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Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first [Zoë Schiffer, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
February 15, 2023
269 views
Y

• Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s, prompting Musk to fly back to the Bay Area to demand answers from his team.
• Engineers worked through the night to investigate why Musk’s tweets weren’t performing as well as they should.
• They discovered that Musk had been blocked and muted by many people, and that Twitter’s system had been promoting other users’ tweets over his.
• To fix the issue, they deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, boosting them by a factor of 1,000 and bypassing Twitter’s filters.
• This caused an uproar, and Musk acknowledged it with a meme. The artificial boosts remain in place, although the factor is now lower than 1,000.
• The incident highlights the tension between why some posts are more popular than others, and the difficulty of understanding why people see certain things and not others.
• Google previewed Privacy Sandbox, its answer to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.
• Instagram will shut down its live shopping feature in March.
• Meta updated the “Why am I seeing this ad?” feature on Facebook to include information about how the company uses machine learning to analyze users’ behavior.
• Andy Jassy says Amazon is doubling down on the company’s grocery store business despite slow growth.
• Spotify removed a clause that let Apple use human voices from Findaway Voices to train Apple’s machine-learning systems.
• Twitter and other big companies are cutting Slack and Salesforce contracts.
• The NFT market been inching back up, with sales on the ethereum blockchain jumping from $546.9 million in December to $780.2 million in January.
• BuzzFeed launched “infinity quizzes,” letting users build personalized narratives using technology from OpenAI.

Published February 15, 2023
Visit Platformer to read Zoë Schiffer’s original post Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

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New Bing Errors, User Preferences and Company Reputations, Section 230 and LLMs [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 14, 2023
343 views
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• Microsoft’s Bing AI demo contained multiple errors, which went unnoticed until Dmitri Brereton pointed them out.
• Brereton’s diligence highlighted the importance of verifying AI-generated data.
• Microsoft’s enthusiasm for the technology and eagerness to take on Google may have led to the errors.
• Google’s reputation and user base make it difficult to balance accuracy and user demand.
• Section 230 may not apply to large language models, raising questions of liability for libel.
• Humans may not care about accuracy, as the humanization of computers may be alluring enough to gain traction.

Published February 14, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post New Bing Errors, User Preferences and Company Reputations, Section 230 and LLMs

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Google and Microsoft’s Events, Monetizable Panic, Paradigms and Hardware [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Uncategorized
February 9, 2023
260 views
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• Google and Microsoft held back-to-back events to showcase their AI-powered search and map features.
• Google’s event was a mess, while Microsoft’s was well-rehearsed and well-coordinated.
• Microsoft’s event was a response to Google’s search dominance, which has more than 90% market share.
• Microsoft’s blog post from 2010 showed their intent to partner with Facebook to take down Google.
• Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Search, Yusuf Mehdi, said that roughly half of all searches don’t deliver the job that people want.
• Microsoft’s new OpenAI-powered chat interface is an attempt to address this issue.
• Google is the default search engine in most browsers and on most phones, making it difficult for Bing to displace it.
• Google has responded to threats before, and the messiness of this week suggests they are ready to do so again.
• Bill Gurley’s article “The Freight Train That Is Android” explains how Android is a “moat” to protect Google’s search engine.
• Microsoft’s approach to Bing is to see it as their Android relative to Google Search’s Windows.
• Chat interfaces are annoying to use, and voice is not always an option.
• Google faces real cost concerns as it incorporates AI into search, and conversation AI is very expensive.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post Google and Microsoft’s Events, Monetizable Panic, Paradigms and Hardware

