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Latest Episodes:

Fri. 03/01 – Elon Sues Sam Altman And OpenAI Mar 01, 2024

Show notes

Elon is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI. Meta continues to get out of the news business, especially when it’s being pushed. A new AI deepfake supertool. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions.

Links:

Elon Musk sues OpenAI over AI threat (Courthouse News Service)
Meta to Wind Down Its News Feature in the US and Australia (Bloomberg)
Microsoft introduces Copilot AI chatbot for finance workers in Excel and Outlook (CNBC)
Alibaba’s new AI system ‘EMO’ creates realistic talking and singing videos from photos (VentureBeat)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

Wait. Why is Reddit losing so much money? (Business Insider)
The 9-Month-Old AI Startup Challenging Silicon Valley’s Giants (WSJ)
What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet (The New Yorker)

Thu. 02/29 – What If The Vision Pro Is Selling Better Than We Think? Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

The SEC has subpoenaed OpenAI. What if the Vision Pro is selling better than even Apple thought? Beware of the repo attack affecting GitHub. Beware of the video doorbells that are ridiculously easy to take over. And is robotics the next big tech industry we need to be paying attention to?

Links:

SEC Investigating Whether OpenAI Investors Were Misled (WSJ)
EA to lay off 5% of workforce, or about 670 employees (CNBC)
Vision Pro demand higher than expected; returns down to 1% – Kuo (9to5Mac)
Kuo: Apple Vision Pro on Track to Launch in More Countries Before WWDC in June (MacRumors)
Apple Vision Pro return rate is about the same as the iPhone 15 Pro (Apple Insider)
StarCoder 2 is a code-generating AI that runs on most GPUs (TechCrunch)
GitHub besieged by millions of malicious repositories in ongoing attack (ArsTechnica)
These Video Doorbells Have Terrible Security. Amazon Sells Them Anyway. (Consumer Reports)
Humanoid robot startup Figure AI valued at $2.6 billion as Bezos, OpenAI, Nvidia join funding (CNBC)

Wed. 02/28 – The Apple Car Project Is Dead Feb 28, 2024

Show notes

The Apple car project is dead. Really, this time. We think. Google is working to fix Gemini. If you’re using Tumblr, your posts might soon be training OpenAI’s models. Klarna’s AI is doing the work of hundreds of humans. And another fever dream of the most recent boom years might be over.

Links:

Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey (Bloomberg)
Apple's Scrapped Car Project Means AI and Headset Bets Are More Urgent (Bloomberg)
Google CEO calls AI tool’s controversial responses ‘completely unacceptable’ (Semafor)
Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools (404 Media)
Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people after it laid off 700 people (FastCompany)
Thrasio, once king of e-commerce aggregation, files for Ch.11 (TechCrunch)

Tue. 02/27 – Gaming Continues To Be A Bloodbath Feb 27, 2024

Show notes

If you can believe it, MOAR layoffs in gaming. Big layoffs at Sony. We might see Meta’s first AR glasses later this year. The big hack affecting US pharmacies. Hopin enters the Deadpool. And yet another startup takes at swing at the delayed gratification gimmick for social media.

Sponsors:

Hims.com/ride

Links:

Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees (The Verge)
Microsoft’s Mistral AI Investment to Be Examined by EU Watchdog (Bloomberg)
Meta aims to reveal and demo Orion, its first true AR glasses, during its fall developer conference (Business Insider)
US pharmacy outage triggered by 'Blackcat' ransomware at UnitedHealth unit, sources say (Reuters)
Netflix confirms it’s cutting off Apple billing for legacy subscribers (The Verge)
Hopin's UK business enters liquidation as it transfers HQ to the US (Sifted)
The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech (The Verge)
Supreme Court Fears ‘Land Mines’ in Social Media Debate Over Free Speech (Bloomberg)
Lapse, the app turning your phone into an old-school camera, snaps up $30M (TechCrunch)

Mon. 02/26 – Mobile World Congress Is All About AI This Year (Corrected) Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

Mobile World Congress kicks off this week, and I bet you can guess what the big theme this year is. All the hardware that is being announced to allow you to do AI on your existing devices. Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Ring, but Apple wants you to know it could do a ring too if it wanted to. And Lenovo’s see-through laptop is cool looking, but also, looking for a use case.

