🚗 Remotely controlled rentals

Plus: SEO's woes, online short films, a new spin on whiskey, and more. ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

You're just 3 referrals away from earning a Hustle Essentials kit. Check out all of our prizes here. Share your link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning. Some hopeful news to start your week: That satin gown that you "can totally wear again" might be the last overpriced dress purchased against your will. The average wedding party has shrunk to eight people — four per side — down from 10 in 2019, according to data from The Knot. Your wallet isn't off the hook, though: Attending a wedding plus a bachelor or bachelorette party costs $2,010, according to Zillow, just $62 less than the typical US monthly rent. Be fiscally responsible — lose some friends. STARTING UP One whisky distillery sees the glass half empty  ❌  The problem: Whisky's iconic glass bottles are cumbersome to ship, hard to recycle, and energy-intensive to produce.  💡  The pitch: Scotland's Stirling Distillery is taking a page from beer's book and bottling whisky in aluminum instead. The company worked with scientists at Heriot-Watt University to test whether aluminum containers — with the right liners — can store whisky without altering its flavor or leaching metal.  🚀  The outlook: Lab tests found that tasters couldn't tell the difference between whisky stored in aluminum and glass, but chemical analysis showed metal can enter the spirit over long periods without a strong enough liner. Even with the challenges, Stirling's first mature whisky is set to debut in 2027. NEWS FLASH   Eightfold, maker of AI hiring tools, is being sued over its "match score," which ranks potential applicants. The claim argues that Eightfold should be required to follow the same rules as credit reporting agencies, including asking for permission and letting applicants dispute inaccuracies. Eightfold does not agree.  Meanwhile, Patagonia is suing drag queen Pattie Gonia for… $1. The retailer says the suit is just to protect its brand in instances where Gonia's name is used on apparel that supports sustainability, which it claims would "overlap" with its own environmental advocacy and has already confused some consumers.  Fervo Energy, a startup that's building the world's largest "enhanced geothermal system" in Utah, has filed for an IPO. Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source derived from heat within the Earth, yet it currently represents just 0.4% of US electricity generation.   Emerald Battery Labs is preparing to scale its sodium-ion battery tech, which would present an alternative to lithium amid rising battery demand. Sodium is much easier to source and therefore cheaper than lithium, while also posing a lower fire risk. GRUNT LESS When you need a team, but only have tech… While AI can't answer every one of your burning business questions, it sure can help you struggle less with grunt work.  Steal these 20 powerful prompts straight from Startup Cookie co-founder Barbara Jovanovic's guide on using AI to repurpose all kinds of content and streamline how you tackle tasks.  Train a bot to sound like you and make it do the work.   Get the spreadsheet   THE BIG IDEA (Vay) The weird way this rental startup delivers its cars If you were asked to imagine a driverless car, you'd probably think of: An autonomous vehicle, like a Waymo A situation that's gone very awry With Vay, a Berlin-based startup that offers on-demand car rentals in Las Vegas, it means a third thing: remotely controlled cars. How does that work? Vay's fleet consists of 100 Kia Niro SUVs, per Business Insider, which customers can order through its app.  Customers can pick up their car themselves, or a remote driver — a human sitting in Vay's office in front of several monitors, a steering wheel, and pedals — can pilot it to the customer.   Once a customer receives the car, they take over driving and the remote driver is disconnected. Customers return cars in designated service zones or hand them back off to remote drivers. Vincent Reddy, an operations lead, told BI that Vay's remote driving setup is similar to a "high-grade racing sim" but without the ability to feel the road or the car's movement. Unlike autonomous vehicles, which often use LiDAR to navigate, Vay uses only cameras. It's a lot cheaper, and a human — not a bot — remains in control.  Vay's cars can't drive over 25 mph until renters take over, and if there's an emergency, remote drivers can push a red button to pull over.  Who uses this service? Vay's been operating in Vegas since January 2024 and says it has provided 35k trips since its founding.  Vay aims to be cheaper and more convenient than Uber, charging 35 cents per minute while driving and 5 cents per minute while parked. The Las Vegas Review-Journal estimated that a trip from UNLV to the Hoover Dam and back, with a one-hour stopover, would cost ~$32. About half of Vay's trips include a stopover — which makes sense considering it's probably easier to use a service like this than call multiple Ubers to run a day's worth of errands. BTW: A McKinsey survey suggested some use cases for letting a remote driver take over your car, including valet parking, refueling or recharging, vehicle maintenance, assisted driving for those with disabilities, and remote chauffeuring.  🔗 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   The US has a CO2 problem… but it's not what you think. The country is running low on the gas used in everything from soda to beer to special effects. NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Decline in Google traffic from organic search to 2.5k+ sites between November 2024 and November 2025, per Chartbeat data via the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The drop was slightly higher in the US, at 38%. The culprit: AI Overviews, which now appear at the top of ~10% of US search results and are quickly rolling out across other markets.     That's bad news for publishers (especially those specializing in lifestyle and utility content, like weather reports and horoscopes), who expect traffic from search engines to plummet 43%, on average, over the next three years as AI-summarized answers become more commonplace.     AROUND THE WEB 📆  On this day: In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demo of a television in London. It depicted two dummies operated by Baird himself on camera, but where the audience couldn't see. 🗞️  Newsletter: Subscribe to Girlboss Daily for career inspo and intel with a side of pop culture.  🍿  That's cool: A collection of short films you can watch online. 🧩  Game: A cute physics puzzler. 💦  Aww: Wow, a hose.   SHOWER THOUGHT Digital archaeologists in a distant future are going to think a lot more happened on Jan. 1, 1970, than actually happened. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Sara "Backseat driver" Friedman.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Working on something big? We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you. Subscribe to our other newsletters Stay up-to-date on AI: Mindstream  |  Expert insights: Masters in Marketing  |  Sell better: The Science of Scaling Follow The Hustle on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 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