Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 12/15 – This Again?

Starting point is 00:00:04 Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, December 15th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. I'll get into that whole Twitter banning private jet tracking accounts thing, but use that to explain how. And even if we're going to cover this whole Elon Twitter story going forward, is Mobile Gaming. The latest domino to fall in this year of Line also goes down. A new consortium hopes to make mapping data better. And let me introduce you to the battery belt, every bit as important as the whole onshoreing the chip industry trend. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So there was this account on Twitter called At Elon Jet that auto-tweeted the trips Elon Musk's private jet made.

Starting point is 00:00:48 It wasn't sourcing this stuff itself. It was basically reposting publicly available flight data. At one point, Elon said even if he took over Twitter, he wouldn't ban that account. But then it was banned, and then it wasn't banned. And now it's banned again, looks like for good, along with 30 other accounts. that share private jet locations. Quoting Bloomberg. Early Wednesday morning in New York, the at-Elon Jet page showed a message that read account suspended because it violated the platform's rules. The account had been operated since

Starting point is 00:01:19 2020 by Jack Sweeney, who also ran other Twitter accounts that tracked the private jets of Mark Zuckerberg and other celebrities. By the afternoon, Twitter updated its policies to bar accounts from sharing someone else's current location information, though tweeting about, quote, historical not same-day locations would be allowed. The at-Elon Jet account reappeared and began tweeting, but then was suspended again. Musk said in a tweet that legal action was being taken against Sweeney and the, quote, organizations who supported harm to my family, end quote. There have subsequently been tweets from Elon about an alleged stalker approaching his car yesterday in Los Angeles, and Elon even posted a video of an alleged stalker.

Starting point is 00:02:05 Hard to see if these events are related, but as of this point, Twitter has officially updated its private information and media policy with new rules, including suspending accounts, quote, dedicated to sharing someone else's live location, end quote. Quoting the New York Times, Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast said he woke up on Wednesday to find that his automated Twitter account Elon Jet had been suspended. In recent months, the account amassed more than 500,000 followers by using public flight information and data to post the whereabouts of Mr. Musk's private plane. Twitter later reinstated the at-Elonjet account before suspending it again. Mr. Sweeney's

Starting point is 00:02:41 personal Twitter account was also suspended on Wednesday, along with the other accounts that he runs that track the planes of tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates. Mr. Sweeney shared a message that he had received from Twitter, which said his account had been suspended for violating rules, quote, against platform manipulations and spam, end quote. In an interview, Mr. Sweeney said that he had not changed how the plane tracking accounts behave and was given no specific reason that they had been suspended. He's doing the exact opposite of what he said, he said of Mr. Musk, adding that the suspensions felt arbitrary given that the accounts had existed for months, end quote. Quoting Sam Biddle on Twitter. The new Twitter rule update on live

Starting point is 00:03:20 location sharing is vague to the point of incoherent, but it gives Musk latitude to basically interpret it however he wants going forward, which is certainly the point. What is the a political event? What is a public engagement? What exactly makes location data historical? Who knows? But I'm sure they'll be defined transparently and rationally going forward. What if a political event is taking place in private? What if I tweet a real-time photo of non-public figures in public, thus revealing their live locations? It's enough to make you think this wasn't really thought out in advance, end quote. So look, I almost called Chris Messina up last night to have almost a therapy session, about to what degree and even if to cover all of this stuff. I almost feel like

Starting point is 00:04:05 I'm the child of an alcoholic parent at this point. Sometimes Papa comes home drunk and he wants to sing Irish drinking songs and it's fun, but sometimes Papa comes home drunk and he smashes up the furniture. I'm tired of the whole thing, tired of this whole story, and maybe the healthiest thing to do would be to just ignore it. But also, I'm stuck in the house with him, so it's unclear what to do. I already have been ignoring half of the Twitter stories this week, or else it would be all Twitter news all the time, like I ignored the whole Twitter files thing and the whole getting booed at the Dave Chappelle show and allegedly having videos of the booing taken down from Twitter thing this weekend for obvious reasons. I guess my editorial guidelines going forward are, is there

Starting point is 00:04:49 news that would affect user experience on Twitter, or is there news that has material impact on Twitter as a business, then that I cover. But I can't cover every change of Elon's mind, every individual beef he gets into, every political angle, every attempt to be Twitter's main character of the day. I guess what I'm saying is a story like this one, the Elon Jet story, it might be the last time I cover something like this on this show. So going forward, if you see me skip some facet of this ongoing Twitter drama, it's because I had to have some sort of boundaries for my sanity and yours. This show is supposed to be about the tech industry. It's not supposed to be a daily recap of the whims of Elon Musk just because he bought one of the biggest

