Inklings #033 📧
It has been quite a year this past week. The Jensen Huang situation may go down as not only the biggest story of the year, but perhaps of the decade? And it feels like there is yet a lot to learn and come out here. And it makes situations like Microsoft Outlook being down for two days (!) seem small by comparison.
Well, in walks the FAA which has just put a ground hold on every single flight in the US. Is that related to an AI roll-out yesterday? It can't be ruled out yet! Wild times. Stay safe out there everyone.
M.G. Siegler
I Note...
🤲 'Western Values' Open Models – Clever idea and work by Nous Research to take an "open" Chinese model (Qwen 3.8-27B) and post-train it on "western values" to remove the inherent Chinese state-aligned material (censorship/ propaganda). It feels like this isn't talked about enough in the heralding of the Chinese "open" models, but they clearly are built with such bias baked into training (and the distillation of such models may make NVIDIA's Nemotron culpable too, which is why Nous had to use Thinking Machine's well-named Inkling model for teaching this new "Arete" model to forget that stuff). [Nous]
🐞 Google Fixing Googlebooks in Post – An update frees up 3GB - 6GB of memory, which is like 20% to 40% of available memory. So much that it's seems insane that Google didn't launch with this "feature" when the first Googlebooks started shipping a month ago. The whole strategy here continues to baffle me and all of these just sound like buggy, unfinished prototypes. [Android Central]
💥 Skydance Kapows DC Heads – Who could have possibly seen this coming? Honestly, not too many since there were some very public indications that James Gunn and Peter Safran were safe in their jobs post-merger. But nothing ever really seems safe in mergers, but especially when DC is involved – just ask Henry Cavill. This mainly reads like a deadly mixture of political jockeying from new studio heads mixed with lackluster performance of the recent DC slate. Also the fact that Gunn clearly likes to make sort of weird, off-center content (even Superman was a fairly strange Superman!) while David Ellison likes Top Gun 2 and 3 and 4 and... With Jeremy Latcham, it seems like he has a guy who will deliver that (and hopefully not full-on religious-fare as he had been focused on), and who is well-versed in big company hierarchies. The fact that he was Kevin Feige's right-hand man for a while at Marvel can't hurt, though it's not clear how much that will help DC as their best content tends to be when they're not just copying the MCU playbook. Henry Cavill is totally coming back as Superman, right? [THR]
🙊 Podcast AI Ads Backlash – Perhaps I'm out of touch on this as well, but I completely fail to see what the big deal is here. The Ringer backed out of their OpenAI advertising deal because the audience didn't like the ads? I mean, sure, ideally the audience would connect with the ads, but if they don't, they just don't convert and the situation rectifies itself? I guess it's more that the ads were bleeding into the content? But even there, Bill Simmons' use – to imagine what deceased film critic Roger Ebert might think of a modern movie – hardly seems like something to be that up-in-arms about? And that was from his co-hosts? I get that it's all a part of the anti-AI sentiment, but come on. Billions of people are already using this technology on a regular basis... [Bloomberg 🔒]
🥃 For Relaxing Times, Make It AI Time – Speaking of AI ads... There was a time when movie stars refused to be in any advertisements in the US for fear of "cheapening" their presence (which led to a lot of fun, weird celebrity ads in European and Asian markets – the kind sort of parodied in Lost in Translation). Now we're about to have such celebrities allowing their likeness to be used to create AI ads. [NYT]
🍎 Trump Wants Tim Apple to Become Tim NVIDIA – Of course he wants Tim Cook installed in place of the ousted Jensen Huang, why not keep the golden grifts gifts flowing? And it's how he thinks to best keep that cut all chip sales to China. Of course, it's now especially hard to see any chip sales to China happening for the forseeable future. And while Cook may be a fine choice in that he's a proven, great CEO with plenty of experience (especially with regard to China), he's hardly the ideal candidate to lead a complex chip company (nor would he do it anyway after stepping back at Apple, you have to imagine). But his chip guy, Johny Srouji, does seem like an interesting candidate – especially if he was somewhat unsure about his future at Apple, as had been reported previously. Far more likely though is ARM chief Rene Haas, who used to work at NVIDIA and almost sold the company to them, before it was effectively blocked. Could there be a new deal of sorts with NVIDIA now in disarray? [9to5Mac]
🤵♂️ The Case for Pattinson as Bond – Matt Belloni makes the case for the biggest star to get the role, which is obviously not how the Bond franchise has typically done things, but perhaps it is time to shake the martini mixer. Per his sources, Robert Pattinson would both cost more money and require a lower film commitment (three movies instead of the four the others in the running are said to have signed up for), but this is the first Amazon-backed Bond, the money won't be an issue and they'll presumably want to go big. I still personally prefer the others as I'm old school in this regard, but I certainly see the case – especially if Pattinson will be hanging up the batsuit after this next superhero go. And clearly the fact that this saga has dragged on this long isn't a great sign for the others long in the running. Also, yes, he was great in Primetime. [Puck 🔒]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Quote...
"What do you think of the logo?"
– John Ternus to Steven Levy, during a sit down with the still-new CEO of Apple. Clearly, he's excited he was able to bring it back on the new MacBooks. And even such a simple sentence conveying that sentiment gives a lot of hope.
Thoughts On...
I Spy...
I continue to think an AI-native OS (versus AI tacked on to Windows, or macOS, or whatever the Googlebook Frankenstein OS is) could be and should be interesting. And that's exactly what Cyanogen and Boost Mobile founder Kirt McMaster is trying to build in Kora. Sure, it's a pivot from a gaming-focused OS, and it's Linux-based, but still, it's not a bad thing to try in our current environment...
🎶 Listening to "Tom and Jerry" by John Mayer
🍺 Enjoying a Mad Squirrel Tsunami New England IPA
🇬🇧 Sent from London, England