Dispatch 1 📧
This will be... an eventful week. One I'm admittedly not sad to be watching from afar. Related, I can't believe I didn't remember (remember...) that the US election falls on Guy Fawkes Night this year. Fireworks, indeed.
Update: Well, I hit the wrong button and published this one to the main feed. So... starting tomorrow. 😆
I Think…
🤖 AI for Startups – While largely vanilla, this post bylined by Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz (but seemingly most in the "voice" of Andreessen to my ear – well, Andreessen watered down by a bunch of lawyers), has a couple nuggets of interest in here. Notably, the full-throated support of "open source AI" which is interesting given Microsoft's deep and increasingly conflicted partnership with OpenAI, which, of course, is not actually "open" when it comes to their AI. Nor is Microsoft with their own AI. Nor are many of the AI startups that a16z backs, including OpenAI and more recently xAI. Also, while Andreessen continues to serve on the board of Meta, and they've long been touting Llama as the 'open source' AI alternative, the recent decision by the group (which Meta backs, as does Microsoft) that hands out such definitions gave guidelines that would put Llama well outside of the 'open source AI' camp. Also interesting: the "right to learn" element, arguing that models should be able to "learn" just as humans do, not restricted by copyright. Mainly, I still dislike the "Little Tech" moniker. It's so belittling, literally. Sort of the point, I realize. But there must be a better framing. [Microsoft on the Issues]
🎺 Quincy Jones, Giant of American Music, Dies at 91 – His obit reads like a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, he was connected to everyone. Nominated for 80 Grammys, he won 28. He arranged and conducted "Sinatra at the Sands". Produced "Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Bad” for Michael Jackson – which combined have sold something like 100M records. Recovered from a sleeping pill addiction on Marlon Brando's island. But my favorite story my be that after he suffered a brain aneurysm, a memorial concert was quickly planned at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. He lived and made artists like Ray Charles do it anyway so he could attend while still recovering. "It felt like I was watching my own funeral." That was 50 years ago. [NYT]
🚗 Tom Cruise Eyeing ‘Days of Thunder’ Sequel for Paramount – With the success of Top Gun: Maverick and the impending merger of Paramount with Skydance, this is probably peak leverage for Tom Cruise to make this happen. I recall enjoying 'Top Gun on Wheels' but it wasn't nearly the success of that other movie, obviously. And yes, as the article notes, it's a pretty crowded racetrack these days with quite a few racing movies, including next summer's F1 starring Brad Pitt and directed by Maverick's Joseph Kosinski. Robert Duvall was 59 when Days of Thunder was released – Tom Cruise is now 62, so yeah, that's the likely angle here. Duvall is now 93! He's more likely to return than Nicole Kidman, one suspects... I'm in, I just wish Cruise would use his clout to do Cocktail 2. Amazingly, this is not the only Cocktail reference in this newsletter. [THR]
🧑✈️ Microsoft's New Consumer Copilot Confuses Externally and Internally – No one ever likes change, but these comments pulled from Microsoft employees and users on the outside all seem fairly unified around the idea that the new Copilot meant for consumers is confusing, from the branding on down. Perhaps that branding is going to change (see: below), but it's still a strange leap to go from 'tool' to 'friend' and requires even more trust as a result. "It tries to be my friend when I need it to be a tool." "I don't need an AI friend. I need a tool." Honestly though, this is the most I've seen or heard about the new Copilot since it launched, which may be more damning than any review. [BI 🔒]
I Wrote…
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- Why is MicroStrategy trying to raise a very specific $42B to buy more Bitcoin? For the very serious reason of the importance of the number 42 in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the fact that 42 is double 21, with 21 million being the end state of Bitcoin, of course. [Information 🔒]
- While Ed Sheeran's “Thinking Out Loud” and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" do have a similar beat, a court ruled it wasn't copyright infringement, in part, because only the "Let's Get It On" skeletal sheet music was protected – to the point where a jury was only allowed to listen to "an electronic realization of the tune with a robotic voice" – sort of like a weird Musak/autotune thing – and not the actual song. [NYT]
- On one hand, the blocking of seeing public posts from people that block you on Xitter was a bit silly – anyone could still view them easily from any browser incognito mode because they're public – on the other, rolling such changes back just seems like a dick move meant to send some sort of statement. I mean, why even bother to make such a change if not to provoke? [TechCrunch]
- Warren Buffett sold another massive slug of his Apple shares. Why? Seemingly because it's Berkshire Hathaway's largest holding and he believes capital gains taxes are going up, so he's locking in a better rate. And even after over 600M shares sold this year (!), Apple is still their largest holding. [NYT]
- The new M4 Max chips are the first ever to cross the 4,000 score threshold in Geekbench 6 (single-core). They easily beat anything from Intel and AMD on the market – including their chips targeted at speed, not mobility. To that end, this is just the 'Max' variant of the M4, the 'Ultra' will undoubtedly come next year with the new Mac Studios and Pros. [Neowin]
- Is Microsoft about to up-level AI in their OS to 'Windows Intelligence' of which 'Copilot' would just be a feature? That would make some sense in the positioning against Apple in the consumer market... [TechRadar]
- Amazon is going to add the NBA to the mix to its current NFL 'Black Friday' extravaganza. Sports Night indeed! [Variety]
- While the quarterly numbers for IMAX were a bit low compared to last year's impossible comp in Oppenheimer, the CEO thinks next year will be their biggest ever. Notably, there are 14 films being released that were shot, at least in part, using IMAX cameras. Wall Street seems like it's starting to get on board... [Deadline]
- The Waymo v. Cybercab race is really one of cameras v. sensors and if AI can fill the gaps quickly enough at which point, Tesla could scale far faster and cheaper. Timing, as always, matters. [WSJ 🔒]
- TGI Fridays has filed for bankruptcy – not to worry though, it's staying open at it restructures, but did you know: "TGI Fridays said its bartenders trained the actor Tom Cruise to make drinks for the 1988 film Cocktail. It also takes credit for having popularized the Long Island Iced Tea." [NYT]
- While Amazon got rejected from using nuclear power as it might raise power costs for neighboring homes, Meta got thwarted by bees! Rare beeeessss! [FT 🔒]
I Quote...
“I feel like the most popular person wherever I go. I can just start the conversation with: I have over 1,500 GPUs—and everyone wants to talk to me.”
-- Nadia Carlsten, who was brought on board to lead the Danish Centre for AI Innovation and formed a partnership between Denmark, Novo Nordisk, and NVIDIA to build Gefion, a new AI supercomputer that's larger than a basketball court and runs on 1,528 NVIDIA chips. Fun headline here too as it is technically "paid for by Ozempic" since the maker of that drug is now the most valuable company in Europe as a result with money to spend on such projects.
Of course, just to keep things in perspective, while without question 1,500 NVIDIA GPUs is a lot – especially in our crazy current age of scarcity – xAI claims to have 100,000 in their new datacenter "Colossus" (some are skeptical). Just last week, Mark Zuckerberg said Llama 4 is currently in training on a cluster of over 100,000 H100s. And Meta has said that they're buying upwards of 350,000.
I Spy...
With the sale of those 100M Apple shares (discussed above), Berkshire Hathaway now has just over $325B in cash (and equivalents) on their balance sheet. For context, Apple itself has just over $150B in cash – less than half that of Berkshire. What on Earth are they going to buy next?