Starting point is 00:05:31 companies in that industry. I signed up to this job to tell you what happened in the world of tech, not to be a stenographer to the daily back and forth of Waves, hand, whatever all this is. Interesting, though, that that flood of headlines happened the same day as this. According to filings, Elon Musk sold 22 million Tesla shares worth around $3.6 billion over the last few days. The fourth sale of shares since Elon announced his Twitter takeover and the third since he declared, quote, no further Tesla sales, quoting the Financial Times. The sale comes as investors displayed frustration over Tesla's future under the stewardship of what some consider to be a highly distracted chief executive. Tesla's share prices down 61% since the start of the year, underperforming

Starting point is 00:06:25 rival car groups such as Ford or General Motors. Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO, wrote Leo Kugan, a major Tesla shareholder on Twitter. Are we merely Elon's foolish bagholders, he added in another post? An executioner, Tim Cook-like, is needed, not Elon, end quote. Musk appeared to try to address concerns on Twitter, writing on Tuesday, quote, I will make sure Tesla shareholders benefit from Twitter long term, end quote. The falling Tesla share price has been severe enough to see Musk lose his coveted position as the world's richest man, falling to the number two spot behind luxury magnate Bernard Arnalt, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index ranking, end quote. Indeed, Tesla's around 60% market cap drop this year puts it on pace for its worst year on record,

Starting point is 00:07:12 despite the fact that all the sales numbers for Tesla have been record-breakingly good, continue to be so. Tesla has lost more than $500 billion in market cap over these last few months, and since Tesla is obviously one of the biggest tech companies in the world, the degree to which this whole Twitter mess impacts that, that's what's worth covering. Helen Kennedy joked on Twitter, quote, tomorrow. Twitter safety announces banning of all accounts reporting on Musk stock sales because they might lead to mockery, end quote. But is that a joke, Helen?

Starting point is 00:07:43 Is it? The other story that we seemingly can escape is the back and forth of all the crypto blowups, especially the FTX stuff. and again, I try to exercise some editorial restraint on that stuff as well. But I thought that this was worth noting. For all of the SBF headlines these past weeks, according to Chainalysis, who analyzed weekly realized gains and losses of all personal crypto wallets in 2022, the FTX blowup isn't actually the biggest, quoting Chainalysis.

Starting point is 00:08:19 The data suggests that FTX's demise hasn't been investors' biggest issue this year, both the depegging of Terra's UST token and the collapse a few weeks later of Celsius and Three Arrow's capital drove much bigger realized losses for investors, $20.5 billion in losses in the case of UST and a whopping $33 billion in the case of Celsius and 3AC versus just $9 billion for FTX. These charts don't take everything into account. For instance, people who used FTCS likely lost any funds they kept on the exchange and the likelihood of recovering them is unknown. But from a market-wide point of view, the data above suggests that as of now, the heaviest hitting crypto events of 2022 were already behind investors by the time the FTX debacle took place, end quote. Remember that narrative that I spoke about at the beginning of last weekend's bonus episode, the one about how this year we all relearned the fact that line can also go down.

Starting point is 00:09:19 I'm going to just quote the lead of this Axios piece without any other preamble. quote. 2020 will go down as the worst year for U.S. IPO since 1990. For context, 1990 is when Germany was reunified. Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for a worldwide web, and Kevin McAllister first defeated the wet bandits. By the numbers, 74 companies have raised just $8 billion via U.S. IPOs thus far in 2022 per refinative, with virtually nothing left on the upcoming calendar. Proceeds are down a whopping 95% from last year and at least 50% lower than any of the past 31 years. The U.S. IPO number is down 88% from 2021 and the smallest since 2009. The global picture is a bit stronger with proceeds at their lowest mark only since 2016. Same goes for global VC-backed

Starting point is 00:10:09 IPOs per pitchbook, while global PE backed IPOs are at a decade-long low, end quote. And unfortunately, it looks like we have another sector to point to in regards to line go down. What has been one of the biggest trends in gaming over the last decade? arguably the trend that has transformed the gaming industry more than any other. It's mobile gaming. Mobile gaming changed the economics of the industry as well as the behavior of gamers themselves. But NetZoo is predicting that mobile games revenue will fall 6.4% to $92.92. $92.92. The first drop in a decade compared to 7.3% growth in 2021 and 25.6% growth in 2020. So again, another decade-long trend in tech falling victim to,

Starting point is 00:10:54 a vibe shift this year. Quoting the Financial Times. Mobile games have been around since Nokia's snake in the late 1990s, but the arrival of Apple's App Store in 2008 kick-started more than a decade of extraordinary growth, turning them into a $100 billion market that now accounts for half of the gaming industry's overall revenues. Another research group Ampera analysis last month downgraded its forecast for the year to a 6.4% decline, or $6 billion less than 2021, driven by weakness in the U.S., China and Japan, the world's biggest gaming markets. Ampeer called it a wake-up call for the industry. Some of the world's top mobile games have seen their income from in-app purchases of extra lives, virtual outfits, or in-game currencies fall by as much as 15 to 20 percent, according to three

