Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/20 – OnlyFans Pulls A Tumblr

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

OnlyFans wants to get out of the porn business, which makes sense to nobody on the Internet. Elon Musk says Tesla is building a humanoid robot, and I love you Elon, but you’ve really opened the door to your critics with this one. Microsoft is raising prices, and of course, the weekend longread suggestions. Sponsors: Postie.com/techmeme TinyCapital.com Links: OnlyFans has tons of users, but can't find investors (Axios) OnlyFans to Bar Sexually Explicit Videos Starting in October (Bloomberg) Microsoft will raise Office 365 business subscription prices in 2022 (CNBC) Elon Musk says Tesla is working on humanoid robots (The Verge) Elon Musk Unveils His Funniest Vaporware Yet (Gizmodo) The Weekend Longreads Suggestions: The FBI’s warning to Silicon Valley: China and Russia are trying to turn your employees into spies (Protocol) Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough? (Nature) Waymo Is 99% of the Way to Self-Driving Cars. The Last 1% Is the Hardest (Bloomberg Businessweek) These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs (WSJ) Amazon Killed the Name Alexa (The Atlantic) Afghanistan - Part 1 (The Rest Is History Podcast) 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. home for Friday, August 20th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, OnlyFans wants to get out of the porn business, which makes sense to nobody on the internet. Elon Musk says Tesla is building a

humanoid robot, and I love you, Elon, but you've really opened the door to your critics with this one. Microsoft is raising prices, and of course, the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. OnlyFans announced late yesterday that it will be prohibiting users from posting any, quote, sexually explicit conduct, unquote, starting in October, but will continue to allow nude photos and videos on the platform. So I guess that conduct word is key there. Now, number one, if the reaction on Twitter is indicative of anything, OnlyFans is way more popular than I thought because everyone was freaking out about this last night. Number two, remember when Tumblr, banned porn? How did that work out for them? Number three,

I didn't mention it this week, but there were rumors floating around earlier this week that OnlyFans was struggling to find investors, possibly due to hosting adult content. A pitch deck that was circulating for OnlyFans to attempt to raise money showed that the company was predicting $5.9 billion in gross merchandise value in 2021 and $1.2 billion in net revenue. So they were looking for some financing that would value them above a billion dollars in aid of probably going public sometime in the near future. Quoting Axios. The Rain Group, a merchant bank, focused on tech and telecom this past spring, began helping OnlyFans to solicit investors. Several deep-pocketed firms quickly passed, not even engaging in serious due diligence. The money,

it's hoping to raise, would partially cash out majority owner and porn mogul Leo Radivinsky, while providing management with what one venture capitalist calls more legitimacy. By the numbers, any other company with growth like OnlyFans would be able to raise big money in a matter of minutes. In short, OnlyFans has a porn problem, even though it never once mentions porn in its pitch deck, something that multiple investors called disingenuous. Some VC funds are prohibited from investing in adult content per limited partnership agreements. Several investors are concerned about minors creating subscription accounts, although the company says it has controls in place to prevent that. Some investors say they could get past the porn, but worry that the company's reputation would prevent it from

attracting brand partners, despite this week announcing a safe for work product that features its growing number of clothed creators, end quote. So I guess we have to assume this is what is going on here. I don't know why porn remains the last great taboo in venture capital land. Lord knows VCs have poured billions of dollars into cannabis startups recently. OnlyFans is by far the most successful platform in the so-called creator economy thus far, though it is a nascent space, one would have to say. So is this an attempt to pivot to, hey, we're not hardcore sex, we're a platform for Pilates instructors and stand-up comedians and the like. Oh, but we'll still let you post pictures of breasts and stuff like that, quoting Bloomberg. Starting in October, the company will prohibit creators

from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website, emphasis, mine, which many sex workers use to sell fans' explicit content. They'll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos provided they're consistent with OnlyFans policy, the company said Thursday. OnlyFans is positioning itself more as a forum for musicians, fitness instructors, and chefs than sex workers. While many of its most popular creators post videos of themselves engaging in sexual behavior, several mainstream celebrities like Bella Thorne, Cardi B, and Tiga have also set up accounts. The changes are needed because of pressure from banking partners and payments providers, according to the company. OnlyFans is trying to

raise money from outside investors at evaluation of more than $1 billion. In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform and continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines, OnlyFans said. The company is run by its founder Tim Stokely and owned by Leonid Radivinsky, an internet entrepreneur, end quote. So I want to make the point again, the financials that OnlyFans revealed in that pitch deck are insane. People should be falling all over themselves to shovel money at them. Is there a deeper issue here? Another shoot at drop, something we're not aware of. This morning, there are stories going around suggesting that OnlyFans may have banned porn because of a BBC investigation into how the site had some, quote, tolerance for creators

publishing illegal content, also that banks and credit card companies were threatening not to work with them anymore. In a vacuum, I think this is a good summary from our friend Julia Alexander, quote, OnlyFans executives suggesting they don't want explicit sexual content because of the banks and future outside investors would be the perfect moment to point to blockchain, eliminating a lot of these concerns, but blockchain groups could have solved it before and didn't. Beyond upsetting that OnlyFans built a billion dollar business on the back of sex workers turning away now that there's capital slash interest. The world. doesn't want another Patreon, it wants OnlyFans. OnlyFans no longer wants to be OnlyFans,

