Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 04/08 – Elon To Give A “Hello, Fellow Tweeps” AMA

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, April 8th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Some folks at Twitter are nervous about Elon Musk's arrival, so he's going to do an AMA to rally the troops. Twitter is testing unmentioning. Robin Hood is fully rolling out that promised wallet feature, the increasing lexicon of euphemisms that people have to use to speak freely on sites like TikTok, and of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal has apparently emailed staff to announce that Elon Musk will hold an internal AMA addressing concerns that Musk would sabotage Twitter's company culture, quoting the Washington Post.

Starting point is 00:01:20 The announcement from Twitter chief executive Paragrawal of the highly unusual internal AMA, which stands for Ask Me Anything session, was an effort to assuage anxious workers who in recent days have expressed worries that the firebrand Musk could inflict damage to the company's culture, as well as make it harder for people to do their jobs. We say that Twitter is what's happening and what people are talking about right now. Often, we at Twitter are what's happening and what people are talking about. That has certainly been the case this week. Agrawal wrote in a company-wide email Thursday, inviting staff to the AMA. Following our board announcement, many of you have had different types of questions about Elon Musk,

Starting point is 00:01:59 and I want to welcome you to ask those questions to him." End quote. This follows extensive debate on internal company channels. Quote, quick question. If an employee tweeted some of the things Elon tweets, they'd likely be the subject of an HR investigation. One employee noted on company Slack channels, are board members held to the same standard? End quote. Another post said that employees were struggling with welcoming a leader whose values seem to be in contradiction with the companies. quote, we know that he has caused harm to workers, the trans community, women, and others with less power in the world, that employee asked, how are we going to reconcile this decision with our values? Does innovation trump humanity, end quote. Another employee who said he used to work at Tesla

Starting point is 00:02:43 said he, quote, witnessed the awful changes in company culture that followed after Musk took over as CEO, quote, I'm extremely unnerved right now because I've seen what he can do firsthand, the person said, end quote. Meanwhile, Twitter seems to be testing unmentioning as a new feature with some users on the web, letting users select the option to leave this conversation on a tweet to avoid notifications, quoting and gadget. Unmentioneding is available for some people today, Twitter says. It's not clear if or when the feature might be widely available or when it might reach mobile apps. In its current form, the text for the mention remains. It just doesn't send an alert.

Starting point is 00:03:29 The company has tested or deployed numerous features to keep mentions civil, including an anti-harassment safety mode that automatically blocks mean-spirited users. This, however, might be one of the most practical. Twitter users often deal with unwanted mentions from friends, spammers, and others. This gives you more control over your participation and lets you focus on the chats you care about, end quote. Robin Hood is expanding its crypto wallet to the more than 2 million users on the wallet wait list and says it will support transacting on Bitcoin's Lightning Network in the coming months, quoting the block.

Starting point is 00:04:08 The rollout for crypto wallets began in September to a select group of users, as reported at the time, and in December, the company inked a deal with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to prepare for the offering's wider rollout. Robin Hood said in a press statement that it has now granted wallet transfer capabilities, quote, to every eligible person on the 2 million plus when wallets wait list of more than 2 million people, end quote. Access is not available to those based in Hawaii, New York, and Nevada, the firm said. Robin Hood also unveiled a pending feature on the horizon in keeping with the theme of its announcement at the Bitcoin-centric conference in Miami. The brokerage app will support the Lightning Network,

Starting point is 00:04:46 which is focused on smaller Bitcoin transactions. We will be adding the ability to transact on the Bitcoin Lightning Network and open source layer two for Bitcoin transactions in the near future. Robin Hood said, adding that more updates on this front could be pending in the coming months. As previously reported, the expanded rollout comes as Robin Hood is teeing up more crypto functionalities. The firm posted a decline in crypto transaction-based revenue during the fourth quarter of 2021. Still, during a presentation on Thursday, Twitter's chief product officer remarked that Bitcoin has been this year's top recurring buy on the Robin Hood app, end quote. According to Gartner, total global tech spending will rise 4% year over year to $4.4 trillion in 2022.

