Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 09/07 - Today in Elon, the 4:20 Edition

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, September 7th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Tim Armstrong might be on his way out of oath. Alex Jones is permanently off of Twitter.

Starting point is 00:00:48 A Cambridge Analytica figure is officially no longer a Facebook employee. Elon Musk smokes a blunt and the weekend Longreads suggestions. Here's what you missed in a crazy day in the world of tech. This is a weird day where we're going to be. going to have to talk a lot about personnel in the tech industry, especially tech executives. They're possible departures, their actual departures, they're seemingly getting high on podcasts. The first instance of this comes from the Wall Street Journal, and the rumors they are hearing and reporting on that Tim Armstrong, head of oath, which is Verizon's media and advertising

Starting point is 00:01:29 business, is in talks to leave the company. Quick history lesson here. Tim Armstrong is an internet advertising OG. He was at Starwave when they brought you ESPN.com and the Go network. Disney bought StarWave, so he did some early online advertising efforts there throughout the dot-com era. Then in the year 2000, he joined Google as its U.S. sales chief and as Google took its tentative first steps into advertising. He's credited with convincing Google to make their ads self-serve rather than relying on a huge

Starting point is 00:02:02 sales force. He helped launch AdSense. He is also credited with pushing Google to get into the display advertising business through the purchase of DoubleClick. Then in 2009, he is appointed CEO of AOL, which was at the time struggling in the aftermath of the failed AOL-Time Warner merger. He moved that company away from its legacy ISP business and heavily into online advertising. Along the way, he snapped up sites like the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, among many others. There was the whole patch experiment, which is a whole another story moving on. Then in 2015, Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion.

Starting point is 00:02:43 Armstrong remained the CEO, and then last year he helped oversee the purchase of Yahoo for $4.48 billion. This is how we got Oath. Oath was the combination of AOL, Yahoo, all these digital assets, all the advertising assets, etc. Oath was supposed to represent Verizon's digital content division in an attempt to create a content and advertising rival to Facebook and Google. Like I said, Tim Armstrong is an internet digital advertising OG. Now, whether his efforts with Oath have been successful or not is debatable. But the stark facts are Google currently owns 36% of the internet advertising pie. Facebook owns around 20% and Oath only about 2.2.2.2.5.

Starting point is 00:03:30 And Oath contributes less than $4 billion in revenue to Verizon's bottom line, while its wireless telephony business contributed $44 billion last year. As the Wall Street Journal piece notes, there have been rumors that Verizon is considering selling off the Oath Division, something that Verizon denies, as Nilai Patel tweeted, turns out gluing AOL and Yahoo together with a bunch of insane ad tracking does not make you a Google competitor, end quote. Peter Kafka says he always wondered why Armstrong stuck around after Verizon bought AOL. Quote, in retrospect, it's more clear. After convincing Verizon to spend another $4.5 billion on Yahoo, Armstrong wanted Verizon to spin the combined company out, giving him control of a much bigger internet content and advertising company with important ties to a giant distributor, end quote. But then, Lowell McAdams, the Verizon CEO who first bought AOL and brought Armstrong into, the company left Verizon.

Starting point is 00:04:30 The spin-out never happened. The new Verizon CEO seems less interested in building a media empire. So, as Kafka says, you've got a guy in Armstrong who was cobbling together a digital media empire using scraps and spare parts. It seems like he thought he could leverage a bigger company into helping him piece all this together and then hand him the keys. And now that seems not to be in the cards. So what now? Those scraps, that digital media empire, is still there. It still has value.

Starting point is 00:05:02 So what happens to oath now? Certainly something to watch. So this was announced just as I was queuing yesterday's episode for release. P.S. Justin Ott from Twitter, I was going to say pod there, but I refrained for your benefit. And anyway, I'm sure you've seen this news anyway, but Twitter has permanently suspended InfoWars and Alex Jones's Twitter accounts saying that they have violated the service's abusive behavior rules. Twitter also confirmed that if Jones switches to a preexisting account, that too will be suspended. If he registers a new account, that will be suspended as well.

Starting point is 00:05:47 I'm actually not sure there's much I can add to this story other than to be constantly amazed at Twitter's decision-making in all aspects of his business, as well as wonder, what was the final straw that finally made the company throw in the towel and deliver these bands. Charlie Worsell and BuzzFeed News have been all over this story from the beginning and in the show notes I'll link to a Twitter thread

Starting point is 00:06:10 from Charlie where he speculates on the how and why of how this went down. Quoting a bit from the thread, don't have any firsthand knowledge of this but have a hunch people at Twitter HQ knew this day would come. Jones was going to cross some line, especially with this much scrutiny.