despite building success via those creators, end quote. Yes, in a normal marketplace, now would be the perfect time for someone to swoop in and create an OnlyFans clone, perhaps on the blockchain? Microsoft says it will raise the prices of commercial Microsoft 365 subscription bundles in March, the first major price change since their 2011 launch. Quoting CNBC, the price hikes will boost Microsoft's total revenue and profit given the office line remains the company's top product in terms of sales, and most office revenue is tied to business use. While Microsoft still sells licensed versions of office for use on premises, the company has been getting the majority of commercial office revenue from subscriptions since 2017. This marks, quote, the first substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago, Microsoft 365 corporate vice president. President Jared Spataro wrote in a blog post. The bundle has expanded to include the Teams

communication app, the whiteboard collaboration app, and power platform application development tools for non-developers among other assets, Spataro wrote. The changes go into effect on March 1st, 2022. Here's a rundown of the coming changes to the monthly prices. Microsoft 365 Business Basic will go up to $6 per user per month from $5. Microsoft 365 Business Premium will move to $22 from 20. The Microsoft 365 E3 variant will be $365 compared to $32 today. Unlike the other products on this list, it includes a version of Windows. Office 365E1 will be $10 instead of $8. Office 365E3 will rise to $23 from 20. The premium Office 365E5 tier will cost $38 up from 35. Creating Microsoft 365 with Windows has helped Microsoft sell office subscriptions for people who aren't necessarily in front

of PCs all day because they hold front-line positions such as cashiers. That has helped widen the base of office users, and now there are over 300 million commercial office 365 paid seats, Spitaro wrote, end quote. Okay, look, I debated even whether I was going to cover this, but at last night's Tesla AI event, Elon Musk said that Tesla is working on a humanoid robot that will handle, quote, tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring, with a prototype, quote, sometime next year. quoting the verge. The humanoid robot will leverage Tesla's experience with automated machines in its factories, as well as some of the hardware and software that powers the company's autopilot driver assistance software. Musk, who has spoken repeatedly about his fears of runaway artificial intelligence,

said the Tesla bot is, quote, intended to be friendly, but that the company is designing the machine at a, quote, mechanical level so that, quote, you can run away from it and most likely overpower it, end quote. It will be five feet eight inches tall, weigh 125 pounds, and have a screen for a face. The code name for the bot inside the company is optimist, he said. The robots will be designed to handle, quote, tasks that are unsafe, repetitive, or boring. The company's website reads, but little else, at least at first. There, the bot is simply called the Tesla bot. Quote, I think essentially in the future, physical work will be a choice.

If you want to do it, you can, Musk said. Musk revealed drawings of the robot near the tail end of his company. company's AI Day event, where it showcased some of the artificial intelligence and supercomputer technologies that it's working on with the goal of one day powering self-driving cars. The company also had a manicon version on the stage, which wasn't working, end quote. And that's the problem here. That's why I was considering not even doing this. Because that's the news. Elon's going to give you an iRobot-style robot to do all your work for you. Someday, he swears. But the best he could do last night to prove this to you was to have

someone come on stage in a skin-tight body suit and walk around stiffly like a robot or from that early around-the-world daft punk video. You heard me right. There was just someone in a body suit pretending to be a robot on stage. Look, I've never been one to go in for the whole Elon is just a showman. He likes to announce vaporware crowd, but you do have to admit, this is the flimsyest thing anyone has tried to announce intact in a long time. Quoting an especially snarky piece from Gizmodo, quote, The Tesla bot will be real, Musk said emphatically, trying to usher his fake robot offstage on Thursday.

Gizmodo could tell you that Musk's robot will stand five feet, eight inches tall, and weigh about 125 pounds. We could also tell you that it's designed to eliminate dangerous, boring, and repetitive tasks, according to Musk. We could even tell you that it's equipped with Tesla autopilot cameras in the head and 40 actuators in the body, but that would be a waste of just about everyone's time. This isn't even a prototype of something that might hit store shelves one day.

It's the promise of a prototype at some point in the future, arguably worse than regular vaporware. And you can watch the video for yourselves if you're curious. What's the point of unveiling something that will probably never happen? Whether it's Musk's Robotaxies that were supposed to arrive by 2020 or solar roof tiles from 2016 that never came into being, the point of vaporware is to push a company into the headlines and sell more of the same that they were selling before. Board TV news outlets with 24 hours to fill, get to wash a particular brand, and in this case the brand is Musk's Tesla, in a hopeful and techno-utopian mystique, end quote. Not saying I agree with that sentiment, but I will say watch the video because it's

pretty silly. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. This first one is something that I've speculated about on here before. Protocol says the FBI has been giving secret briefings to big tech companies about foreign countries possibly recruiting their employees as spies. Quote, it's not the Hollywood image of espionage, but the risk to tech companies is real, the FBI says. Employees are being persuaded or more typically coerced by foreign autocracies into stealing information or handing over login credentials. In one case, Shrenken worked on Chinese government agents threatened to deny an employee's mother dialysis back in China if he didn't steal proprietary information from a large hardware slash software company. For the last few years, San Francisco-based