Starting point is 00:05:34 Device spending will reach $824.6 billion, while software spending will rise 9.8% year-over-year to $674.9 billion, quoting Silicon Angle. Gartner Distinguished Research Vice President John David Lovelock said 2020 is already, proven to be one of the, quote, noisiest years on record for chief information officers, what with inflation, currency fluctuations, and geopolitical disruption, adding to the existing supply chain challenges that have persisted since the COVID-19 pandemic, yet contrary to what we saw at the start of 2020, CIOs are accelerating their IT investments as they recognize the importance of flexibility and agility in responding to disruption, Lovelock said. As a result, purchasing and investing preferences will be focused in areas including analytics, cloud computing, seamless customer experiences, and security, end quote.

Starting point is 00:06:24 One of the reasons for the increased spending forecasts is that technology service providers are raising their prices. Gartner says that reflects a dearth of IT talent that's forcing tech companies to pay more competitive salaries, and those costs are being passed on to buyers. As a result, software spending could rise by 9.8% this year, while IT services spending will grow by 6.8% to $1.3 trillion. Gartner said software spending is also being driven by digital transformation and the growing prominence of enterprise application software, infrastructure software, and managed services. It noted that cloud infrastructure as a service powers virtually every major consumer-focused online offering and mobile app. These trends will

Starting point is 00:07:03 account for a significant amount of spending growth. And software spending will likely make up for sluggish growth elsewhere in the industry. Gartner's forecast shows that the hunger for new laptops and tablets that was spurred by the pandemic has finally abated. Devices spending is forecast to rise by only 1.9% this year, end quote. The Washington Post takes a look at how Algo speak, its term, things like saying unalive instead of dead, is becoming common on the internet as people seek to bypass content moderation filters on platforms. In other words, we've got some newspeak to avoid the algorithms. Quote, Algo-speak refers to code words or turns-of-phrase users have adopted in an effort to create a brand-safe lexicon that will avoid getting their posts removed

Starting point is 00:07:54 or down-ranked by content moderation systems. For instance, in many online videos, it's common to say unalive rather than dead, essay instead of sexual assault, or spicy eggplant, instead of vibrator. As the pandemic pushed more people to communicate and express themselves online, algorithmic content moderation systems have had an unprecedented impact on the words we choose, particularly on TikTok, and given rise to a new form of internet-driven, Aesopian language. Unlike other mainstream social platforms, the primary way content is distributed on TikTok is through an algorithmically curated for you page. Having followers is a secondary metric that doesn't guarantee people will see your content.

Starting point is 00:08:34 This shift has led average users to tailor their content primarily toward the algorithm rather than a following, which means abiding by content moderation rules is more crucial than ever. When the pandemic broke out, people on TikTok and other apps began referring to it, the pandemic, as the Backstreet Boys reunion tour, or calling it the Panini or Panda Express, as platforms downranked videos mentioning the pandemic by name in an effort to combat misinformation. When young people began to discuss struggling with mental health, they talked about, coming on alive in order to have frank conversations about suicide without algorithmic punishment. Sex workers who have long been censored by moderation systems refer to themselves on TikTok as

Starting point is 00:09:14 accountants and use the corn emoji as a substitute for the word porn. As discussions of major events are filtered through algorithmic content delivery systems, more users are bending their language. Recently, in discussing the invasion of Ukraine, people on YouTube and TikTok have used the sunflower emoji to signify the country. When encouraging fans to follow them elsewhere, users will say blink in Lio instead of link in bio. Because algorithms online will often flag content mentioning certain words devoid of context, some users avoid uttering them altogether simply because

Starting point is 00:09:46 they have alternate meanings. You have to say saltines when you're literally talking about crackers now, said Lodane Eresian, a community manager for Twitch creators. Twitch considers the word cracker a slur. Twitch and other platforms have even gone so far as to remove certain emotes because people were using them to communicate certain words. Black and trans users and those from other marginalized communities often use Algospeak to discuss the oppression they face, swapping out words for white or racist. Some are too nervous to utter the word white at all and simply hold their palm toward the camera to signify white people, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. First up from the Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, what purports to be an inside account of the

