Call it a case of being Unborn on the Fourth of July: Audio Pixels, its tagline being "breaking the barriers of sound", yet again advised the market on Wednesday that its mysterious, world-changing chip (which promises to produce boombox-quality sound from devices as small as our smartphones) is nowhere near being ready for the Shepparton Science Fair, let alone for mass production. A dozen years in, without making or selling a single thing (absurdly, its market capitalisation briefly topped $900 million in 2016), Audio Pixel shares finished the Independence Day session down 16.9 per cent, its market cap now, even still, a surely ambitious $385.1 million.

Founder Fred Bart (red flag: a former professional poker player) has, since July 2006, been proselytising his "revolutionary technological platform" that will apparently do to speakers what LCD did to tube televisions. But Bart's shepherding of an Elysian vision onto an actual factory line makes Elon Musk look like Jack Welch.