Episodes

Looks like that Hollywood strike inspired by AI fears is a go. Apple and Google want to set a new standard to prevent modern digital stalking. Pornhub is boycotting Utah. Mastodon is trying to make it less confusing to give them a try. And what is one of the biggest reasons companies are wary of giving generative AI a try?

Gurman says the big Apple Watch OS overhaul is nigh. I can already tell you what the biggest tech IPO of 2023 is going to be. Are there signs tech earnings have turned or a corner, or, at least, have bottomed out? And why the AI revolution is behind the potential of a major labor strike in Hollywood.

Another bonus episode from the Internet History Podcast. As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background details on the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone and more!

Another bonus episode from the Internet History Podcast. I originally wanted to talk to Mike Slade about Starwave, the innovative company that launched some major names onto the web, including ESPN.com, ABCNews.com, MrShowbiz.com, and after an eventual sale to Disney, put together the pieces that eventually became the Go.com portal play. But Mike is one of those guys who has had such a varied and interesting career, I couldn't help but go into other eras of his career. The dude worked at Microsoft in the early 1980s. He worked at NeXT in the early 90s. And from 1998 through 2004 he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs as he saved Apple as a company, launched the iPod and kicked into motion the modern gadget era.

More signs that vital communications infrastructure is abandoning Twitter. Reddit is testing Discord-like chat channels. Big layoffs at Clubhouse. Microsoft exits the peripherals business after 40 years. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads suggestions.

Meta reported earnings that surprised investors in the good way. But that doesn’t mean they’re backing off the Metaverse. Global smartphone shipments continue to plummet. Might congress ban children from social media? Amazon gets out of the health tracker business. And the interesting way that rejection of the Microsoft Activision deal is using a somewhat novel argument.

The UK is blocking Microsoft’s Activision Acquisition. A quick rundown of Microsoft and Alphabet earnings. The new Mavic drone is a beast. Cruise has actually expanded its self-driving taxi service. And a look at the mounting pressure on Binance and CZ.

Methinks Coinbase is orchestrating laying the groundwork for a showdown with US regulators. Slack rolls out Canvas, which seems pretty cool. AI Guardrails from Nvidia. A browser built for AI tools from Opera. And I delve into the whole story about that AI generated Drake song that has gone viral.

Would you believe me if I told you there was more Twitter chaos over the weekend. More details on the Apple headset. Is ARM about to abandon its Switzerland strategy? Interesting data about how Netflix dominates TV watching. And sad data about the down rounds we can expect for the foreseeable future.

Again, my Internet History Podcast interview with Chamath Palihapitiya of the All In podcast from 2016.

Again, this is a republishing of my Jason Calacanis interview from the Internet History Podcast.

More… I dunno… Twitter things are happening. Google is consolidating its AI efforts. We now have a hint about what that startup Humane might be creating. The US wants to get a jump start on 6G technology. And pour one out for BuzzFeed News.

Are Elon and Microsoft fully at war at this point? Does Coinbase already have one foot out the country at this point? Is OpenAI careening toward a run-in with GDPR? And, Stability AI’s big play to compete with Chat GPT.

That Netflix ad tier seems to be paying off. But it’s also the end of the road for those famous red envelopes. We’re about to see a foldable Pixel phone. More layoffs from Meta. More links in bio for Instagram. And forget data being the new oil. What if data was the new fertile farmland to be rented out to LLMs for harvesting?

Is the AI revolution going to kick of a silicon revolution with a whole new generation of chips? Coinbase would consider leaving the US if it can’t get clarity from regulators. Is the Apple savings account the savings account for you? A look at Twitter competitor Bluesky. And what happens if you take GPT-4 and feed it back on itself?

Hey everybody, back from Ireland, and man, the universe dumped all the news on me this morning. Google is rushing to add AI to search because they’re afraid Samsung is about to jump ship to Bing. More chaos at Twitter. Meta has to make nice with advertisers. Spotify seems to be abandoning it’s paywall podcast strategy. And is Apple’s Watch OS about to get its biggest overhaul ever?

AWS has begun offering customers access to LLMs made by Anthropic, Stability AI, and AI21 Labs, as they look to be a neutral platform for generative AI features. WhatsApp is rolling out new verification and protection features, including defenses against SIM jacking and social engineering attacks. Twitter has just increased the character limit to 10,000 for Blue subscribers. And your weekend longread suggestions.

The stocks of Apple suppliers Cirrus Logic and AAC are down after reporting that iPhone 15 Pro models won’t have solid-state buttons after all. IBM is reportedly looking into selling The Weather Company, for quite a bit less than they paid for it in 2015. LinkedIn has new identity verification via the airport and stadium security service CLEAR. Ethereum has successfully completed its Shanghai, or Shapella, upgrade, letting users withdraw staked ether. And Warner Bros. Discovery has officially renamed HBO Max to just… Max.

Elon Musk did a big spontaneous interview with the BBC last night on Twitter Spaces, but here’s two things that didn’t make the interview: Twitter appears to be working on generative AI for reasons yet unknown and Twitter Inc. doesn’t exist as a company anymore. Global VC funding for crypto startups fell to $2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2023, down 80% from an all-time high in 2022. Video game illustrators in China say AI image generators are causing them to lose their jobs. And Reddit moderators saying AI-generated spam is rapidly mounting as they brace themselves for a spam apocalypse.

Alibaba revealed its ChatGPT-style bot, and mere hours later the Cyberspace Administration of China announced plans to require security reviews of generative AI tools before they’re released. The Winklevoss twins made a $100 million loan to their crypto exchange, Gemini Trust, after it failed to raise enough from outside investors. The FBI has warned against using any public USB charging ports. And YouTube has announced new Premium features and also announced the pricing for their NFL Sunday Ticket packagers and they’re not cheap.Sponsors:Bloomberg.com/careersgo.tech/tmLinks:China slaps security reviews on AI products as Alibaba unveils ChatGPT challenger (Ars Technica)China proposes measures to manage generative AI services (Reuters)Winklevoss Twins Lend $100 Million to Their Gemini Crypto Platform (Bloomberg)Juice jacking rising, FBI says don't use airport USB outlets (Android Authority)YouTube Premium adds more perks with SharePlay support, higher quality video and more (TechC…

Twitter has stopped throttling tweets with Substack links in them, but only after Elon Musk denied they were ever blocked. About 270 US Apple Stores have held staff meetings about unionization risks in the past two weeks. A New York Times article about the environmental and economic impact of bitcoin mines has some crypto proponents up in arms. And the 2023 Dell XPS 13 is… fine. Just fine.

Check out David Auerbach's books:Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner RealitiesBitwise: A Life in Code

Shenanigans from some Elon companies. Twitter looks like it’s blocking Substack. Not just links to Substack but even mentioning the name, the word Substack, in some cases. Oh, and Tesla employees apparently liked to view videos from your car and share them with each other internally. Last quarter was epically bad when it came to venture investing. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions.

More examples of chatbots hallucinating might lead to the first lawsuits. Did you know that you have a copy of the bitcoin white paper on your Mac right now? You don’t know it, but you do. I’ll tell you why. Substack is the latest to launch a Twitter clone. And why E3 had to die. It’s called direct to consumer, or, I guess, gamer.