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New Bing, and an Interview with Kevin Scott and Sam Altman About the Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 8, 2023
269 views
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• Microsoft and OpenAI have been in a partnership for 3.5 years.
• Kevin Scott and Sam Altman have known each other since Sam tried to recruit Kevin to be the Head of Engineering at his startup, Loopt.
• Microsoft and OpenAI have a shared vision of powerful models that can be used as platforms to develop lots of things on top of.
• Microsoft believes OpenAI is the best AI team pound-for-pound on the planet.
• OpenAI can focus on their work while Microsoft helps them commercialize their products.
• OpenAI and Microsoft have a successful partnership that has allowed them to accomplish a lot of amazing things.
• The goals of OpenAI and Microsoft are compatible and not overlapping, allowing them to work together efficiently.
• The partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft is not a simple “throw it over the wall” situation, but rather a close collaboration at each step.
• CoPilot was the first project that required collaboration between three organizations, and it was a learning experience for all involved.
• Sam Altman and Kevin Scott discussed the success of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership and the cost and business models associated with the new Bing product.
• Sam believes that the partnership works best when both parties trust and like each other and work together in good faith.
• Kevin believes that Microsoft has the ability to performance-optimize the product and bring it to market as an ad-supported product.
• Sam believes that the two companies will be able to figure out a way to monetize the product profitably.
• The two discussed the new Bing product and how it may require new interaction models to be successful.
• Sam gave credit to Kevin for his commitment to the partnership and the flexibility of both companies to make it work.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post New Bing, and an Interview with Kevin Scott and Sam Altman About the Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership

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Google Earnings, YouTube’s Aggregation Bid, YouTube Shorts Monetization [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 7, 2023
257 views
G

• Google reported its first drop in advertising revenue since the beginning of the pandemic, with YouTube’s revenue down 8% year-over-year.
• YouTube is attempting to become an Aggregator of television, with its multiyear agreement to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket and its Primetime Channels launch.
• YouTube is also attempting to monetize its Shorts feature, with a revenue-sharing model similar to Spotify’s.
• Meta is facing pressure from YouTube’s monetization strategy, as it is more difficult to create compelling Reels than Stories.
• Google is more generous with YouTube monetization because it is a smaller part of its business, but other companies have a similarly cavalier approach to profitability.

Published February 7, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post Google Earnings, YouTube’s Aggregation Bid, YouTube Shorts Monetization

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Big Tech Wants to Tell You Who Counts as Your Family [Cory Doctorow, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 7, 2023
264 views
B

• Netflix recently unveiled a new password-sharing policy, which allows members of the same “household” to share an account.
• This policy is more of an anti-password-sharing policy, and assumes that there is a universal meaning of “household” and that software can determine who is and is not a member of a household.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation was involved in a forum created by the industry consortium Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) to limit video sharing to a single household.
• The forum rejected the suggestion of a family based in Manila, whose dad travels to remote provinces to do agricultural labor, whose daughter works as a nanny in California, and whose son does construction work in the United Arab Emirates as an “edge case.”
• After 9/11, people had to perform the bureaucratic rite of standardizing their name for recognition by machines with their database schema.
• Netflix is part of the “enshittification” cycle, in which the platform company first allocates surpluses to its users, lures them in, and then reallocates surpluses to businesses.

Published February 7, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Cory Doctorow’s original post Big Tech Wants to Tell You Who Counts as Your Family

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The Four Horsemen of the Tech Recession [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 6, 2023
177 views
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• Stephanie Palazzolo wrote on Twitter that it was disorienting to see tech layoffs and then to see US job numbers increase and unemployment drop to its lowest level in 50 years.
• The four horsemen of the tech recession are the COVID hangover, the hardware cycle, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, and the end of zero interest rates.
• The COVID hangover is the single biggest issue facing tech companies, as consumers with no way to spend discretionary income and flush with stimulus checks bought new devices, subscribed to streaming services, and used cloud computing.
• The hardware cycle is impacting companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, as well as TSMC, as production slowdowns and pent-up demand for Apple Silicon-based processors have caused revenue to drop.
• Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has caused a decrease in ad revenue for many tech companies, as users opt out of tracking.
• The end of zero interest rates has caused tech companies to re-evaluate their investments, as the cost of capital has increased.
• The COVID hangover refers to the inevitable slowdown in tech sales after the initial surge due to the pandemic.
• The end of zero interest rates refers to investors realizing that the cost of capital input in their equations can be something other than zero, and the price they are wiling to pay for growth without profitability is falling through the floor.
• The ATT recession refers to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) initiative, which fundamentally disrupts the “hub-and-spoke” model of digital advertising, leading to a crash in revenue growth for companies that rely on performance marketing.
• The article argues that the impact of ATT has been underestimated, and that ascribing the advertising revenue headwinds to macroeconomic factors is misguided.

