Dispatch 039: One Prediction Down...
With one such prediction seemingly already in the bag, I figured I should share the quick predictions post I wrote while killing time waiting for the clock to strike 2025 (while this newsletter was on vacation). Despite being written on a whim, it quickly became the most popular post in the (almost) year-long history of Spyglass. Funny how that always seems to happen with writing: the throw-away post takes off. Though it's probably just a testament to the power of lists...
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
🤼 Netflix Made Me Watch WWE — And It’s Betting $5 Billion You’ll Watch Too – The streaming giant's latest foray into "sports" seems like a hit, at least after night one. Of course, they pulled out every stop, and celebrity, to hype this thing to no end. Naturally, The Rock returned, as did John Cena, as did Hulk Hogan hawking his own America First beer (social media seemed surprised at the level of boos – not booze – he received). A savvy opening, but will it have staying power and most importantly for the WWE, expand the audience, potentially pushing it global? For Netflix, can it be a form of glue that holds together their clearly ramping sports streaming scaffolding? Speaking of predictions: as I noted a year ago when this partnership was announced: "And so can the NFL games on Netflix really be that far behind?" Narrator: they were not that far behind. [THR]
🇪🇺 We Do Not Censor Social Media, EU Says in Response to Meta – Mark Zuckerberg used his content moderation pivot speech to take a swipe at the EU for their overzealous policies. The EU, of course, did not like this – in particular the assertion that Meta would work with the incoming Trump administration to combat such actions. While this was clearly a broader and thinly-veiled threat to the EU around regulation, the body chose just to respond to this element specifically, noting that Meta was welcome to use their new community moderation method in the EU, but that it would need to be "checked for effectiveness" – in other words, we can expect these changes to Meta products to roll out in Europe around 2029. Or never. [Reuters]
🫧 On Bubble Watch – As always, a good overview from Howard Marks on where the market stands today, on the 25th anniversary of his "bubble.com" memo, no less. As he notes, since he's not a tech expert, it's hard for him to deduce if any of the "Magnificent 7" are overvalued, and by just how much – and, in a way, that's all that really matters because those stocks so utterly dominate the markets right now (roughly 1/3 of the S&P 500's total capitalization), in a way that's actually far beyond the way the top seven stocks dominated the market in that 2000 bubble (22%). But just these types of high level numbers point to quite a bit of bubble risk. Not insane, but a lot. And any sort of slip could easily trigger a correction given the concentration risk here alone. Regardless, a good level-setting and history lesson from Marks, especially now with so many in the workforce (and founding companies and investing) who were born after the Dot Com Bubble. Marks' lessons, of course, start well before that as he learned his first (the hard way) over 50 years ago. Aside: bubble.com is now naturally a startup named Bubble – "The full-stack, no-code app builder for everyone" (to be fair, they use the bubble.io domain, to which bubble.com redirects). [Oaktree]
⚖️ TikTok Supreme Court Case Pits National Security Against Free Speech – With the Court set to hear the arguments for and against banning TikTok starting tomorrow (ahead of the January 19 ban date), this is a summary of what it it likely to boil down to. The US will argue that a 2010 case which sided with national security set the precedent here. While TikTok will argue that a 1965 case that sided with free speech should be the precedent. One key: current Chief Justice John Roberts also presided over the 2010 case while now Justice Elena Kagan was the US Solicitor General at the time. That seemingly does not bode well for TikTok here (nor do lower court rulings). Nor does the push by many politicians, like Mitch McConnell who have seen a behind-closed-doors briefing of the security risks. But... you-know-who looms large here, asking the Court to give him time to make a deal. Will this test checks (books) and (bank) balances? [NYT]
I Note...
- Speaking of TikTok, it sounds like Eric Schmidt and Sebastian Thrun are working on a potential alternative focused on AI video generation. At least in trademark submissions, the name is 'Hooglee', which sounds awfully Googley for two former Googlers... [Forbes 🔒]
- As expected, xAI's stand-alone Grok app is here (at least in some countries). I was able to download it from the US App Store. And interestingly, it lets you sign in via Xitter or Apple... [TechCrunch]
- Elon Musk echoed the notion that we're now beyond "peak data": "We’ve now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge …. in AI training. That happened basically last year." The way forward in his view? Synthetic data, of course. But there are risks... [TechCrunch]
- One recent model trained primarily on such synthetic data? Microsoft's Phi-4, a smaller but performant model that does particularly well in math. Originally put out there a few weeks ago, Microsoft has now released the weights on Hugging Face. [VentureBeat]
- Meanwhile, Microsoft had to roll-back their AI on the Bing Image Creator to the old (OpenAI) model, continuing their consumer AI issues... [TechCrunch]
- It took me a bit to figure out that Umi, a new AI-powered wellness coach developed by Panasonic and Anthropic wasn't meant to be a feature of the former's smart TVs, but is actually a mobile app. [TechCrunch]
- Is this new Nintendo Switch 2? Sure looks (and sounds) like it (in 3D printed form). Still lamenting the lack of 'Super Switch' branding, but after months (years) of waiting, it's clearly close... [Verge]
- They're active user FAST fighting in the press – of course they all have slightly different ways of measuring and defining such users:
- Razer's 'Project Ava' an AI system that helps you when you're stuck in a videogame – by capturing "thousands of pictures of your screen as you play"(!). My 12-year-old self would have killed for this, versus buying expensive guides or calling toll-charging phone numbers – remember Nintendo Hotline? Though hopefully it's not an always-on thing: there's obviously something to working through it yourself, especially for kids. [Verge]
- AMD both credits and refuses to credit Apple with their new 'Ryzan AI Max' combined CPU/GPU chips. VP Joe Macri says they were working on such chips before Apple Silicon, but also that the success of Apple Silicon gave them the push to finish and launch such chips. [Engadget]
- On the topic of Apple chips, TSMC's US plant in Arizona seems to have picked up a second Apple product: the S9 chip for Apple Watch (following the A16 chip for iPhones). [Culpium]
- More on that WTF Melania Trump documentary that Brett Ratner (!) is helming for Prime Video – and it's even more WTF. Apparently, Amazon paid $40M for the rights, and that's just to distribute it, they won't own it. And there will be follow-up episodes! And they outbid Disney and Paramount for the rights to trip over themselves to kiss the ring. [Puck 🔒]
I Quote...
"Apart from the million-dollar wristwatch, it had the look of a hostage video."
-- The Economist on Mark Zuckerberg's video announcing Meta's change in stance regarding content moderation. The publication agrees with the changes overall, but like myself, bemoans the way it was presented – in particular, the timing, which was clearly and obviously politically motivated.
I Spy...
I see no problem with Bing's image creator (per above) – it's just as random, bland, and wonky as it was when I first tried it a couple years ago. I feel like OpenAI has really ceded the image generation game to others, they should fight back!