Starting point is 00:10:35 forgive me, rapid collapse of Fast, that startup that we covered earlier this week. Quote, as a software engineer at Fast who joined in December 2021, shared, quote, I remember this spreadsheet about the equity upside like yesterday. It was the reason why I left my previous company where I enjoyed working and had a good package. The millions and gains looked so real, especially that Bolt's valuation was just under $11 billion. It seemed realistic that Fast could get to a $12 billion value. In hindsight, it was the worst decision of my career to make the leave for fast based on data displayed in the spreadsheet, end quote.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Exploding offers because of, quote, the inevitability of the Series C closing, end quote, was used as a tactic to close candidates at the end of 2021. Several employees were told at the end of December that their offer would expire in a few days, thanks to the Series C being very close to closing, and their equity offer not guaranteed after this. The candidates I talked to signed offers in December, thanks to this news, assuming the new round was in the bag. One thing the company did not share with candidates was revenue numbers. However, once joining, the new joiners found these out fast enough, and this is where warning signs started to go off, end quote. Next, to be quite honest, before these past two weeks, I thought it was Bolt that was the controversial player in the one-click checkout space, given how CEO Ryan Breslau had made being provocative on social media. a bit of a habit, taking swings at prominent Silicon Valley players like Wycombinator and Hacker News.

Starting point is 00:12:07 So given this week's events from Forbes, a profile of Breslau, quote. In January, Breslau tweeted a multi-thread screed, arguing that Stripe, the $95 billion valuation payments, darling, and Y Combinator, the elite startup accelerator, are, quote, mob bosses that collude to crush fintech competition. It was both business and personal for him. Stripe is a competitor. Why Combinator had rejected him? In February, he wrote that Shopify, the $90 billion e-commerce company that offers high-tech tools to small businesses, eats its own ecosystem by stealing its developer community's best ideas. Neither Stripe nor Shopify has responded publicly to his provocations. I'm not afraid of bothering a few powerful people. If I'm not going to speak up about the

Starting point is 00:12:52 darkness that I see in Silicon Valley, who is, Breslau says. I believe you should share the knowledge and also share the struggles because the thing that I hate most about Silicon Valley is everyone telling a Cinderella story, end quote. Of course, sharing the struggles makes for good marketing too. Bolt, a wonky digital checkout startup that's far from a household name needs to sign up millions of users fast. A well-timed Twitter beef with well-known competitors is a cheap way to draw attention and build hype. That's Ryan. He's a Gen Z entrepreneur unsatisfied with the order of the world and he wants to change it, says Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvila, a former Amazon exec who managed global logistics and prime fulfillment. Most people who achieve success don't upset the

Starting point is 00:13:32 apple cart. Ryan is more fearless, he said, end quote. Next, this is a bit of inside baseball, but usually we don't have any idea in real-time how successful the bets major venture capital firms are making actually are because, you know, their results are not public knowledge. That's for the LPs. That's for their investors. But since VC firms have begun to file as registered, investment advisors in order to invest in crypto tokens, they now have to do public disclosures of assets under management. And if you do the math on these disclosures, you can sort of see how well various VC firms are doing. For example, from the newcomer newsletter. Andresen Horowitz, which manages a suite of venture capital funds, including a crypto fund, disclosed last week that

Starting point is 00:14:18 its assets under management reached $54.6 billion. That's up 53% from $35.8 billion in its previous disclosure. The assets under management for Andriesen Horowitz's crypto-focused funds total about $9 billion. Sequoia Capital, which is in the process of reshaping its entire investing structure, disclosed that its holdings total $85.5 billion. In its initial filing as a registered investment advisor in September, Sequoia disclosed it had $80.7 billion in assets under management. Tiger Global, which invests in both public and private companies, disclosed it had $124.7 billion in regulatory assets under management. That's up 58. percent from $79.1 billion in its 2021 filing, but the really interesting one is Paradigm, which raised a

Starting point is 00:15:03 $2.5 billion fund since it last disclosed its assets under management. So putting that new funding aside, it would seem that Paradigm has grown its assets to $10.7 billion since its December 2020 filing. That would suggest a 259% return on the $2.98 billion that the firm had under management previously, end quote. paradigm is an increasingly prominent crypto investor. So turning an investment of, say, $10,000 into $25,900 just since December 2020. And, you know, caveat MTOR, that's on paper. That is still, shall we say, impressive. And you wonder why VCs are so hot on crypto at the moment. Then from motherboard, a look at Axi Infinity, not from the perspective of the big hack we've been talking about, or investors having to back up the Brinks truck to hopefully make that hack hole,