 

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Microsoft Earnings, Azure’s Slowdown, Office Strikes Back [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
January 31, 2023
252 views
M

• Microsoft reported its slowest sales growth in more than six years last quarter, with revenue expanding 2% to $52.7 billion and net income falling 12% to $16.4 billion.
• Intelligent Cloud business, which includes Azure cloud-computing business, grew 18% to $21.51 billion, with Azure growing 31%.
• Microsoft’s commentary on the PC market was encouraging, with Windows OEM revenue expected to decline in the mid to high 30s, in line with the PC market, and usage intensity of Windows continuing to be higher than pre-pandemic with time spent per PC up nearly 10%.
• Azure growth moderated, particularly in December, and Microsoft expects Q3 growth to decelerate roughly 4 to 5 points in constant currency.
• Office 365 Commercial is seeing slowing seat growth, but is being offset by upselling current customers to the highest per-seat pricing plan (E5). E5 offers integrated and automated security, advanced compliance capabilities, audio conferencing and calling capabilities, and Power BI capabilities.

Published January 31, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post Microsoft Earnings, Azure’s Slowdown, Office Strikes Back

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Recent layoffs at Big Tech don’t spell economic doom [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
January 30, 2023
166 views
R

• Emily Stewart is a writer for Vox who wrote a piece about how widespread layoffs in the tech and media sectors don’t necessarily foretell broader problems in the economy.
• The next day, Vox Media announced layoffs of approximately 7% of the company’s staff, which some people used as an opportunity to dunk on Stewart.
• Stewart points out that the widespread attention given to the Vox layoffs illustrates her point.
• She explains that the media industry is an extreme outlier in terms of attention paid versus objective economic significance.
• Stewart notes that there has never been a month that didn’t feature a million people losing their jobs, and that since the pandemic settled down, we’ve been in a two-year period of structurally low layoffs.
• She also points out that big tech companies have been super-sizing at an incredible pace, and that now that they’re contracting, lots of places would like to hire engineers.
• Stewart suggests that the upside of the layoffs is that it will make it easier for people who have startup ideas to get them off the ground, and that it will also make it easier for government agencies to use signing bonuses and other private sector tactics to attract and retain labor.

Published January 30, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Recent layoffs at Big Tech don’t spell economic doom

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Reversion to Reality: How Big Tech Impacts the Economy [kyla scanlon, Kyla’s Newsletter]

By Spencer Chen
In Kyla Scanlon [Kyla's Newsletter]
January 26, 2023
285 views
R

• Tech layoffs are happening in a horrible way, with no communication, locked badges, and broken email access.
• There are multiple reasons for the layoffs, including tech bloat, ad sales, higher interest rates, AI, and planned obsolescence.
• The layoffs are sending a message to the market that the end of profligacy is here.
• The economy is a force within itself, and it’s questionable if the Fed rate hikes have even worked their way through yet.
• We need to evolve from focusing on bits to refocusing on atoms.
• We need to exercise empathy and compassion to understand the pain of others and help them.
• Big Tech layoffs can feel removed from reality, but we must strive to have perspective and care for those affected.
• Empathy and compassion are key to understanding and helping those in need.
• Mary Oliver and Barbara Alice Mann offer advice on how to teach children to appreciate the world and be devoted to it.
• U.S. fiscal stimulus has caused excess inflation, and Lael Brainard is a top contender for the National Economic Council.

Published January 26, 2023
Visit Kyla’s Newsletter to read kyla scanlon’s original post Reversion to Reality: How Big Tech Impacts the Economy

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