Links:

Samsung unveils the Galaxy Ring as a way to 'simplify everyday wellness' (Engadget)
Apple Ponders Whether to Develop Smart Glasses, Fitness Ring (Bloomberg)
Here’s why the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro headset is so expensive (CNBC)
Au Large (Mistral.ai)
Nvidia launches RTX 500 and 1000 Ada Generation laptop GPUs for AI on the go (VentureBeat)
Lenovo’s laptop concept is fully transparent, but the point isn’t entirely clear (TechCrunch)
Peering through Lenovo’s transparent laptop into a sci-fi future (The Verge)

(Bonus) Ed Zitron On The Social Landscape Feb 24, 2024

Show notes

Catching you up on the great Substack controversy and who is winning the race to be the new Twitter?

Ed's new podcast is called Better Offline, which you can find wherever fine podcasts are found. And his newsletter is called: Where's Your Ed At?

Fri. 02/23 – Reddit To IPO And Nvidia To The Moon Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

We have all the details of the Reddit IPO. And Sam Altman of all people makes an appearance in the S1! What that big cell phone outage yesterday was all about. Can Mark Zuckerberg be held personally liable in some of these Meta lawsuits? And given this weeks’ news, in the longreads, a long interview with Nvidia’s CEO predicting the future of computing.

Sponsors:

Robinhood.com/boost

Links:

Reddit files to list IPO on NYSE under the ticker RDDT (CNBC)
Reddit is going public and inviting power users to invest (The Verge)
AT&T outage caused by software update, company says (ABCNews)
Meta’s Zuckerberg Seeks Out of Lawsuits Blaming Him for Instagram Addiction (Bloomberg)
Bluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server (TechCrunch)
OnlyFans is the most lucrative side hustle, tax service shows (Mashable)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control (Wired)
Nvidia Hardware Is Eating the World (Wired)

Thu. 02/22 – Nvidia’s Earnings Are Epic Feb 22, 2024

Show notes

The most important tech company in the world right now reported earnings yesterday, and they were historic. Stability AI is previewing Stable Diffusion 3.0. Google has to fix some if its AI image generation details. Amazon is getting aggressive about bringing sports to streaming. And has a startup we’ve never mentioned made a big AI breakthrough?

Sponsors:

Nutrafol.com/men and promocode RIDEHOME

Links:

Nvidia posts revenue up 265% on booming AI business (CNBC)
Stable Diffusion 3.0 debuts new diffusion transformation architecture to reinvent text-to-image gen AI (VentureBeat)
Google Pauses Gemini's Image Generation of People to Fix Historical Inaccuracies (PC Mag)
Google pauses Gemini’s ability to generate AI images of people after diversity errors (The Verge)
Tuned In: Amazon Said To Be Paying Record $120M To Stream NFL Playoff Game (Front Office Sports)
Exclusive: Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google (Reuters)
The ‘Magic’ Breakthrough That Got Friedman and Gross to Bet $100 Million on a Coding Startup (The Information)

Wed. 02/21 – Apple Has Quantum Encrypted iMessage Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

Signal finally rolls out usernames, but Apple goes one better security-wise, by quantum encrypting iMessage. Weirdly, Apple also launched a standalone sports scores app. Gemma is an open-source flavor of Gemini from Google. And Reddit wants to reserve some IPO shares for its users.

Links:

Ed Zitron YouTube Bonus Episode

Tue. 02/20 – LockBit Ransomware Gang Taken Down Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Perhaps the biggest law enforcement action against a ransomware gang ever. Once again, you could view other people’s cameras on your Wyze camera. How Anthropic is raising to do battle with OpenAI. Are the VCs flocking back to San Francisco? And comprehensive proof that defense tech is the new VC hotness.

Links: