Dispatch 020
Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror means one thing to me each year: The Game. Tomorrow.
While Michigan is in the midst of an awkward transition year (as you might imagine after they lost half their team – and coach – to the NFL, following a national championship) and are currently three touchdown underdogs to Ohio State, it's still the best game in the land. Even in down years for either side, they tend to "play up" for this rivalry – especially when it can mean spoiling something for the other team: Ohio State is currently #2 in the nation, having only lost a close game to #1, Oregon.
Have I mentioned that Ohio State hasn't beaten Michigan in five years? (Yes, COVID played a part in that streak, but regardless, it's been three beat-downs in a row – after years of bad beats.) So Ohio State has something to play for beyond their ranking. If they lose, their coach is gone. The Game is also, of course, in Columbus. They'll be especially rabid, one imagines.
With a championship in hand, I feel at ease about The Game for the first time in a long time – as I've documented over the years. Especially with the knowledge that Michigan just flipped the top prospect in the country to their side to play quarterback for the Wolverines next year. Thanks, in no small part to... Larry Ellison. Tech angle! #GoBlue
I Think...
📱 Australia’s Social Media Ban for Under 16s to Become Law – I still feel like I don't have a fully formed opinion here. On one hand, this seems like heavy-handed nanny-state stuff. On the other, I don't really want my own children (who thankfully, are still too young to care) using the social networks as they exist today. My instinct is that it should be a parental thing, but we also know how well that works in our current age of everyone having devices, everywhere. Regardless, it feels like there's a tide pushing towards age-verification becoming a thing at the OS-level (despite Apple's efforts). And not just because Mark Zuckerberg wants that, but because other approaches are too piecemeal and onerous on smaller companies. Perhaps it's an interesting compromise with Big Tech™: you can be this big, but with it, comes big responsibilities... [Bloomberg 🔒]
🦋 Meta’s Threads Developing Own Take on Bluesky’s ‘Starter Packs’ – Everyone calm down! Meta has had all of these features in testing for months, you see. Actually years. Maybe even a decade. Adam recommended Eve via his Threads Starter Pack, I hear. It's just a total coincidence that they're shipping them as another network that is not Threads is sucking the buzz out of the social room with features users actually want instead of stuff Meta wants users to want. I'm with Sarah Perez in laughing at the notion that Threads needs a 'Starter Pack' when they have the ultimate starter pack in the form of the Instagram social graph. The Threads app icon is totally going a specific shade of blue soon. [TechCrunch]
🥽 Apple in Talks to Upgrade a Sports Stadium for Live Vision Pro Content – Yes, this would be both awesome and exactly what Apple needs to spur Vision Pro growth and usage. Is it technically feasible to do a fully immersive live stream? No idea – surely there must be some reason why Apple hasn't even done a single game in immersive video after the fact, only short highlights of certain games, months after they're shot. It may be less about the stream itself – which even startups have been able to pull off! – and more about the post-production work required to meet Apple's standards. Installing their special cameras at specific angles throughout a stadium certainly may help. Also, while this is about Real Madrid, you'd think a certain deal Apple has with another soccer league would make this all even easier... But given Apple's cadence with the Vision Pro and content to date, this all still feels years away. [9to5Mac]
💍 Mark Zuckerberg Meets With Trump at Mar-a-Lago – Unlike some of the early overtures, which were double-speak at best and inappropriate at worst, I'm fine with this and recognize that now that Trump is President-Elect, it's Zuckerberg's duty as a fiduciary of one of the largest companies in the world, let alone in the US, to be able to work with the new administration. And, you know, not have them threatening to jail you. This issue, and why this is news, is the quid-pro-quo risk here. This isn't a President who just takes a compliment, he uses the compliment. Always has, always will. See: the Stephen Miller quote at the end of this piece. To hear Team Trump frame it, this isn't Zuck just thawing relations with the incoming President, it's him wanting to be a part of the team. It's kissing the ring to show fealty to Trump and whatever he wishes to do. To be clear, I'm not saying Zuckerberg/Meta thinks about it that way – I certainly don't believe that. But that's how it's going to be spun. Beats jail, I guess. [NYT]
🤓 Silicon Valley Billionaires Remain in Thrall to the Cult of the Geek – A good column by John Thornhill pointing out a lesson that Bill Gates learned long ago: that intelligence – at least the human variety – comes in many forms. Putting pure paper IQ in positions of power doesn't yield the best results. Better is a blend of different types to tackle different problems – including, of course, interpersonal issues – as they arise. At a high level, I'm of the mind that it's probably a good thing to shake-up various government offices which have become bloated and ossified over decades of largesse. If nothing else, fresh sets of eyes can yield results. At the same time, moving too fast and breaking too many things clearly has the potential for disastrous first and second order effects when said agencies are part of the glue that holds our messy machine together. All I'm saying is that we need people who are mindful of that reality as well. And those willing to admit that they don't know what they don't know. It's not clear that we're setting this up for success as DOGE gets ready to bark and bite. [FT 🔒]
I Note...
📆 One Year After Altman’s Ouster, OpenAI Remains Dominant – One year to the day that "the Blip" ended with the return of Sam Altman as CEO, the company is now a $157B juggernaut doing a lot more things with a lot more people. That despite a number of key people leaving. The relationship with Microsoft – so vital in providing the cover to bring Altman back – is also now clearly quite strained. Meanwhile, in the east, Elon Musk's xAI raises data centers at record speed and funds at record rates. All are good testaments to just how much can happen in one year. [Bloomberg 🔒]
📹 Amazon Develops Video AI Model, Hedging Its Reliance on Anthropic – Even while giving Anthropic another $4B, Amazon continues work on their own models. Which just makes sense as the link right above this one should make clear. While a startup may have no choice, a tech giant simply cannot put all their eggs in one basket with AI – especially if they don't actually and fully own that basket. This would also seem to be the first acknowledgement, albeit anonymously, that Amazon's first LLM, Titan, didn't move any needles, let alone mountains. We'll see what the mountain, Olympus, can do. And it will be interesting to see which of these models is actually power the new, 'Remarkable' Alexa if and when she launches – perhaps a hybrid of Claude and Olympus? Sounds like we may hear about Olympus sooner with an AWS angle.[Information 🔒]
I Link...
- As expected, Microsoft is holding back the launch of the Xbox game store on Android devices given the stay granted which allows Google to wait to offer third-party billing through Play Store apps, which is clearly what Microsoft is waiting for. [Verge]
- While I may not love OpenAI's naming schemes, they're got nothing on Alibaba, whose new 'QwQ-32B-Preview' model is here and open-ish and capable of reasoning like o1 – it may even perform better. [TechCrunch]
- Making the new US Postal trucks look like a duck or platypus was a choice – but one focused on how it works, as it allows mail carriers of all heights to see the road... [NYT]
- As a part of their chip contract with the government, if Intel were to spin-off their foundry business, they would still need to maintain a majority ownership stake. Which makes sense, the government isn't just going to hand out money to help flip a business to someone else – what if it's a foreign entity, thus defeating the point of the CHIPS act. [Reuters]
- NVIDIA has a new AI model that can change one sound to another – voices too. They're not currently planning to release it due to obvious risks. [Reuters]
- Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr in one of the (four) Sam Mendes’ Beatles movies? Sign up Ringo, "I think it’s great. I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many." [ET]
- Different, of course, from the Beatles '64 documentary just released presumably to both celebrate 60 years of their tour and play off 64. [NYT]
- The first ever picture of a star outside our galaxy! WOH G64 is a "colossal red supergiant" 160,000 light years away and about to go supernova. [BBC]
I Quote...
“This is a chance to work on the reverse ‘New Deal’.”
— An unnamed “college-aged DOGE applicant” speaking to Forbes as to why they’re excited about the potential of joining the Department of Government Efficiency. They go on to note that while some compared it to the Manhattan Project, “these aren’t physicists, but 22-year-old engineers.”
While there’s a lot of talk about big names who might join such efforts, as the piece notes, the real key will be the grunt-work which likely means 100 hour work weeks for little-to-no pay. Will such a group be the new ‘PayPal Mafia’, as Figma co-founder Dylan Field put it? Seems a bit lofty. But another group Field knows well comes to mind: Thiel Fellows.
Aside: reading up on the Thiel Fellowship on Wikipedia I was reminded that I actually wrote the first post about the program after Peter Thiel announced it on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. Wild that it was nearly 15 years ago.
I Spy...
I mean, per the link above, just look at this thing...
“It looks like a robot Beluga whale — built by the East German government,” he wrote in 2021, after the design was unveiled. “It also reminds me of the baseball bullpen golf carts that were designed to look like motorized baseball hats.”
Also, here's that star, per above, stunning in yellow/orange hues as it prepares to explode...
