Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/23 – Reddit To IPO And Nvidia To The Moon

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Friday, February 23rd, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, we have all the details of the Reddit IPO and Sam Altman, of all people, makes an appearance in the S-1. 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 week's news in the long reads, a long interview with NVIDIA's CEO predicting the future of computing. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, we finally have it, a big tech IPO, the first social media IPO since Pinterest back in 2019. Reddit has filed to list its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange reporting revenue up 20% year-over-year to $804 million in 2020, a net loss that was down 43% year-over-year to $90.8 million, and 73 million daily active users, quoting CNBC.

Reddit has more than 100,000 communities, 73 million average daily daily. active Uniques, or DAUQ, and 267 million average weekly active Uniques, according to the filing. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, Reddit's U.S. average revenue per user was $5.51 down from $5.92 from the previous year. The company's global average revenue per user was $3.42, which was a 2% year-over-year decline from $3.49. Reddit said that by 2027, it estimates the, quote, total addressable market globally from advertising, excluding China and Russia to be $1.4 trillion. Reddit said the current addressable advertising market is $1 trillion sans China and Russia. The company is building on its search capabilities and plans

to, quote, more fully address the $750 billion opportunity in search advertising that S&P global market intelligence estimates the market to be in 2027, end quote. But they're also clearly betting on AI in a section of their filing label data licensing. Reddit notes that the compound annual growth rate of the global AI market is 20%, and that is expected to reach a total of $1 trillion by 2027. Quote, we believe the importance of data of all types of analytics and AI from training to testing and refining models positions us well to tap into this strong market, end quote. Yes, Reddit plans to give some of its users the chance to buy shares, quoting the verge.

Reddit will allocate shares using a tiered system beginning with, quote, certain users and moderators identified by us who have meaningfully contributed to Reddit community programs. Outside of that first tier, people with a karma score of at least 200,000, and those, quote, who have performed at least 5,000 moderator actions will be invited to purchase shares. There are a few other tiers as well, end quote. Finally, I didn't have the Sam Altman's ambitions file entering into this on my bingo card, but here we are. According to the S-1 filing, Sam Altman holds an 8.7% stake in Reddit, making him the third largest shareholder behind Advanced Magazine publishers with 30.1% and Tencent with 11%. Apparently, it was known that Altman was an investor in Reddit,

and I think he was even on the board at some point, but now we know how big an investor he was. Ooh, yes, you might have been affected by the cellular network outage yesterday and might have been surprised I didn't mention it. Well, with things like that, sometimes I make the bet that it will be resolved by the time you hear me talk about it, so sure enough, it seems it was resolved by the time I hit publish yesterday. But in case you were curious, AT&T believes the February 22 outage was, quote, caused by the application and execution of incorrect process as it was expanding its network and not a cyber attack, quoting ABC News. We are continuing our assessment of today's outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve. The statement continued.

The software update went wrong, according to preliminary information from two sources. familiar with the situation. Sources have told ABC News that there was nothing nefarious or malicious about the incident. The outage was not caused by an external actor, according to a source familiar with the situation. AT&T performs updates regularly, according to the source. In an earlier statement to ABC News, AT&T said some customers, quote, were experiencing wireless service interruptions and advised them to make calls over Wi-Fi.

The company issued an update later Thursday afternoon, saying that its network had been fully restored. The FCC has been in touch with AT&T to figure out what caused the outage, according to National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby. Kirby told reporters Thursday afternoon that DHS and the FBI were looking into the outage as well as working with the tech industry and network providers to see what can be done, quote, from a federal perspective to enhance their investigative efforts to figure out what happened here, end quote. There are various lawsuits and investigations looking into whether or not meta-new that its various products were potentially harmful to children. I've not talked about it

because I'm waiting for something concrete to actually happen. There's tons of different angles to this. But I found this one angle interesting and worth mentioning. In a hearing today, Mark Zuckerberg is seeking to avoid being held personally liable in two dozen lawsuits accusing META of addicting children to its products. Quoting Bloomberg, a ruling in Zuckerberg's favor would dismiss him as a personal defendant in the litigation with no impact on the allegations against META. Holding him personally responsible may be a challenge because of a corporate law tradition of shielding executives from liability, especially at larger companies where decision-making is often layered. A victory against the billionaire who launched Facebook with friends as a Harvard undergraduate

