Let the Games Begin 📧
Mark Zuckerberg loves two things above all else right now: llamas and wakeboarding. And this week, he was able to combine the two on a whirlwind press blitz to extol the virtues of "open source" AI. That message was squarely aimed at the US government and against China which are battling over the future of AI. The EU, meanwhile, is close to discovering new technology called the wheel. But hey, at least they were indirectly to blame for the complete collapse of computer systems around the world this week thanks to their regulations. They would undoubtedly love for AI to eat itself, as may happen.
Back in the US, when President Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Xitter, the artist formerly known as Twitter, was on fire – in ways good and bad. Meanwhile on Threads, Meta's employees learned about the news over the course of the next several hours. Wait until they get to read about JD Vance and the couch next week!
That was fun, but also, maybe no one should ever tweet.
People are watching movies in theaters again! For this week at least! The NBA on TNT? Not so much. They are never, ever, ever getting back together. Unless a court forces them to. But we learned that someone is watching Apple TV+: the ROI gods.
Perhaps those two items help Apple buy HBO. I need to be able to watch House of the Dragon on my flip-iPhone in a couple years.
As for something to watch right now: the streak of there being no such thing as a bad Steve Jobs video continues unabated. Or the Olympics.
Remains of the Week
🤖 Who Will Control the Future of AI? – I honestly found Sam Altman's op-ed to be a bit muddled. It almost feels like it was pushed out in response to Mark Zuckerberg's "Thoughts on Open Source AI" post earlier this week and so it's not as taut as it should be. And it's obviously beyond self-serving. It makes the case for more US government involvement in the space partnering with companies like OpenAI – which some, like Zuckerberg, would argue will just entrench the current powers. But like Zuckerberg, Altman is worried about China (and Russia). It also almost reads like a plea to help subsidize the cost of building AI – which is interesting in light of reports that OpenAI may need more money again, soon... [The Washington Post 🔒]
💬 WhatsApp Hits 100M MAUs in the US – This strikes me as a bigger deal than it may seem at first. Why? More than half of those users are on iPhones, according to the company. Since moving to Europe, I'll be the last person to report to you that everything is run on WhatsApp over here – school groups, vendors, etc. And that, in turn has led me to start using it with more friends in the US as well – especially for groups. Because someone is likely elsewhere in the world which runs on WhatsApp, or yes, on Android. I wonder how Apple is watching and thinking about this news... [TechCrunch]
🔎 OpenAI Unveils SearchGPT – While it's starting with a very limited test – 10,000 users – this is obviously a big potential moment for the company. Before they were indirectly going after Google (in Search, they're obviously battling in AI full-bore), now they're directly doing so. Though it's probably a bigger risk to Perplexity, right now, which is the key upstart in the AI search space but facing a lot criticism (and legal action) over the way it surfaces content. Still, part of me is reminded when Facebook went after search back in the day. Oh, you don't remember that? It was going to change everything. [The Verge]
🇨🇳 China Is Closing the A.I. Gap With the United States – Speaking of China and AI, this report makes the case that the country is quickly catching up to and in some cases surpassing the US. There's the example of 01.AI, Kai-Fu Lee's startup, building on top of Meta's Llama, and then expanding on it. And open source is what they seem focused on going forward (with all the usual Chinese speech and content restrictions, of course). [NYT]
📲 Perhaps the 'Slim iPhone' Won't Be the 'iPhone Ultra' After All – If Ming-Chi Kuo's supply chain sources are to be trusted here, "the ultra-slim iPhone 17 will emphasize innovative form factor design rather than competing on hardware specifications". Notably, he says the it will have a slower processor than the 'Pro' models of the iPhone 17. And a single rear camera?! And a new 5G chip made in-house by Apple... Beauty over performance? [Medium]
⭕️ The Inner Ring ⭕️
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M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
Potent Quotables
"We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer."
-- A "former senior employee" at Amazon talking to the WSJ for their damning report about just how much money the company has burned trying to make Alexa happen. Just from 2017 to 2021, "Amazon had more than $25 billion in losses" according to documents they've seen. A reboot nears, but will it work?