Starting point is 00:06:28 Twitter sees the fact that they held out as showing they're making principled, consistent decisions. Twitter sees this as a part of a bigger way to gain user trust. The reality is that is likely a naive view. People will be mad Jack at all didn't do this faster. Folks on the far right will see this as yet more censorship. If this was all a way to gain trust, not sure you'll be. you can say it worked, end quote. Mashable's Matt Binder snarked, interesting.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Looks like all Alex Jones needed to do to get banned from Twitter is harass its founder and CEO in person on Capitol Hill, end quote. He's referring to that photo from this week of Jones attempting to confront Jack Dorsey outside the congressional hearings. I've got a link to that picture in the show notes. It's like a tableau from a Renaissance painting or something. It's really one of the most 2018 photos there is. This also hit late yesterday, but this was so heavily rumored and leaked ahead of time as to basically be assumed at this point.

Starting point is 00:07:39 But Google has sent out invites to the press for an event on October 9th in New York City where everyone and their grandmother assumes they will announce the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL smartphones. You're probably aware of this, but actual in the wild. photos of the pixel 3 and pixel 3 XL have already leaked. Guess what? There's no notch guys. So I guess some of the excitement and mystery

Starting point is 00:08:07 is gone. However, but at last year's pixel event, Google did announce a whole bevy of other hardware items, the pixel book, Google Home Mini, and Max, pixel buds, and clips. So just because the headliner was already seen entering the building, that doesn't mean the show won't have any surprises.

Starting point is 00:08:24 And wait! This hit right before I started editing. Microsoft has also sent out press invites. These to an event on October 2nd, where I believe we can expect the refresh of the current surface hardware line. So buckle up, everybody. This is going to be a busy month. Also, I wanted to do this piece real quick,

Starting point is 00:08:51 not to get all conspiracy-minded or anything. But when the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke, this didn't get a lot of attention. But around the same time that in December 2015, Facebook first discovered that a pair of Cambridge University researchers had sold user data to the election firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook actually at that same time hired one of them. Alexander Kogan is the guy who's been in all the headlines as implicated in the scandal. But his research partner, the one who was hired by Facebook, was named Joseph Chancellor. quoting from a piece about this in Fast Company, the exact nature of Chancellor's work at Facebook is not clear.

Starting point is 00:09:34 The company employs many in-house social scientists to better understand the psychology of its users using an unprecedented amount of data. When he was hired at Facebook research in November 2015, according to a now-deleted LinkedIn profile, Chancellor had been researching happiness and so-called pro-social behavior. At some point, he was assigned to virtual reality research,

Starting point is 00:09:55 a hot topic for the Oculus Ones. owning tech giant, end quote. Well, Joseph Chancellor no longer works at Facebook officially, according to a statement given to Fast Company this week, as well as a report from 60 Minutes on Sunday. But to say Facebook has been evasive about Chancellor's role at the company in congressional and parliamentary testimony in investigations by journalists is putting it mildly.

Starting point is 00:10:21 Check out the Fast Company piece that I've linked to for all the details about this. And again, I'm not flagging this, because I'm saying there's anything nefarious going on here, but I am flagging this because one of the two main guys responsible for the Cambridge Analytica scandal worked at Facebook, and now no longer works at Facebook, and we have no word from Facebook about what any of that means. And I just kind of find that odd. All right, guys, let's do this. Today in Elon Musk, as I'm sure you've heard, he went on Joe Rogan's podcast last night.

Starting point is 00:11:02 I'm actually only about 53 minutes into listening to it because I had to do this all day. So what everyone has been freaking out about, of course, is that Elon appears to smoke a blunt if you watch the YouTube video of the thing. Although that's the sort of part of being a quasi-journalist that I hate. No, I saw the video. He smokes weed. I can see it. And that's what's freaking everybody out. I mean, literally, if you've been watching CNBC all day, they've just been trotting person after person

Starting point is 00:11:32 on to clutch their pearls and wonder how the CEO of a publicly traded company can do something like this. Which is to me, like, you know, whatever's. The interview itself, while it's super interesting to say the least, even without the weed part. Let me just pull some highlights.

Starting point is 00:11:50 Musk and Rogan discuss the singularity and living in a simulation. As I said, I expected that. I love the Joe Rogan podcast for noodling into things like that. Musk says he had plans for an electric plane. He says he tried to get governments to regulate AI, but, quote, nobody listened. He says that he's fatalistic about runaway AI and what it'll do to our society. What's it like inside Elon Musk's head, quote, a never-ending explosion, end quote. On running a car company, which he says is his hardest job,

Starting point is 00:12:24 quote, it's very difficult to keep a car company alive, end quote. He says his company, neuralink will have, quote, something interesting, end quote, to announce in relation to merging human brains and machines that is, quote, an order of magnitude beyond what people think is possible sometime in the next few months of the boring company. Quote, maybe it will be successful, maybe it won't. Elon says he's not a regular smoker of marijuana because he, quote, doesn't find it's very good for productivity. It's like a cup of coffee in reverse, end quote.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Now, as I said, people have been freaking out about this all day long. Tesla's stock was down as much as 10% in early trading. It's down only 6% at the time of this recording. Literally, the headline on MarketWatch right now is Elon Musk's high and Tesla's low. Stock and bonds tumble on CEO's latest shenanigans, end quote. Now, maybe that's true. Maybe stockholders don't like Elon getting high online on air. it could be that or it could be the news that both Tesla chief accounting officer Dave Morton and Gabrielle Tolano, the head of human resources, were leaving Tesla.

