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Last Notes

2024-08-08 16:01:17

DOJ antitrust chief is ‘overjoyed’ after Google monopoly verdict
AAG Jonathan Kanter says the Google monopoly verdict belongs on the ‘Mount Rushmore of antitrust.’

2024-08-05 14:57:25

Donald Trump says Google ‘has to be careful’ or it will be ‘shut down’
Let’s trace the straight line from Peter Thiel to now.

2024-07-30 14:09:29

Um, sure? Sure.
Wired editor-in-chief (and notable Verge alum!) Katie Drummond flags this incredible stack of sourcing and disclosure notes in Semafor’s piece about Perplexity’s new revenue-sharing agreements with publishers. Well done, all around.
www.threads.net/@katiedrumm/post/C-DHJ5MAzWl

2024-06-17 19:10:33

Apple’s fancy new CarPlay will only work wirelessly
And many other notes about the future of Apple’s ideas for the car.

2024-05-20 14:00:00

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web
The head of Google sat down with Decoder last week to talk about the biggest advancements in AI, the future of Google Search, and the fate of the web.

2024-05-07 15:24:50

The sharks are in the water for Peloton.
A number of private equity firms are thinking about buying Peloton and taking it private, according to CNBC. That’s after the company’s bad quarter (and lack of strategy) led to both a 15 percent staff layoff and CEO Barry McCarthy stepping down. How will the PE vultures fix things? They have “zeroed in on cutting Peloton’s operating expenses,” of course. That’ll fix it, sure.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/07/private-equity-firms-circle-peloton-for-potential-buyout.html

2024-04-22 14:00:00

Discord CEO Jason Citron makes the case for a smaller, more private internet
For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives. Co-founder Jason Citron thinks the internet is headed more in that direction.

2024-03-11 14:00:00

How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka
The author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture discusses how we might be able to cultivate our own tastes once more.

2024-03-07 15:00:00

Why people are falling in love with AI chatbots
From Tinder to Replika, generative AI is transforming how humans use dating apps and even spurring real people to romance AI chatbots.

2024-02-10 15:15:00

Swaggy AI Pope inspired the real Pope to learn more about AI.
The NYT has a profile of Father Paolo Benati, the “self-professed geek” leading the Vatican’s thinking about AI. A good piece but this jumped out:
> [Pope] Francis — who Father Benanti said has become more literate on A.I., especially after an image of the pope sporting an A.I. designed white puffer coat went viral — then became more animated. The pope liked when the discussion was less about the technology, Father Benanti said, and more on “what he can do” to protect the vulnerable.
Last month Adobe’s Dana Rao told me the Swag Pope was a “catalyzing event” for AI safety. One puffer jacket really can change the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/world/europe/italy-artificial-intelligence-ethics.html

2024-01-30 14:00:00

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not
The Apple Vision Pro is the best consumer headset anyone’s ever made — and that’s the problem.

2023-12-14 13:22:17

Adam Mosseri’s Threads account is rocketing up the Mastodon followed lists.
You can now follow certain test Threads accounts on Mastodon as Meta begins enabling ActivityPub interoperability. It barely works right now — all you can do is follow so far, and posts don’t even show up yet - but Threads head Adam Mosseri’s account is storming up the charts and is now the third most followed account in the fediverse. The people want open and interoperable networks!
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GkZ6M2pOzSKjoEwdSMAgWJTe0KQ=/0x0:1290x1077/1290x1077/filters:focal(645x539:646x540)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25162242/IMG_1487.jpeg

2023-12-11 14:48:25

Investing.com gets caught plagiarizing financial news with AI.
Max Tani at Semafor:
> Investing.com, a Tel Aviv-based site owned by Joffre Capital, is a financial news and information hub that provides a mix of markets data and investing tips and trends. But increasingly, the site has been relying on AI to create its stories, which often appear to be thinly-veiled copies of human-written stories written elsewhere.
Good response from The Motley Fool’s lawyer:
> “AI has achieved a level of human intelligence that copies good content and makes it mediocre.”
You ain’t gonna become the “Bloomberg of retail investing” by pumping rewritten AI chum at people, that’s for sure.
https://www.semafor.com/article/12/10/2023/a-financial-news-site-uses-ai-to-copy-competitors-wholesale

2023-12-01 04:19:07

However many it is… it’s so floppy!
53 seconds into this Cybertruck walkaround video, Mat from Carwow picks up the wiper. And…it’s so floppy! Looks like one blade but still inconclusive.
Thanks to Tyler for the tip — The Verge is America’s leader Cybertruck wiper news source, and it’s all thanks to readers like you.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcu0j3Wsys

2023-11-18 16:00:00

Do Pixel 8 AI-edited photos have to be labeled as synthetic content on YouTube? YouTube is still figuring it out.
Google’s push into letting people make AI content is going to keep creating new content moderation problems for Google’s platforms.

