Down Round

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Sport Streaming: Bringing back the biff Jun 15, 2023

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Despite the fact the entertainment world at large is — for better or worse — piling in to the streaming model, sport has proven much more difficult. A headache-inducing labyrinth of rights deals, blackouts and other thorny problems have kept sport broadcasting from fully leaning into streaming. But that is changing, with streamers from Apple to Amazon d…

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#90 - Swimply: The Way Of Water (ft. Becky Lucas) Jun 14, 2023

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James is in the US this week, so we're digging an episode from the deep and forgotten archives.

Swimply is, to put it simply, Airbnb but for pools. As in, you can go to a strangers house and swim in their pool for a small fee. It has tried to launch in Australia three times now, so obviously it deserved our attention. Comedian Becky Lucas joined us to discuss.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#89 - Yahoo!: Pouring one out for the OG Jun 08, 2023

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At every major juncture of internet development since 1994, you’re guaranteed to find one company making baffling decisions: Yahoo. From one of the biggest stocks of the dotcom boom to the laughingstock of the mobile era, Yahoo has managed to stumble ungracefully through internet history in a way we simply had to chronicle.

In this episode, we look back …

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#88 - Esports: This is our application to join FaZe Clan Jun 06, 2023

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Esports was one of the weirdest hype cycles of the last tech boom. A surge of venture capital and investment led to a frothy market which somehow convinced people that ‘watching Apex Legends’ was not only the next frontier in video gaming, but also in sports and entertainment generally. This unstoppable hype train culminated in FaZe Clan, an esports influencer house, listing on the public markets via a SPAC.

Turns out it didn’t really work, and esports has not remotely lived up to its promise of being the future of sport. What went wrong? Down Round discusses.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#87 - Netflix: Stranger Things season 1-4 recap [AD-SUPPORTED] Jun 01, 2023

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Netflix was once the golden child of the tech industry, with its streaming model held up as the future of content consumption. Now that every rightsholder has a streaming platform, and the end of the tech boom has led to drastic cuts in content budgets and the return of advertising, where does that leave Netflix?

The boys chat. Raph offers his strident view as a man who does not watch scripted television.

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#86 - Nvidia: From sexy elves to a $1 trillion company May 31, 2023

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This week, GPU maker Nvidia was briefly valued at $1 trillion, which is pretty wild for a company founded to cater to the whims of one of God’s most pathetic creatures: PC gamers.

The surge in value is largely thanks to Nvidia’s critical position in the emerging AI economy. It turns out the company’s graphics cards technology, originally intended to support high-performance gaming, are actually very good at training the neural networks that drive platforms like ChatGPT.

In this ep, we dive into how we got here.

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#85 - AR/VR Headsets: Yet more exciting ways to play Beat Saber May 25, 2023

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Apple’s developer conference is in a couple of weeks, and all signs suggest it is about to announce an insanely expensive AR/VR headset, which it hopes will be their next computing platform and maybe a smartphone successor somewhere down the line.

In this ep we talk about headsets generally, the companies trying to make them happen, and why no one seems …

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#84 - Text: This one is for the posters May 23, 2023

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Despite the fact the social web seems inexorably on the march towards TikTok-style video feeds, there’s still a happy home on the web for big-brained lovers of text. Twitter, despite never being the biggest social network, has outsized influence. Now that Elon Musk is slowly transforming it into a big toilet, other challengers are poking their head above the parapets.

In this episode we’re talking through the vultures who are circling Twitter’s instability and trying to become the next place where text-heads congregate — from Meta to Bluesky.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#83 - Meta: Checking in on Casa de Zuck May 18, 2023

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It’s been a hot minute since we’ve taken a look at what Meta is up to. It’s a good time, because they’re currently making a hasty AI pivot like everyone else.

Will it work? What happened to the metaverse? Will zoomers ever use Facebook? So many questions, so few answers.

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#82 - Fitness: Lifting a 1kg weight while the Rocky theme blares May 16, 2023

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The worlds of fitness and tech have been converging for years thanks to innovations in wearables, apps and subscriptions. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys quantifying every minute biological detail of your workout, or developing a parasocial relationship with a chirpy American cycling instructor… your time is now.

In this ep, we survey everything from the Apple Watch and Fitbit to Peloton and Strava, and ask a key question: are you ready to feel the burn, boss?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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