The Quick & the Read
- A single 40kb file that was distributed by CrowdStrike for just 78 minutes (before the first fix was issued) is what caused the computer chaos this week. [The Verge]
- Tom Warren also relays the inside story of how Microsoft rushed to help fix it since they were being (wrongly – thanks, EU) blamed. [Notepad 🔒]
- As if the ramifications weren't wide enough already, the fiasco may have also helped to derail Google's $23B deal to buy Wiz [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Sort of strange that the MLB launched a new streaming service in the middle of their season? It's $5.99/month but it's not MLB.tv, which lets you stream most of the games, this is just for whatever is on MLB Network. Why are these two different things? [Variety]
- With AlphaProof, DeepMind created an AI that is actually good at math. How good? Silver medalist level at a math olympiad (but still far behind the best humans there) [NYT]
- Speaking of Google/Alphabet, they're investing way more into Waymo. [CNBC]
- AMC was able to restructure some of the mountain of debt which is hanging over its head. Though it just feels like a continuing and literal passing of the buck given the state of the movie theater industry (yes, even when thinks are looking better post-Inside Out 2). More APE coins? [Bloomberg 🔒]
- I'm shocked – SHOCKED – that the "California Forever" plans are on hold for at least a couple of years given how well the original PR around this went over. I will be more shocked if it all ever actually happens. Not any statement about the idea of creating a new type of California city itself – though again, the roll-out was stupid – more just a prediction. [NYT]
- Apple Maps on the web! (What year is this? It looks nice though.) [9to5Mac]
- In other mapping news – basically everyone not named Apple and Google are teaming up on Overture Maps Foundation a new initiative for "interoperable and open map data". [TechCrunch]
- Meta is about to be the first company hit in a new wave of EU regulatory fines, this one for tying Marketplace to Facebook. While the new product roll-outs are clearly paused, you have to wonder if Meta might not just exit the market entirely given how much they're going after their entire business. We'll see what the fine ends up being – it can be up to 10% of worldwide revenue. Last year, Meta made just over $130B. [Reuters]
- Sonos really shit the bed with their latest app update, and now the CEO is apologizing. I don't understand why this company, which is so good at making hardware, is so bad at the software layer. Always has been. [The Verge]
- Back to China, the iPhone has apparently dropped out of the top 5 devices sold in the country as local brands continue to win and global trends continue to push Apple. Maybe flip-iPhones will help? Slim ones? Or just cheaper ones? [Bloomberg 🔒]
- And aside from AI and cheap smartphones, they may be eclipsing the US in supercomputers too. [WSJ 🔒]
- Come on, this simply must be the Murdochs having a bit of fun – this new succession drama is just way too close to the actual plot of Succession, the show, which was based, in part, on the Murdochs, to be real. You are not serious, people. [NYT]
- Lina Khan would like you to know she's in favor of open-source models – but very specifically calls for open-weight models, which Meta must be happy about given that's what they do with Llama, but in the eyes of many, this is not actually open source, despite Mark Zuckerberg's framing, since what goes into Meta's actual training is still locked down... [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Speaking of, buried/lost – obviously intentionally – in the news about Llama 3.1 is that it's text-only, for now. In other words, not "omni" or "multimodal" like GPT-4o or Gemini. This will come, Meta says, but it's a pretty important omission! [The Information 🔒]
- Not to be outdone, the other "open" model maker, Mistral, pushed out Mistral Large 2. This one is open-weights, though only to be used for non-commercial purposes. [VentureBeat]
- Amazon has bought an old film studio in London, famous for old horror movies – in order to get its physical studio space for shooting series like The Rings of Power (which was partially shot here before Amazon bought it). [FT 🔒]
- The new Prime Video UI seems a lot less bait-and-switchy [Variety]
- In other streaming UI news, Disney is going to overhaul Disney+ to do a lot more Netflix-like stuff to try to keep people glued to the service ("channels" is a part of this) [WSJ 🔒]
- Wake me up when Disney+ can resurrect washed out shows, like Netflix is seemingly doing again with Your Honor. Maybe that audience just really, really loves Bryan Cranston... [NYT]
- The pricing for the Disney+, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle is out: $16.99/month with ads, or $29.99/month without. It's good value versus all three bought separately, but my god this is all getting expensive... [Variety]
- Epic's new strategy for mobile Fortnite seems to be releasing it on every App Store not controlled by one of the gatekeepers [Epic]
- Meanwhile, Netflix poached one of their executives to oversee their own gaming initiative, which is expanding quickly [Variety]
- EssilorLuxottica is buying Supreme – at a pretty big discount to what VF paid just four years ago. And apparently there will be a Supreme/Meta smart glasses tie-up too, which I guess makes sense since Meta is also investing in the eyewear giant and also Zuck is now wearing chains around [FT 🔒]
- Remember the cookie-pocalypse heading straight for Chrome soon? Forget about it. [Digiday]
- What Elon Wants – I enjoyed these two similar headlines this week:
One Hideous Thing...