2023-11-09 18:29:28

It sure seems like Humane investor Sam Altman doesn’t care much for the Humane AI Pin.
Altman on stage with the WSJ’s Joanna Stern last month, discussing AI hardware: “I think there is something great to do but I don’t know what it is yet.”
Altman to the NYT for its shiny feature on the AI Pin, today (my emphasis):
> Humane has the advantage of being the first of those A.I.-focused devices to become available, but Mr. Altman said in an interview that was no guarantee of success. “That will be up to customers to decide,” he said. “Maybe it’s a bridge too far,” he said, “or maybe people are like, ‘This is much better than my phone.’” Plenty of technology that looked like a sure bet ends up selling for 90 percent off at Best Buy, he added.
Props for honesty, Sam.

2023-11-03 17:19:20

Barack Obama is on Decoder next week.
The 44th President just posted his AI reading list and let it slip that he and I chatted about the challenges of regulating AI — and he recommended our episode on free speech and social networks with Larry Lessig as well. Coming on Tuesday — subscribe now so you don’t miss it.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SJ2k56J5WLBWFDfM6LDX_xWe2pk=/0x0:6240x4160/6240x4160/filters:focal(2833x1474:2834x1475)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055862/DSCF8871.JPG

2023-11-01 20:48:09

Google’s Danny Sullivan responds to our piece about the culture of SEO hustlers.
Fair to say Danny does not love Amanda Chicago Lewis’ excellent piece about the web SEO built — and the people who’ve made millions running SEO schemes. (Also important to note that Danny says he is not responding in his professional capacity as a Google employee here!)
Danny calls out an email conversation we had a while ago about indexing quick posts in search while we were redesigning the site; the only thing I’ll say is that I found it very instructive that our ideas about how to make our site more useful ran headfirst into a discussion about what Google would want instead of what our audience would want. And ultimately Google’s guidance was so opaque that we excluded quick posts from the search index rather than accept the traffic risk. (We’re going to let them get indexed soon, though. Yolo.)
https://dannysullivan.com/thoughts-verge-article-seo-6558

2023-10-19 13:07:40

I turned off optimized Apple Watch charging in the new watchOS so quickly.
I appreciate Apple’s aggressive attempts to manage battery longevity across its devices, but the new optimized charging algorithm in watchOS 10 consistently left me with a dead watch on my wrist by the end of the day. Anyone else having any luck?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213338

2023-10-16 16:30:01

The Google antitrust trial has been frustratingly locked down — the NYT just filed a motion to open it up
US v. Google is one of the most important antitrust trials in decades, but Judge Amit Mehta has kept most of it out of the public view. That needs to change, argues a new motion from The New York Times.

2023-10-03 15:22:17

Barry Diller is coming for his AI money.
The media mogul is working on a syndicate of big publishers including the NYT that will pressure AI companies into huge payments for training data one way or another.
> Payments on the scale the publishers expect would mark a dramatic change for companies like Google, which have built high-margin business in large part because they — unlike media companies from Netflix to Comcast — don’t pay for content.
> Unless the publishers lower their expectations, or the tech companies adjust their fundamental sense of what it is to be a platform, this high stakes conflict is likely to escalate.
I will remind you that anyone who confidently predicts how a fair use AI copyright case will play out is getting paid by one side or another — fair use cases, even on largely similar facts, are a coin flip every time, and they’re getting weirder not simpler.
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/23/2023/publishers-want-billions-not-millions-from-ai

2023-09-12 19:06:45

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max hands-on
The high-end iPhones still look like iPhones, but this is no warmed-over iPhone 14 Pro. It has new buttons, new ports, and a new body.

2023-08-28 16:06:01

No, they did not do surgery on a banana over 5G
If your mother says she loves you: check it.