Shrenken has been quietly briefing venture firms, startups, academics, and tech industry groups that might be of interest to foreign actors. It's not the glamorous spy, stings that form movie plots, but a subtle way of fighting espionage through education. After protocol heard about the briefings from multiple sources, the FBI agreed to an interview about the content of the briefings and shared its framework called the Delta Protocol, no relation to COVID-19 or this publication, which the agency developed to distribute two startups so they can learn to protect themselves. The reason why we're being so much more assertive about these briefings and trying to be more open with the U.S. industry is because we've just come to the realization that if there's no cost, then they will continue to do what they're doing, Shrenken said.

So the briefings are like, please, American companies, raise your shields, protect yourselves, make it more expensive for the thieves to rob you, and the country is stronger, and you're stronger." Collectively, we've worried for years about the concept of peak oil. There's only so much oil in the ground. Once it's gone, it's gone. And thus one of the reasons behind the pivot to electric vehicles. Except, according to nature, there's also a limit to the natural resources required to make batteries, too. Quote, lithium itself is not scarce. A June report by BNEF2

estimated that the current reserves of the metal, 21 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, are enough to carry the conversion of EVs through to the mid-century. And reserves are a malleable concept because they represent the amount of a resource that can be economically extracted at current prices and given current technology and regulatory requirements. For most materials, if demand goes up, reserves eventually do too. As cars electrify, the challenge lies in scaling up lithium production to meet demand, Ampho says. It's going to grow by about seven times between 2020 and 2030, end quote. Researchers are more worried about cobalt, which is the most valuable ingredient of current EV batteries.

Two-thirds of global supply are mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Human rights activists have raised concerns over conditions there, in particular over child labor and harm to workers' health. Like other heavy metals, cobalt is toxic if not handled properly. Alternative sources could be exploited such as the metal-rich nodules, on the seafloor, but they present their own environmental hazards. And nickel, another major component of EV batteries, could also face shortages, end quote. Next, this is something that we've discussed before as well, but a restatement of this particular problem comes from Bloomberg this week. The headline says it all, Waymo is 99% of the way to self-driving cars. The last 1% is the

hardest, quote, it turns out that the last 1% has been a killer. Small disturbances like construction crews, bicyclists, left turns, and pedestrians remain headaches for computer drivers. Each city poses new unique challenges, and right now no driverless cars from any company can gracefully handle rain, sleet, or snow. Until these last few details are worked out, widespread commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles is all but impossible. We got to the moon, and it's like, now what, says Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst in Detroit and longtime industry spectator. We stick a flag in it, grab some rocks, but now what? We can't do anything with this moon, end quote. By the way, I just want to quickly editorialize here. Pedestrians,

left turns, rain or snow. Are we sure those are little problems, the last few details to iron out? Because it kind of feels like this are bigger than just 1% problems to me. Next, this lead from the Wall Street Journal also has a good summary for me. These people who work from home have a secret. they have two jobs. When the pandemic freed employees from having to report to the office, some saw an opportunity to double their salary on the slide. Quote, it's two jobs for one, says a 29-year-old software engineer who has been working simultaneously for a media company and an events company since June. He estimates he was logging three to 10 hours of actual work a week back when he held down one job. The rest of it is just attending

meetings and pretending to look busy, he said. He was emboldened by a new website called, over-employed. Started by two tech workers this spring, it aims to rally workers around the concept of stealthily holding multiple jobs, framing it as a way to rest back control after decades of stalled wages for some and a pandemic that led to unpredictable layoffs, end quote. The Atlantic looks at how, you know who, has sort of ruined the name Alexa for parents. At first, the number of baby Alexis spiked following the voice assistance rollout in late 2014. perhaps parents heard the name in the news and liked it, but it has since crashed. Likely, parents began to realize that having the name could be a nuisance or worse could become

associated with subservience because people are always giving orders to their virtual Alexis. This up and down pattern reminded Wattonberg of what happens with baby names after hurricanes when, quote, the news coverage and attention causes the name to briefly shoot up, and then the aftermath when the name is constantly referred to as a disaster, kind of kills it off, end quote. Basically, Amazon's impact on the name Alexa resembles that of a natural disaster. When I reached out to the company, it didn't comment on whether it had played a role in Alexa's decline, end quote. And finally this week, a podcast recommendation. I believe I've mentioned the show called The Rest is History before. The hosts are two well-known British historians, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland,

and every episode, they just kick around historical things, one topic at a time, be it the Enlightenment or the ancient Olympics or Persia. But if you want a great intro to their show, I could not recommend more highly the two most recent episodes they did this week on Afghanistan. This show is so, so good. It almost single-handedly restores my faith in the internet. Search your podcast app now, for The Rest is History. No weekend bonus content at all this weekend, but as I said, we will be marking our 1,000th episode. with a bonus episode next weekend. And Ride Home Plus subscribers do watch for a small five-minute announcement episode in your feed

to explain some changes to the Ride Home Plus offerings. Talk to y'all on Monday.