two decades ago could encourage claims against other CEOs in mass personal injury litigation. Zuckerberg faces allegations from young people and parents that he was repeatedly warned that Instagram and Facebook weren't safe for children but ignored the findings and publicly stated the opposite was true. Plaintiffs contend that as the face of, Meta, Zuckerberg has a responsibility, quote, to speak fully and truthfully on the risks meta's platforms posed to children's health, end quote. Zuckerberg, the world's fourth richest person as of Thursday, has argued that he can't be held personally responsible for actions at meta just because he's the CEO. As for the statements made by Zuckerberg himself, his lawyers claim that they were generalized or covered

by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protection of free speech and that Zuckerberg didn't have a duty to disclose the safety findings that were allegedly reported to him. Zuckerberg, who has Meta's most significant shareholder and maintains sole voting control at the company is also at risk of being held personally liable in a separate 2022 lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal brought by the Attorney General of the District of Columbia and Washington, end quote. Here's my question. It's related to that last bit. Any lawyers out there able to tell me why this is even being considered? Please do, because what's that term? Piercing the corporate veil, I think. Like that's the very foundation of corporate law. Officers of a corporation can't be legally liable

unless they, I don't know, do specific criminal acts, is the idea here that Zuckerberg has such a locked down control over the voting shares of META and its board of directors that him being separate from the decision-making of META is sort of a legal fiction. Like, how is this even being considered? Following up on this to let you know it actually happened, Blue Sky has officially opened up Federation letting anyone run their own server that connects to Blue Sky's network, which uses the AT protocol, which is important because, quoting TechCrunch, this decentralized model of social networking is similar to the one that Mastodon already uses, but is underpinned on Blue Sky by a different protocol, keeping the two networks separate for now. After a somewhat lengthy time in

private beta, the company launched to the public earlier this month and now has over 5 million registered users, according to an official tracker. With Federation, the Blue Sky Network could continue to grow as those interested in self-hosting could set up their own server or instance to cater to their own needs or those of a particular community. An instance can send and receive posts from other instances like the one Blue Sky itself operates, but can also block others if they choose and set their own moderation guidelines. This could be helpful for those who were hoping to make Blue Sky a safer place to interact, unlike Twitter slash X, but found themselves frustrated with Blue Sky's moderation decisions,

which have been controversial at times. While this model is similar to Mastodon, Blue Sky uses a newer social networking protocol, the AT protocol, while Mastodon and many other networks today use Activity Pub. Because the latter is a W3C indoor standard, it's the one being adopted by Instagram for its ex-rival threads. There are some differences between Blue Sky and Macedon, as the company points out today in an announcement. It notes that Blue Sky users will be able to participate in the global conversation instead of

the one dictated by the community they join as aspects of how your experience differs from others is in your control thanks to other features like custom feeds and composable moderation. The latter means moderation is not tied to your server. While server operators can set rules around the content they host, communities can use block lists and soon independent moderation services to introduce additional layers of moderation. That means there's not as much pressure on server operators to block other servers defederate because of the content they host, since users will have their own tools to manage their moderation preferences. Plus, Blue Sky aims to make account portability easier than on Macedon, allowing users to change servers

without changing their username or losing followers or posts. People interested in hosting their own service will need a bit of technical know-how to get started. You can view resources across Blue Sky's developer blog, it's PDS repo on GitHub and the PDS administrators Discord. Initially, Federation will be open to those interested in running smaller servers, end quote. Service journalism now, I guess, news you can maybe, use? What's the most lucrative side hustle you can do? Selling online courses, driving an Uber. Well, quoting Mashable, you might be able to guess the answer. Keeper, a tax filing service focused on freelance workers found OnlyFans had the highest median income of the top side hustles. It found

the median annual income for OnlyFans creators was $4,995. For comparison's sake, the most popular side hustle DoorDash had a median annual income. of $2,636. Delivery side hustles were the most popular, according to Keeper, working for DoorDash, Uber, and Instacart were the top three hustles. Instacart proved the most lucrative of the three with a median annual income of $3,445. It is important to note that this was median income, not average income. On OnlyFans, it's likely that there are some folks who make lots of money and others who