2023-08-22 20:25:52

Google and YouTube are trying to have it both ways with AI and copyright
Google has made clear it is going to use the open web to inform and create anything it wants, and nothing can get in its way. Except maybe Frank Sinatra.

2023-08-18 15:42:46

Disney thinks about making the same mistake as Time Warner.
The Information reports that Disney, seeking a “strategic partner” for ESPN, has had talks with Verizon. This is a bad idea: mobile carriers are historically terrible at distributing content and software, because their only distribution idea is installing bloatware on midrange Android phones. You will recall that the entire thesis of the AT&T / Time Warner merger was distributing bloatware on midrange Android phones, a “vision deal” which produced a grayscale 4:3 Snyder Cut before collapsing into the arms of David Zaslav.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/verizon-has-talked-with-disney-about-espn-partnership

2023-08-15 19:04:45

Your regular reminder that... you know, this one just sucks.
Cory Tomczyk, a Republican state senator in my delightfully broken home state of Wisconsin, is spitefully suing a tiny four-person local newspaper for defamation after it reported that he used a homophobic slur at a county board meeting. The mounting legal costs could put the paper out of business.
I will say it over and over again: the biggest threat to free speech is the government, and it should be disqualifying and shameful for politicians to try and chill speech they dislike, especially accurate reporting of their own actions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/business/media/antigay-slur-wausau-pilot-review.html

2023-08-13 13:03:45

Your regular reminder that the biggest threat to free speech is the government.
This story is basically Kansas restaurant owner Kari Newell swatting a local newspaper and having all of its computers and phones seized because a reporter looked up her public DUI record on a state website. It is unconscionable that Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed this warrant and that the cops executed it. Hey, let’s see if anyone has the integrity to stand by these decisions:
> At the law enforcement center in Marion, a staff member said only Police Chief Gideon Cody could answer questions for this story, and that Cody had gone home for the day and could not be reached by phone. The office of Attorney General Kris Kobach wasn’t available to comment on the legal controversy in Marion, which is north of Wichita in central Kansas.
Got it.
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling-raid-on-marion-county-newspaper-seizing-computers-records-and-cellphones/

2023-07-18 14:07:23

The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage. It is not a secret plan.
Seriously, no one’s being all that shy about it! Here’s G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown to Peter Kafka about that AI-written list of Star Wars movies in chronological order that wasn’t actually in chronological order (emphasis mine):
> And for at least a few days, Google ranked Gizmodo’s machine-made output among the top results for “star wars movies” queries. That’s something Brown noted when he told me that he’s learned that AI content “will, at least for the moment, be well-received by search engines.”
All these media companies keep saying they’re using AI because they need to learn more about it, but surprise — the only thing they’re learning is that they can get even cheaper, shittier traffic than before.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/7/18/23798164/gizmodo-ai-g-o-bot-stories-jalopnik-av-club-peter-kafka-media-column

2023-07-17 23:43:04

Threads engagement bait is out of control.
Nice one, Adam.
www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/CuzpnOwtadu

2023-06-30 18:25:24

All these media company AI plans are aimed at the wrong problem.
Here’s G/O Media, which owns Gizmodo and Jalopnik and the rest, saying it will head down the same sad road as CNET in publishing AI-written content. I don’t know how much more loudly I can say this, but the problem isn’t making more stuff. It’s that distribution on the web is broken. Facebook doesn’t send anyone any traffic anymore, Twitter never really did, and Google traffic has been declining for ages and getting weirder for a host of reasons.
If an AI puts a bunch of cheap spam on a website and no one ever links to it, do you have a media company?
twitter.com/CorbinBolies/status/1674505033553965060

2023-06-25 15:07:10

You can say blue bubble bullying isn’t real... but it’s real.
Even if you’re in the NBA. I think this is the third or fourth story like this we’ve heard from pro athletes, actually?
www.instagram.com/p/CtzL6e2OFZv/

2023-06-16 21:13:54

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been taking lessons from Elon Musk’s “violent changes” at Twitter.
In an interview with NBC News Huffman says “my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale.” More:
> “As a company smaller than theirs, sub-$1 billion in revenue, I used to look at Twitter and say, ‘Well, why can’t they break even at 4 or 5 billion in revenue? What about their business do we not understand?’ Because I think we should be able to do that quite handsomely,” he said.
> “And then I think one of the non-obvious things that Elon showed is what I was hoping would be true, which is: You can run a company with that many users in the ads business and break even with a lot fewer people,” Huffman said.
“They had to do some pretty violent changes and violent surgery to get there,” he adds. Well then! Buckle up, Redditors.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700

2023-06-13 14:30:00

Private equity bought out your doctor and bankrupted Toys“R”Us — here’s why that matters
Author and federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou explains why private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates, how this system is broken, and what can be done to fix it.

