Dispatch 003
There’s a lot to say about this election, but also plenty of others who will do so over the coming days, weeks, months, and years. In some ways, unlike 2016, this outcome felt inevitable. And yet still no less incredible given Trump’s first term in office and especially given the circumstances since he left. Beyond that, I’m going to stick to reading and taking my notes — many of which are undoubtedly going to be at least tangentially related to this outcome. It feels like a lot is about to change. I’m happy to be watching from afar...
I Think...
💸 How Lina Khan Became an Election Hot Topic – With Trump's election, it seems pretty likely that Khan is gone. Yes, J.D. Vance has been complimentary about some of her policies against Big Tech, but the reality is that the pro-business movement – which was actually pretty bipartisan amongst the entrepreneur/investor class – will undoubtedly win the day here. If nothing else, the new administration will want a Republican in the role. Not all of Khan's policies and changes were bad, of course. But her overall agenda was clearly too ideologically-driven and didn't account for the nuances of the tech market in particular. And she seemed blinded to the obvious second-order effects of such policies, such as the cessation of more or less all M&A in the tech sector, which is vital to the flow of the entire ecosystem. I'm not talking mega-deals, I'm talking smaller deals that were chilled out of existence and which led to the farcical "hackquisition" deals in their place. Well, bye. It's time to thaw. [NYT]
₿ Polymarket, Prediction Betting Markets Vindicated by Trump's Strong Showing – I get the victory lap, of course, but this is a strange take on it. It was a 50/50 call – they were either going to be right or not. At least on Polymarket, it's a few thousand people outside of the US (or illegally inside the US) making bets to try to make money – and one person in particular, in France, making a lot of money. And yes, undoubtedly some jokers trying to see if they can help fuel a narrative or betting on Trump as if a Cowboys fan may bet on the Cowboys without any real thought about the likely outcome. Polling data can be increasingly bunk and prediction markets can be on the rise. But here, in this particular election, this wasn't some outlandish one-in-a-million bet. There's no "vindication" for a binary outcome that happen to align with a bespoke market prediction, no matter how juicy such an anti-establishment narrative may be here. Do it again, at scale, with a bet that's actually unlikely. [CoinDesk]
🤳 TikTok Sees Trump Victory As App’s Best Hope – The Trump victory sure seems like good news for TikTok. While he seemingly won't be able to change the law which will effectively ban the service in a couple months, he could change how the DoJ enforces or interprets it. As the article notes, he'll undoubtedly use it as a bargaining chip with China – that's what Trump does – which could go any number of ways! And, of course, he has a handful of people close to him which have financial interest in seeing the entity not just survive, but thrive. Will Trump Media be involved in some way? It cannot be ruled out. TikTok is now officially a pawn, which I guess is better than being stuck in check mate. [Information 🔒]
📲 Apple Preparing for Upcoming Siri Onscreen Awareness Feature – This new API in the iOS 18.2 beta is going to be potentially powerful as it will let Apple Intelligence take action based on what's on your screen. This seems to be mainly about taking screenshots of your screen and/or parsing it directly, not doing explicit actions on that screen like the new AI-using-your-computer features from Anthropic and soon it seems, Google in Chrome (see below) – not yet, anyway. And it feels like you can already sort of see the UI for this if you use the double-tap action at the bottom of the iPhone to bring up type-to-Siri, it zooms out your open app a bit but you can still see what's on screen, seemingly to ask Siri something about it... This is sort of the inward version of Visual Intelligence. Good to see Apple moving a bit faster on AI... [MacRumors]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- A rising OpenAI valuation lifts all AI boats: Perplexity set to hit $9B valuation – tripling the number from just a few months ago. [WSJ 🔒]
- With its recent rally on strong earnings, Reddit is now worth more than Snap – despite Snap having 4x the users and 4x the revenue. That's a pretty damning statement on Wall Street's view of their future. Perhaps it's time to go private again and build away from the quarterly spotlight? [Information 🔒]
- Could be crazier, as Trump Media clearly tried to bury with a surprise earnings release on Election Day (!?), the social media company lost another $19.2M last quarter on... just over $1M in revenue. And that number was down over 5% y/y. This is a company now worth $7B and undoubtedly about to surge alongside its namesake today. That's... quite the multiple. (Of course, it's not really about that.) [CNBC]
- A dive into how Ridley Scott operates at the pace he does – at 86! – with the help of his team at his Scott Free production house. Two new entrants already in the works: the next Alien and another Gladiator sequel, before the latest entry is even released. That's after the Bee Gees biopic. All of this will take him well into his 90s. [THR]
- More layoffs at Mozilla – this time on the Foundation side – continue to point to a troubled future. Especially if/when those Google default payments go away and/or are altered – something which it doesn't seem like a new Trump administration would change? (See also: TikTok above.) [TechCrunch]
- NVIDIA is back as the world's most valuable company, passing Apple once again yesterday. While those two and Microsoft – the three $3T companies – seem like they'll keep swapping spots for the foreseeable future, it's possible that one of them breaks away, seen as a beneficiary of a "Trump Bump". First though, NVIDIA has to get through earnings in two weeks. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- The fifth (and final) season of Stranger Things is set. We don't have an exact date, just that it's coming in 2025 (there had been some fear of 2026). And it's set to take place in the Fall of 1987, which is over a year after the setting of last season – which aired in 2022. So the series will have played out four years over an almost 10 year span in real life – which is only weird because of the how young the cast of kids was when this started and how old they are now... We have titles set to that excellent score! [THR]
- Looks like Google accidentally leaked their "Jarvis" AI-uses-your-computer tech (similar to Anthropic's recent release but again, at the browser-level) via a Chrome extension (which didn't work and was quickly pulled). So yeah, sounds like that's launching soon... [Information 🔒]
- While there's no formal announcement yet, Nintendo has confirmed the next console – Super Switch? – will be backwards compatible with current Switch games (and Switch Online will work too). [Verge]
- Physical Intelligence seems like an interesting company both if you believe in a future with robots, but also if you believe there needs to be some level of real-world interaction to continue to further AI beyond the seemingly impending LLM limitations. Also, Jeff Bezos, some guy perhaps best known as a angel investor in Google, is leading this $400M round... [NYT]
- The EU's complaint against Gorilla Glass-maker Corning reads a little bit too much like Margrethe Vestager personally cracked her iPhone screen and wants them to pay for it, literally. Isn't it her last day yet? How many more press releases can she get out before? Come on, Thierry Breton went out with a bang! [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Quote...
“We still want regulations, they just need to be necessary. I liken it to referees on a field. You don’t want to have no referees, but you don’t want to have more referees than players. That’s crazy.”
-- Elon Musk, arguably the second biggest winner of Trump's victory for a whole host of reasons, talking about his likely new role as the cost-cutter-in-chief of the incoming Trump administration. While we've seen this kind of cost-cutting at companies for years – including, most notably, with Musk himself after he acquired Twitter – doing so to the federal government is going to be... something.