debuted this month. The bionic leg boosters, which use AI to anticipate a user’s movements and provide the right force, promise to cut hiking effort by 20%, meaning it could potentially help more people, like older folks and those recovering from injury, enjoy more of the outdoors.
But for now, at that price point and looking the way they do, The Wall Street Journal’s Nicole Nguyen, who tested them out, found they’re mostly an expensive novelty for tech enthusiasts who wouldn’t mind looking like dorks on the trail and — if the battery dies — lugging five pounds of machinery off a mountain.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 2014, “Orange is the New Black” star Laverne Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine.
🍽️ Useful: Share recipes with other home cooks.
🪟 Haha: A Windows 93 desktop full of time-wasters.
🎸 Wow: Talk about multitasking.
🦆 Aww: Tiny new friend.
SHOWER THOUGHT
The slower you walk up an escalator, the fewer steps you take. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Finder's keepers!" Friedman.
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