2023-05-16 00:24:58

The online CAC is wack.
It’s been years in the making, but “online” brands like Warby Parker are turning to physical retail stores as a core marketing strategy because the cost of customer acquisition is cheaper than ads on platforms like Facebook. And, hilariously, easier to track.
> Digital advertising costs exploded during the pandemic, as people were stuck at home and companies shifted their marketing to screens. Apple’s decision in 2021 to allow phone users to opt out of tracking by apps such as Facebook further increased costs, Mr. Lai said, by making it more difficult for apps to gather data on consumers’ interests. That limits advertisers’ ability to efficiently target potential customers.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/warby-parker-allbirds-everlane-parachute-collars-co-stores-e4b94623

2023-05-11 17:54:17

The incredible Hyundan N Vision 74 might end up as a real car.
It’s one of the hottest concept cars in years, and now a report from Korea’s Money Today says a production version will hit on May 27th. Please be real!
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uUfMxx6e4ZU14DXIgd47QWiWjl8=/0x0:4800x2829/4800x2829/filters:focal(2400x1415:2401x1416)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24650975/1244861467.jpg

2023-04-30 14:13:37

The entire Super Mario Bros. movie keeps getting posted to Twitter
A major social media platform with no moderation team is a major social media platform with hilarious DMCA problems.

2023-04-21 12:34:00

I don’t think this genie is going back in the bottle.
Wow.
www.tiktok.com/@sam.smyers/video/7224262078012362026

2023-04-14 22:29:50

A level-headed take on that Substack interview.
Mike Masnick at Techdirt has been writing about free speech and content moderation for ages, and this is about as clear an analysis as you’ll get.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/14/substack-ceo-chris-best-doesnt-realize-hes-just-become-the-nazi-bar/

2023-04-14 18:28:29

We actually talk about free speech and content moderation a lot on Decoder.
It just usually goes a lot better than it did with Substack’s Chris Best. For example, I really enjoyed this episode with Matt Mullenweg, who is the CEO of both Wordpress and Tumblr, which got pretty far down the path of where the rules should come from. Maybe more than any podcast Decoder is the place to get all the way into the weeds of what various tradeoffs actually mean!
www.tiktok.com/@decoderpod/video/7177759574508801323

2023-04-13 18:08:25

(Welcome to hell.)
Here’s, uh, Fox News taking Elon to task for turning his back on free speech on Twitter, without any mention that his promises were always nonsensical and whatever perceived betrayals occurred were inevitable. I told you so.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-self-described-free-speech-absolutist-limits-free-speech-since-taking-over-twitter

2023-04-12 16:17:59

It’s over, they got me.
Twitter is now threat-selling verification, which is very funny.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JzzrZqHlBuH5kxOM8TKd6ZVuw5E=/0x0:1246x1132/1246x1132/filters:focal(623x566:624x567)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24580361/Screen_Shot_2023_04_12_at_12.12.49_PM.png

2023-04-08 16:39:13

Twitter is now redirecting searches for “Substack” to “newsletter.”
Imagine being the engineer assigned to being this much of a baby! I discovered it because it’s implemented so bluntly: even the word “substack” in a URL slug is blocked, so searching for this piece this morning didn’t work. Truly, this is free speech at its most democratic.
twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1644513690761277441

2023-04-04 19:45:32

SCAN FOR LIVE BLOG.
Mark this moment, media historians: Donald Trump’s arraignment prompted MSNBC to use live cable television to promote a live text blog of the exact same event. Live blogs forever! (Disclosure: NBC is an minority investor in our parent company, Vox Media.)
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CW4Upvn8NwTq_jiYcKX8s8MPOEc=/0x0:4032x3024/4032x3024/filters:focal(2016x1512:2017x1513)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24561086/IMG_1858.jpg

2023-03-29 20:47:09

Make a list of your 23 house-arrest websites, go.
twitter.com/JayShams/status/1640702169639682048