Dispatch 016
Okay, I've sat on it for over 24 hours. I still can't for the life of me figure out what Apple was thinking with their actions around the release of the movie Wolfs. It's just such a weird self-own, for what? To save a few million bucks and some face if the movie bombed at the box office? No one would have cared – at least not like they do now! None more so than the awfully influential actors and director (not to mention probably all the rest of the hundreds of people who worked on that film).
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
🍪 The Next AI Battle: Who Can Get the Most Nvidia Chips in One Place – If 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs linked together in a data center is the new table stakes, we're already in a world where only a handful of massive companies (plus OpenAI, thanks to Microsoft, and Anthropic, thanks to Amazon) can compete. At least in terms of model training. But the reality is that we've long been at that point. The real question is how much that big model training matters as these data centers scale to 200,000 GPUs, 300,000 GPUs, etc... "AI Wall" or not, you wonder if it's some flavor of diminishing returns, perhaps not unlike the difference between having 50 nuclear warheads versus having 5,000. 5,000 are more powerful, but to what end? At some point the question becomes if these clusters can be used just as effectively for inference – or again, is that overkill? What about post-training work augmented by the newer "reasoning" models? Do the "superpowers" have hundreds of thousands of GPUs simply because their rivals do? [WSJ 🔒]
🕹️ Sony Working on Handheld Console for PS5 Games to Rival Switch – I'm surprised Sony (and Microsoft, for that matter), haven't moved (back) in this direction earlier given the success of the Switch, the Steam Deck, and mobile gaming in general. But with the latest generation, both went in sort of the opposite direction, becoming much more like giant PC gaming rigs. That worked out okay for Sony (though the PS5 is behind the PS4 in lifetime sales) and poorly for Microsoft. The latter is now clearly pivoting to the cloud – which may include a mobile hardware component – which makes sense on paper at least as it's a strength they can leverage. That leaves Sony in potentially a weird position. Presumably, they'll also have to leverage the cloud to get their PS5 titles to play on a mobile device (whereas the Portal is a sort of weird hybrid device for local game streaming), but again, that seemingly shifts an advantage to Microsoft. Maybe they could do a separate device, with its own games leveraging Playstation's popularity, a la Sega's Game Gear or Nintendo's GameBoy back in the day? Maybe the PSP and Vita were just too early? Before the Switch, we had the Wii U... [Bloomberg 🔒]
🇪🇺 The EU on the Hunt for Bluesky – Man, I love the EU when it comes to technology. While every once in a while we get something good out of their overbearing approach to regulation, for the most part, we get comedy – comedy which would be much more funny if the US would actually step in to stop all the ridiculous fines (which presumably they will be doing soon enough under the Trump administration). Today's example is the EC asking the countries if "they can find any trace of Bluesky" – as in, physically, in their countries. They're not big enough to fine. Nor do they have any revenues from which to fine. But the EC would sure like to rattle a stick at them and tell them to follow the rules! And then undoubtedly do a press conference in an attempt to ride the publicity wave Bluesky is currently enjoying. Because things are going great for Bluesky, but instead of focusing on keeping the service up and scaling, they really should have put up a web page to let the EU know what a simple Google search could tell them. Those are the rules. They don't write them. Actually, yes they do. [FT 🔒]
🦋 Bluesky Says It Won’t Screw Things Up – Speaking of Bluesky, Steven Levy chatted with CEO Jay Graber and board member Mike Masnick – yes, he of Techdirt (as Bluesky came about because of some of his ideas around free speech) – to ask the simple question: why is this time going to be different with social media? Anyone who has been around on the internet long enough will be both cynical – it me! – and skeptical at this point. But there is a real feeling of hope around Bluesky, which never existed around Threads, for example – the hope there was simply that because Meta knows how to both scale and monetize, that they could actually make a compelling Twitter-clone. They chose... poorly. (And are now rushing to rectify that.) [Wired 🔒]
🧹 ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ Jump-Start the Box Office, but at a Cost – While the trades really, really want to tout Wicked as the biggest thing ever and as such, go pretty granular: the highest-gross adaptation of a Broadway or stage musical – a list which is comically anemic – but not the top musical, not by a long shot. They're glossing over that it actually underperformed initial expectations, and initial estimates. And I appreciate Brooks Barnes pointing out just how crazy (and undoubtedly crazy expensive) the marketing was for the film. Still a great opening, but not some industry-altering, historic thing. And now we can really stop trying to make "Glicked" happen. Moana 2, this week, on the other hand, I believe will truly be massive... [NYT]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- Starbucks, which buys 3% of the world's coffee alone (!), is historically under-hedged on their coffee contracts right now. Why? prices keep rising with coffee production disruptions caused by bad weather. [FT 🔒]
- Microsoft has finally shipped the first version of 'Recall', the marquee AI feature of Windows. Of course, just in preview. Just to those with Qualcomm-powered 'Copilot+ PCs'. Better 5 months late than never? [Verge]
- Idris Elba is talks to join the new live-action Masters of the Universe movie for Amazon/MGM. No, not as He-Man, but as Man-at-Arms. He better rocks the big mustache like John Cypher did in the 1987 version – it's cannon. [THR]
- Yes, Intel's piece of the CHIPS Act is getting trimmed a bit, but it seems to be just as much about the other big government grant they got on the military side as well. So the government is giving Intel over $10B, if – a big if – they can hit their targets over the next many years. And if – a big if – the incoming Trump administration doesn't alter the deals. [NYT]
- A lot of fun quotes in Brendan Greeley's dismantling of the notion of a US "bitcoin strategic reserve" – starting with the idea that it could be funded by federal budget surpluses 🤣. A lot of circular thinking in the "nuclear put" – but also just the continued hypocrisy. This should be the exact opposite of what any true crypto believer wants. But, well... things have changed. [FT 🔒]
- Disney is coming hard at Netflix to take on their control over comedy specials. And Hulu is promising to be more "comedic-friendly". [NYT]
- Within their iOS app, Google will now start injecting automatically generated links on webpages. No. No. No. No. No. I get that many extensions do similar things, but an overall web browser/browsing tool should not do this by default, obviously. It's almost like they want people to worry they could do this everywhere on the web if only they controlled a popular web browser... [9to5Google]
- In better web browser news, Microsoft is using Edge for "game aware" overlays when playing a game on Windows. It's more like Amazon's "X-Ray" feature (which Apple also now offers) than Pop-Up Video, and can help you figure out what do to next... [Verge]
- The Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos spat over petty he-said/he-said bullshit on Xitter is slightly better than the Musk/Mark Zuckberg back-and-forth about having a wrestling match last year. But only just. [NYT]
- Airbnb partnering with apartment complexes in the UK to streamline long-term sublets is interesting (an extension of a trial in the US)... [FT 🔒]
I Quote...
"Isn’t your brain just math? A neuron fires and sums up calculations, that’s math, too. Like, we shouldn’t be afraid of Hitler, it’s just math. The whole universe is math."
-- Dario Amodei, who I'm guessing isn't thrilled with that quote in hindsight. But his point, made on stage at Eric Newcomer’s Cerebral Valley conference was to counter Marc Andreessen's remarks that there was nothing to fear about AI because "it's just math".
We're going to need a ruling on Baby Hitler. Math or not?