Starting point is 00:15:57 or any of that, but just the functional mechanics of Axi Infinity, the game and the ecosystem. And well, according to this piece, it ain't pretty, quote. Savage Studios FBG owns over 600 axes and runs a team of about 200 scholars. The burgeoning YouTuber sees his large returns as a chance for his scholars to earn big with him and rejects the employee framing. portray them as employees. Our agreement on Axy is mutually beneficial. I make money from them using my NFTs, and they make money by playing them, FBG told motherboard. Philanthropy is something I have never experienced in any way. The message I get from my scholars on how they have used

Starting point is 00:16:35 their profit to pay bills, get a washer and dryer, or in some cases new teeth for their grandpa, is truly amazing to see, end quote. At its peak, FBG's operation was pulling in $20,000 a month, he said. Whatever managers want to call their scholars and many cases they're treated a lot like typical workers, though. One U.S. expat who goes by Rafar has spent the last nine years living in the Philippines and now manages about 15 scholars. He plans on adding one or two more a month, even as the market for SLP craters, because he's been able to generate enough returns through a strict quota, an onboarding program, and close management of his scholars. Rafar scholarship program is a comprehensive one.

Starting point is 00:17:13 It includes a one-month trial to maintain a competitive ranking, a daily quota of 75 SLP, an onboarding system complete with Google Doc guides, playtesting live feedback, and a community discord to ask questions and get further help, end quote. And finally, BuzzFeed takes a look at WorldCoin, that Sam Altman-backed crypto startup that gives people free money, free crypto money, but you also have to let them scan your eyeball first for reasons that even after all this time I'm still unclear on. And anyway, according to this piece, things are also, well, quote, Orb operators tried different tactics. Hiring DJs and handing out World Coin merch were holding presentations at universities or at the houses of community leaders. One operator asked passers-by to guess what the orb was. What do you think this is? A disco ball? The operator would say.

Starting point is 00:18:03 An event in rural Indonesia attracted more than 100 people, including parents with kids in tow. But these stunts also caught the attention of the local authorities. Three orb operators told BuzzFeed News that at least two distributors were detained by police while on the job in Zimbabwe, where banks are forbidden from processing cryptocurrency transactions. Blania acknowledged that operators had been detained, adding that there has been less than five such incidents. After the mishaps, Worldcoin created boilerplate letters for authorities in any given market, explaining the project and the orb. The orb operators are not collecting money or sending money out of the country, reads the letter which was viewed by BuzzFeed News. People participating in the social project are not asked for any money in return. Instead, we all benefit when everyone takes part in the World Coin project.

Starting point is 00:18:47 and quote. Run-ins with authorities aren't the only problems distributors have faced. Eight current and former operators who spoke to BuzzFeed News described a chaotic operation mired in logistical and technical problems where workers were largely left to fend for themselves. If operators signed up fewer than 500 people for two weeks in a row, they were forced to relinquish their orbs, a process called involuntary orb return, according to a deck on sign-up targets viewed by BuzzFeed News. The World Coin spokesperson Golovina said they do not refer to this process with that term. On the flip side, getting more than 700 sign-ups for two weeks in a row made operators eligible for an additional orb. Just tell people it's free money, one operator

Starting point is 00:19:26 said a World Coin representative advised them. But according to a document that lays out WorldCoin's marketing guidelines, the company instructed operators not to say that WorldCoyne is a great investment or an opportunity to, quote, get in early, end quote. All righty then, only one bonus episode this weekend. It's a portfolio profile episode. Want to know what it's like to build a brand new, months old SaaS platform in this year of our Lord 2022. Well, listen to the founder of Margin. Give you the on-the-ground reality of doing that. And he'd like you to help him refine the product before launch. So enjoy that conversation. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 04/08 – Elon To Give A “Hello, Fellow Tweeps” AMA

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