Dispatch 013
A lot of people are having fun with the Jaguar re-branding online and damnit, I'm going to have my fun too in the form of some tips for the company...
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
📚 Microsoft Signs AI-Learning Deal With News Corp.’s HarperCollins – Just yesterday, I was wondering who the "big tech company" might be that HarperCollins was emailing their authors about, to get permission to compensate them to use their works for training AI models. A few hours later, Bloomberg seemingly got the answer and it's sort of surprising. While I made the obvious guess of OpenAI (or Meta), it sounds like Microsoft is doing this deal not with their key partner in mind but for "a model that it hasn’t yet announced". Possibly they're trying to obfuscate something OpenAI is working on, I guess. But that would feel awfully misleading. More likely, it's something that Microsoft itself is working on without OpenAI – work which is clearly ramping. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🦋 Bluesky Tops 20M Users, Narrowing Gap with Instagram Threads – Honestly, I hope this kicks Threads in the pants to start building a network that users actually want, not the way Meta wants to in order to optimize for growth to optimize for ads. Such optimizations seem to be backfiring of late – no surprise – and several signals seem to betray that Meta both sees this and cares about this. Bluesky, seemingly built the right way – i.e. not using an algorithm built for image/video sharing – feels like it gets better with each passing day as new users come on board. Threads feels stale, at best. And Xitter feels worse with each passing day. [TechCrunch]
💼 Meta Forms Product Group to Build AI Tools for Businesses – In a way, I'm reminded of Bizarro Microsoft. That company can do no wrong in enterprise, but when it comes to translating that work over to consumers, they can't quite figure it out. Meta has tried to go the other way – remember Workplace? No? – but their social DNA doesn't seem to translate well to businesses. Except, of course, when it comes to small businesses running ads on their social networks. So if that's the focus of this new group under Clara Shih, then maybe there's something here. But my read is that they aspire to do much more, leveraging Llama to sell AI tools and services into the enterprise. Llama for Workgroups 3.11, perhaps? [Axios]
🦚 Comcast Greenlights $7 Billion Spinoff of NBCUniversal Cable Channels – Not a shock as the company previewed this move a few weeks ago (to get ahead of leaks, they said), but one surprising element is that one cable network is staying with the mothership – and it's neither MSNBC or CNBC, it's... Bravo? Presumably this highlights its importance to Peacock (which is also staying alongside the broadcast network NBC), but it's sort of weird to cleave off all of the cable channels except one. And they aim to have this new entity partner with/sell to/buy other content players over time – something they're also aiming to do with Peacock itself still, presumably. Still, I guess better to cut these losses now, as the sky falls, in the mind of Comcast, I suppose... [WSJ 🔒]
✈️ Arthur Frommer, 95, Dies; His Guidebooks Opened Travel to the Masses – Talk about timing, Frommer published his first guide – "Europe on 5 Dollars a Day" – in 1957. In 1958, airlines began trans-Atlantic jet passenger service, opening up long-distance travel to a class of customer beyond just the ultra-wealthy. And that's what those early Frommer guides were all about, dating from his days as a GI traveling around Europe. By the 1960s, they accounted for a quarter to a third of all Europe travel books sold in the US. Today, those books number 130 editions and have sold over 75 million copies. He sold the company in 1977 to Simon & Schuster, but kept on publishing and expanded the empire until that was acquired – and then acquired again... by Google (to add to their earlier Zagat purchase). But he bought the brand back a year later and kept going. "Stay away from gondolas; they cost as much as $3 an hour!" What a ride. [NYT]
I Wrote...
On the topic of re-branding fun...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- ProRata.ai is a new startup from Bill Gross that aims to partner with both media companies and AI companies to pay for usage of content within models. Some big publishers are on board – the tech companies, not so much yet. It sounds like ProRata will aim to entice them by showcasing their tech with their own "answer engine" to launch soon. Rushing to get paid for your content to flow into AI is all the rage right now. [FT 🔒]
- Imagine booting up your iPhone and seeing "AT&T Turbo" in the upper left corner – just the latest in a string of nonsense AT&T pulls to try to upsell you on network add-ons. Presumably either Apple or the FCC won't allow them to call it "5G+" or the like, so we get this new waste of screen real estate. [MacRumors]
- Casey Newton connects the other obvious dot in the whole Google/Chrome situation: the product was originally spearheaded by none other than current CEO Sundar Pichai back in the day. Not that such a connection would get in the way of doing whatever is best for Google now, but it must hold special meaning to him – and rightfully so! [Platformer 🔒]
- Speaking of, while he apparently just happened to be in the room (where it happened), even just the optics of Elon Musk joining President-Elect Donald Trump's call with Sundar Pichai seems wildly inappropriate and conflicted. No real surprise there, of course. [Information 🔒]
- Netflix is now saying that 108M people watched their Tyson/Paul live-streamed boxing match. The previous 60M figure was for households and households, of course, often have more than one person in them. But how they know this number so specifically, is not clear (is it just average number of people per household that subscribe to Netflix – so, 1.8?). [THR]
- Google's Gemini can now remember things about you and your life if you're on the premium plan. It seems to work pretty well (and doesn't further train the model with your own personal data, as you'd hope!). [TechCrunch]
- Related: I can't believe I haven't linked to this yet, but if you prompt ChatGPT with the following line: "based on what you know about me, draw me a picture of what you think my current life looks like." It works shockingly and humorously well... [Threads]
- Six years after Apple started selling the Pro Display XDR, there's finally a rumor about one new bit of technology coming: quantum dots, which also quietly were added to the new M4 MacBook Pros recently. No timetable for any such updated displays though. It seems like it usually takes Apple about a decade to remember they have displays to update. [9to5Mac]
- I didn't realize that all of those higher-end speakers/headphone companies you used to see in the overpriced future-y gadget stores in the mall are now owned by other entities. The latest is McIntosh, acquired by Bose. Hopefully they allow Apple to keep using the Macintosh name – the $100k or so Steve Jobs paid 40 years ago might be a different number now... [Verge]
- Did Meta hobble and eventually shutter Facebook Watch at the behest of Netflix? That's what a new lawsuit claims. And once again, we see the problematic – even if just optically – nature of tech executives on each others' boards. Though this one might be tough to prove given just how many content – and video, specifically – endeavors Meta has started and abandoned over the years... [THR]
- Yoshua Bengio – one of the "Godfathers of AI" – new op-ed lures you in by praising the new "thinking" capabilities of reasoning models such as o1 but quickly turns to use it as the reason why AI companies must be regulated now. [FT 🔒]
I Quote...
“We’re relaxed enough now as a retailer. In the past, we’d have probably tried to put a process around it so we had some agency in all of this from a central perspective. Whereas, in fact, the sensible thing to do is just have fun in each individual store.”
-- James Daunt, talking about the turnaround he's been orchestrating at Barnes & Noble. Following the turnaround he orchestrated at Waterstones here in the UK. Following his success building his own bespoke bookstore chain.
It's almost like this guy knows what he's doing. And I can't help but continue to wonder if what he's doing isn't similar to what Starbucks should also be doing in their own attempt at a turn around.
I Spy...
Per one of the links above, here's the output of a couple of tests I ran to see what ChatGPT thinks my life looks like and it's... not bad. Perhaps a little over-index on Premier League (tis the season), but nails the cribs-to-gadgets ratio...
