I invested a chunk of cash in Chinese big tech companies because I was bullish about both the market opportunities and the tech chops of its top companies.
Those investments turned to dust once the government decided tech companies had too much power. I sold and didn’t look back.
Now the acúnese government is trying to woo foreign investors. Fool me once…
The SEC recommended that Coinbase stop trading in crypto outside of bitcoin since everything else was an unregistered security.
Coinbase’s CEO argued this would kill the crypto industry. This is funny mostly because the primary use case of crypto that isn’t bitcoin is to get the benefits of stocks without any of the regulations especially any regulation of insider trading, wash sales or money laundering.
https://www.ft.com/content/1f873dd5-df8f-4cfc-bb21-ef83ed11fb4d
Layoff season seems to be behind us in big tech as the recession seems to have been a myth and quarterly earnings have shown growth for most that have reported.
Apple is the one company that showed discipline during both the boom times by not overhiring and the slow times by not resorting to mass layoffs.
Steve Jobs left the company in great hands. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/05/04/apple-layoffs-are-a-last-resort-tim-cook-says.html
It’s wild to me that a company that’s making $20 billion in PROFITS a quarter laid off thousands of people.
This is the human sacrifice that shareholders demanded.
Return to office has gotten to the sell your house and move closer to work phase at Amazon.
This is The Empire Strikes Back of revenge against the Great Resignation. Certain employers want to ensure employees never even think about asserting their rights ever again.
This feature stops spam by requiring you to pay to send lots of DMs a day because everyone knows spammers can’t afford $8/month.
The difference between Trump and DeSantis is that Trump bet correctly that Americans are more racist than they admit while DeSantis is betting incorrectly that Americans are so homophobic & transphobic that they’ll go to war with Disney & Bud Light.
Twitter has gone from saying $8/month is meant to stop bots to basically selling it as a service for spammers. You are rate limited on the number of DMs you can send unless you pay. 🤦🏾♂️
Twitter has gone from saying $8/month is meant to stop boys to admitting that people paying this fee are spammers but instead of banning them, they’ll limit how much spam they can send per day. 🤦🏾♂️
Netflix, YouTube and now Spotify. Subscription fatigue was already setting in and now everyone is raising prices. Streaming is already unprofitable for many as it is. I expect rising prices will cause some lower value subscriptions to get reconsidered and dropped.
Is there a trait more human than acing a test you studied for then not being able to remember anything about the topic a few months later?
It’s just passing the Turing Test in style. 😁
Two years later, I still think this deal made no business sense besides giving Jack an excuse to hang out with Jay-Z and Beyonce.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/business/media/tidal-square-jay-z-dorsey.html
"Streaming is not really a very good business. ... They’ve been able to attract subscribers, but they attract ’em at a terrible price." - Warren Buffett
The surge in streaming services was a zero interest rate phenomenon. Companies that were making big money licensing TV shows & movies to Netflix only to have lots of customers and zero profits.
nostr:npub1lcen9zrqd82xlpd5h6wasjw2fv6gmuwccx4k706q2fwknmd2034qd6x94h Thanks for the kind words.
The rare occasion when an email actually finds me well.
Oppenheimer continues the long tradition of Americans bombing the shit out of your country then making movies about how they sad they were while doing it.
Every OpenAI proposal to support regulation of AI sounds like a naked attempt to get government to slow down the competition.
This is as if Google asked the government to step in after they started shipping websites using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. A license to build an LLM would stop Open Source LLMs in their tracks.
With affirmative action now banned by the Supreme Court when it comes to college admissions, there is now pressure on schools to do away with it.
I expect the Ivy League schools who want to receive donations from wealthy alumni will never abandon it. Hard to get an alumni to give you $100 million for a library only their kid Amy Jo not to even get admitted. Harvard isn’t going to play that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/us/wesleyan-university-ends-legacy-admissions.html
Netflix earning are out and they blew away expectations on new subscribers. They had 5.9 million versus 1.9 million expected.
It turns out cracking down on password sharing after creating a cheaper ad supported tier worked brilliantly.
Even the police are complaining that AI is stealing their jobs. 😂
If the choice is being pulled over by a trigger happy police officer or getting a ticket in the mail. Bring on the AI traffic cops.
https://sanjosespotlight.com/state-bill-would-automate-speed-enforcement-in-san-jose/