Quiet. Thinking. 📧
I just love this clip of David Foster Wallace talking about the importance of quiet time – that is to say, of thinking, in society. Also, of reading. This is both an easy dunk to make, but also entirely true. And then you realize that he said this over 20 years ago. In fact, he died just over 16 years ago. That is truly depressing.
I Think…
📍 Farewell to Foursquare’s app – Definitely a bummer that they're winding down the city guides app – also sort of surprising given that it's pretty deeply integrated into a handful of other places, notably Apple Maps (presumably they'll just use Yelp and other such data sources going forward?). But the writing has obviously been on the wall here for a while, of course. Ever since the company broke off the "check-in" element of the service into Swarm and made Foursquare itself a separate app, the guide has really seemed to suffer as a result. Given that the company is now in the business of selling off location data, it sadly makes sense to care less about recommendations, but that was the core of what made Foursquare great and useful originally (well that and knowing where your friends are and were, but that use case got taken over by the youths on Zenly and now Snap Map). I distinctly recall writing about Foursquare in those early days – well over 15 years ago! – and the "location wars" with Gowalla and the like. Consumer services were more innocent and fun then. I actually still check-in with Swarm from time to time, but only really to keep track of where I've been (which I export to a Google Sheet), not for the recommendations. I should probably just move everything over to Google Maps finally, I guess. [TechCrunch]
🤖 Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore Join Thousands of Creatives in AI Warning – I've read this story twice and I just can't figure out why Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore specifically are called out in the headline. There are 10,500 signatories of a statement – including many other Hollywood actors, musicians, and various other celebrities. Maybe they're trying to connect Yorke's work with Radiohead, including themes which tie into technology, as being interesting to this stance? Okay, computer. Julianne Moore seems even more of a stretch as while she's a great actress, what's the connection here? Certainly there are more well-known actresses in this list if that's all they're going for? Maybe The Guardian just randomly chose two people that they thought would get people to read. Maybe they had their images licensed and ready to roll? Whatever you think about the merits of the stance (and AI + Hollywood in general), the article is notable given both the sheer number of creatives who signed and the involvement of a former Stability executive trying to rally the community against his former employer and others in the space, I just don't understand the headline. [Guardian]
⭕️ OpenAI Plans to Release its Next Big AI Model by December – "Fake news" tweets Sam Altman in response to what would be a big scoop from Kylie Robison and Tom Warren. Presumably this isn't misdirection by Altman and he's perhaps upset because getting hopes up about the launch of "Orion" before the end of the year (which had been rumored – in part due to OpenAI itself – FWIW, ChatGPT itself says that it's expected that "Orion" will be released in "early 2025"), only for it to not come, would obviously not be a great look for OpenAI. That said, he did tweet last month a seemingly random but perhaps cryptic message about winter constellations – which yes, includes Orion, per ChatGPT. Of course, that tweet notes the constellations would rise "soon" not necessarily in December. But maybe we're all just reading way too much into this. Like, you know, that new 'O' logo. Also, can they even still call it "Orion" in a post-Meta 'Orion' world? Also, also is another constellation: Gemini 2.0 imminently inbound? (My general viewpoint is that Sam should be happy that people care this much about OpenAI to obsessively write about it, even "fake news" beats "no news" – as in, no one cares enough to write about you or your company.) [Verge]
🗳️ The Crypto Website Where the Election Odds Swing in Trump’s Favor – I don't understand why we increasingly see so many people citing Polymarket as some sort of accurate bellwether for the upcoming US election. Even mainstream media has started doing it – even this very headline is confusing! But as the article goes on to note, Trump has pulled ahead in this crypto betting market because four accounts – all controlled by the same person, a French national – bet over $30M on a Trump victory. Many polls may be ridiculous and/or wrong, but what on Earth is this? Even Mark Cuban – who is an investor in Polymarket – cast aside the relevance of such a service in this election, since Americans can't (legally) use it. So at best, it's a sample of what others in the world think is going to happen in this election. Those likely with a crypto-bent. And perhaps just one French dude. Yes, it "predicted" that Biden would drop out of the race, but that was not a hard call, despite what various Biden factions tried to convey. And yes, Nate Silver is now an advisor, but that may or may not be a good thing here. [NYT]
📧 Notion Brings AI to Email – Casey kicks off by talking about Mailbox, a company that I was pretty closely involved with in the early days as an investor. As such, I'm biased, of course. But I still miss it. The notion of Notion Mail sounds interesting to me – notably because they're trying to back into their own back-end for email. That's the key which no one has nailed and why we all default back to Gmail. A million times easier said than done, of course. But also: Gmail is so fucking bloated now, can someone please put it out of its misery? [Platformer 🔒]
I Wrote…
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- It will be interesting to see where the third Venom movie lands at the box office. I'm not a fan of these films but they've always seemingly been timed well to succeed in theaters. This one might underperform, it seems. [Deadline]
- In other actress/technology non sequiturs – Helen Mirren recently expressed sadness that Kurt Cobain died before he could experience... GPS. At first I thought he was making some sort of strange, slightly morbid joke but no, as it turns out, she's used variations of this thought before. Specifically mentioning her sorrow at Kurt Cobain died before he was able to use various forms of technology. I guess she was just a big Nirvana fan? (As an aside, GPS was created long before Cobain died in 1994, of course, though yes, he probably wouldn't have been using it at the time.) [Guardian]
- Did Meta only want to strike a deal with one news source for AI answers or was everyone else besides Reuters simply wary after years of having the football pulled away in such deals with the company? [Axios]
- Perplexity follows OpenAI in creating a native app for the Mac. I actually use the native ChatGPT app all the time – it's nice not to have to switch to another tab in your browser and they smartly made the shortcut very similar to the one for Spotlight (which seems comically useless these days and is hopefully replaced by Siri with Apple Intelligence). [MacRumors]
- Apple has promised China it will keep investing more in the Chinese supply chain even as they make myriad moves to diversify the global supply chain. Interesting that Tim Cook took Jeff Williams with him on the PR circuit for this – or perhaps it was Williams that told Cook he needed to do this (again) to re-affirm support for iPhone development in China. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Oriental hornets can't get drunk no matter how much alcohol they consume. The secret is in their genes which allow them to break ethanol down and metabolize it at levels other animals cannot. [Economist 🔒]
- Another $5.6B for Waymo – which somehow almost feels small in the context of OpenAI's $6.6B recent raise and the Cybercab announcement. It feels like they could have raised almost an infinite amount of money? [CNBC]
I Quote...
“TOILETS! 1,160 toilets and urinals! We do not want people waiting in line. We want them back in their damn seats!”
-- Steve Ballmer, speaking – in the most Steve Ballmer way possible – to workers building his new NBA arena last year when it was still under construction. Now that The Intuit Dome is officially opened, no word on how those toilets fared in game one. Hopefully better than the Los Angeles Cruise Ships – sorry, Clippers. [via Yahoo Sports AM]