make none at all. Delivery side hustles, on the other hand, guarantee at least some payment so long as you work. OnlyFans is primarily a subscription-based site for creators of sexual content. It would make sense that it could pay better than door-dashing, end quote. Time for the week and long read suggestions. And first up, Wired has some actual service journalism for you devs and tech company workers out there. Interviews and emails show that technical interviews have become more punishing for engineers

after the recent mass layoffs in tech, often requiring days of work on unpaid assignments just to prove yourself. quote, nearly a dozen engineers, hiring managers, and entrepreneurs who spoke with Wired describe an environment in which technical job applicants are being put through the ringer. Take-home coding tests used to be rare, deployed only if an employer needed to be further convinced. Now, interviewees are regularly given projects described as requiring just two to three hours that instead take days of work. Live coding exercises are also more intense, industry insiders say, one job seeker described an experience where an engineering manager said during an interview, okay, we're going to build a to do

list app right now, a process that might normally take weeks. Emails reviewed by Wired showed that in one interview for an engineering role at Netflix, a technical recruiter requested that a job candidate submit a three-page project evaluation within 48 hours, all before the first round of interviews. A Netflix spokesperson said the process is different for each role and otherwise declined to comment. A similar email at Snap outlined a six-part interview process for a potential engineering candidate with each part lasting an hour. A company spokesperson says its interview process hasn't changed as a result of labor market changes. The balance of power has shifted back to employers, which has resulted in hiring getting tougher, says Lozlo Bach, who ran hiring at Google as SVP of People

operations for 10 years, and is now an advisor at the venture capital firm General Catalyst. Bach says the shift is partly due to mass layoffs. Employers are more able to flex their muscles in a tighter labor market, but there's also a broader psychological shift. shift. Quote, after years of tech workers being pampered of bring your whole selves to work and work from anywhere, executives are now overcompensating in the other direction, he says, end quote. And finally, look, he's the man of the moment. Invidia just passed $2 trillion in market value after adding $277 billion to its market value on Thursday alone, Wall Street's largest single one-day gain on record. So, let's hear from the man himself.

Wired's just-published interview with NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang, quote, we're building a new type of data center. We call it an AI factory, the way data centers are built today. You have a lot of people sharing one cluster of computers and putting their files in this one large data center. An AI factory is much more like a power generator. It's quite unique. We've been building it over the last several years, but now we have to turn this into a product. We haven't given it a name yet, but it will be everywhere. Cloud service providers will build them and will build them. Every biotech company will have it. Every retail company, every logistics company, every car company in the future will have a factory that builds the cars, the actual

goods, the atoms, and a factory that builds the AI for the cars, the electrons. In fact, you see Elon Musk doing that as we speak. He's well ahead of most in thinking about what industrial companies will look like in the future, end quote. And then when Jensen was asked what is happening right now, that is about to change everything like how the transformer paper created this AI moment, what he's most excited about, he responded, quote. There are a couple of things. One of them doesn't really have a name, but it's some of the work that we're doing in foundational robotics.

If you could generate text, if you could generate images, can you also generate motion? The answer is probably yes. And then if you can generate motion, you can understand intent and generate a generalized version of articulation. Therefore, human-eyed robotics should be right around the corner. And I think the work around state space models or SSMs that allow you to learn extremely long patterns and sequences

without growing quadrilatically in computation probably is the next transformer. You could have a conversation with a computer that lasts a very long time, and yet the context is never forgotten. You could even change topics for a while and come back to an earlier one, and that context could be retained. You might be able to understand the sequence of an extremely long chain, like a human genome, and just by looking at the genetic code, you understand its meaning. In the recent past, from the time that we had AlexNet to superhuman AlexNet, that was only about five years. A robotic foundation model is probably around the corner. I'll call it next year sometime. From that point, five years down the road, you're going to see some pretty amazing things,

end quote. The weekend bonus episode this weekend is the interview with Ed Zittron I told you about earlier this week. We talk about two things we've not touched on much on the show. The whole recent controversy with some writers fleeing substack and the current state of play in terms of if you're someone like Ed who has built his career on Twitter, where do you post now? How are the various Twitter alternatives shaking out in terms of audience and even personality. Enjoy that. Talk to you on Monday.