Starting point is 00:13:39 Tolano had already been on a leave of absence, but accounting officer Morton had only been on the job one month. In a statement, Morton said he was leaving Tesla because, quote, the level of public attention placed on the company as well as the pace within the company have exceeded my expectations, end quote. So I guess maybe this is all related. News of both departures from the company came after the Rogan podcast interview popped. See, guys, podcasting is a powerful medium. But in this instance, I wish I was doing a blog, not a podcast right now, because I just end this piece by posting an animated jiff of Elon puffing on that blunt. So just imagine that in your head right now.

Starting point is 00:14:20 This is Elon Musk's world, my friends, or maybe his simulation. We're just all living in it. Now it's time for the weekend long reads this week, brought to you by Betterment's Resource Center. The Resource Center has great articles about the future of the gig economy, how to think about retirement, what goes into saving for your kids' education, buying a house, and much, much more. Check it out at betterment.com slash resources. First up, speaking of podcast, a podcast recommendation. As you know, it was Google's 20th birthday this week. So at the Internet History Podcast, my other pod, I cobbled to you.

Starting point is 00:14:59 together a special episode of all my history of Google episodes. So after you get done listening to that three hours of Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, maybe check out the latest episode of the Internet History Podcast for the history of Google. Also, it's a great preview of some of the Google material in my book that comes out next month, how the Internet happened, available for pre-order wherever fine books are sold. But let's talk some more about tech executives. The information has a lengthy profile up of, of Apple's Eddie Q.

Starting point is 00:15:31 Q oversees a grab bag of internet services at Apple, Apple Maps, Siri, Apple Books, and clearly the push into whatever it's going to do in the streaming video space is under his purview. The information spoke with more than two dozen sources to profile Mr. Q. Quote, Mr. Q is described as a leader of intelligence and empathy with a loyal following at Apple. But others who have worked with him say he seems overextended and, at important moments, has failed to intercede in conflict. Apple tries to do too much with too few people, said one former Apple executive, that sometimes backfires.

Starting point is 00:16:09 Eddie is the best example of that at Apple. He's always doing too many things, end quote. Forbes has a lengthy interview and profile with Jeff Bezos, that I believe is the cover story of their most recent issue of the magazine. If it's not, I can't imagine why not. They do touch a bit on the push into advertising that we've been discussing so much recently. but they also talk about the search for headquarters too, the joint venture he's doing with Warren Buffett in healthcare,

Starting point is 00:16:33 the experiments with physical stores and even stores without checkout lines. Very interesting, touching base with his recent thinking. So I'm sure you've heard the stories like I have of tech billionaires planning on using New Zealand as their escape hatch if Doomsday comes and we're all hoarding canned food and going to our bunkers. Bloomberg has a piece taking a look at this phenomenon. How real is it? Is it all just talk? Is it actually feasible? The billionaires buying real estate in New Zealand is real, or at least it was, until the government cracked down on that recently. This is a quote from former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key from the piece. Quote, we live in a world where some people have extraordinary amounts of wealth, and there comes a point at which, when you have so much money, allocating a very tiny amount of that for Plan B is not as crazy as it sounds, end quote. This one might be a bit of inside baseball for some of you, maybe even most of you,

Starting point is 00:17:33 but I think we talked briefly about how social capital, that influential VC firm run by former Facebook CEO, Chimath Palihabitia, has basically imploded with a whole slew of personnel departures and the whole firm imploding. But if you want to get the gossipy behind the scenes, check out the piece from Dan Primak in Axios. You also might have heard that the... latest version of Android. Android Pi has adaptive battery and brightness controls that are managed

Starting point is 00:18:03 on the phones themselves by some pretty sophisticated onboard AI. Venture Beat has a pretty deep dive into how that AI actually works and how it was developed, so definitely worth reading for you technically minded out there. Finally today, I don't know, I guess I just love stories about people trying to hack lotteries. So from The Hustle, the amazing story of a rogue Romanian economist who legally gamed lotteries winning 14 times around the world and netting millions of dollars. If you ever

Starting point is 00:18:35 thought to yourself, what if I just bought every possible lottery combination? Is there some way I could actually come out ahead? What if I bought 10% or 70% etc? Could I play the odds in a way that the payout was big enough? Well, this

Starting point is 00:18:51 is that story, played out in real life. That's been the weekend long reads, brought to you by Betterment? Who needs lotteries when you have Betterment? Investment involves risk, but TechMeme Ride Home listeners can get up to one year of investment money managed free. For more information, visit betterment.com slash ride. That's betterment.com slash ride. Betterment. Outsmart average. That's all for today. I feel like it was just yesterday. I was urging you guys to enjoy one of the first weekends of summer. And now, I guess, this is probably your last chance to enjoy a decent

Starting point is 00:19:34 weekend of summer for this year. For me, autumn can't get here soon enough, but if you do have the means and the inclination and weather permitting, go get you some outside time this weekend. And I'll talk to you all again on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 09/07 - Today in Elon, the 4:20 Edition

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