Starting point is 00:11:38 senior industry insiders. This comes as the entire games industry has faced a slowdown this year, following a surge in demand and profits during the pandemic alongside supply chain issues that have also held back sales of the latest PlayStation 5 console. While video games have proven resilient, during previous recessions, this downturn is the first in which free-to-play mobile games are the dominant source of income for the industry. It has left some executives questioning whether cash-strapped consumers will keep investing in a favorite title when there are so many free games available. This is an affordable form of entertainment, said Sonor Ademir, co-founder and chief executive of Dream Games, whose Royal Match app has been one of the few new hits this year. Players typically

Starting point is 00:12:18 spend about 40 to 50 minutes on Royal Match each day. It's like a TV series, he said. end quote. The gaming downturn has already hit the wider digital economy. Gaming has become one of the largest sources of revenue for digital advertising platforms and mobile app stores, accounting for tens of billions of dollars worth of marketing spend and sales commissions. Facebook's parent meta, Apple and Google pointed to the slowdown in gaming as a drag on their most recent quarterly results when several big tech companies disappointed Wall Street, end quote. Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and the Linux Foundation have all teamed up to launch the Overture Maps Foundation, aiming to build interoperable open source mapping data.

Starting point is 00:13:05 Quoting Venture Beat. The sourcing and curating of up-to-date high-quality, fine-grained map data from often disparate sources is expensive, difficult, and time-consuming. Data can be inconsistent, vulnerable to errors, and based on unique conventions and vocabularies, thus making it difficult to combine. And often, existing open-map data lacks the strong foundation on which new products and services can be built. to help usher in the next era of map building, particularly with the dawn of the

Starting point is 00:13:31 metaverse, the rise of augmented reality and mixed reality, and the many other platforms the world's not yet conceived. The Linux Foundation today announced the formation of the Overture Maps Foundation, founded by Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom, the effort will develop interoperable map data on an open source methodology. It will be open to all communities with a common interest in building open map data and strengthening mapping services worldwide. The Overture Maps Foundation's goal is to create reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open-map data, according to the Linux Foundation. Members will combine resources to build data that is complete, accurate, and refreshed as the physical world changes.

Starting point is 00:14:10 The project aims to complement existing open geospatial data and integrate with existing open map data from projects such as Open Street Map and city planning departments, along with new map data contributed by members and built using computer vision and AIML technology. and quote. Finally today, something I wasn't aware of, but I want to put on your radar, forget the Rust Belt or the Steel Belt or the Sun Belt. Say hello to the battery belt. You think all the money the government is putting into domestic silicon production, into building new chip factories is a big deal. Actually, the new battery factories that have been announced lately are even bigger than that. Quoting Axios,

Starting point is 00:14:55 battery company Redwood Materials is investing $3.5 billion. in a gigantic new South Carolina recycling and manufacturing campus that will produce enough components to power a million electric vehicles, Joanne Mueller reports. It's the latest in a wave of huge investments across America's emerging battery belt, spurred on by new government policies and tax credits designed to promote development of a domestic EV supply chain. At least 21 U.S. battery gigafactories worth $54.3 billion overall have been announced since the beginning of 2021, according to Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Reefi. research. Domestic capacity is expected to grow more than five-fold from 2021 to

Starting point is 00:15:34 26 projects benchmark mineral intelligence, a battery research firm. The federal government has put together a pretty clear set of pretty substantial incentives that guide the direction of this transition, and it's really benefiting the country right now. Redwood Materials CEO J.B. Straubel, a Tesla co-founder, tells Axios. Redwood's technology fills a particular gap in the battery supply chain. The company recycles and processes expensive anode and cathode materials now made almost exclusively in China. Redwood recycles, refines, and remanufactures battery materials with the goal of eventually creating a sustainable closed-loop supply chain. The company collects end-of-life batteries from EVs, as well as consumer electronics like phones and laptops, and breaks

Starting point is 00:16:15 them down to their basic metals, including nickel, copper, cobalt, and lithium. It then reprocesses those materials into new battery anodes and cathodes, EV's most critical and expensive components. If we recycle a battery in the U.S., it's the equivalent to basically mining that material in the U.S. We can do this faster than starting a new lithium-cobalt or nickel mine in the U.S., says Strobel. The bottom line, the more batteries produced or recycled in the U.S., the less geopolitical risk the country faces from relying on foreign supply chains, end quote. A bit more on the battery belt, though, quoting again, automakers and battery suppliers will be eligible for billions of dollars in federal loans and tax credits to offset costs and spur additional investments. The government

Starting point is 00:16:55 will provide a tax credit of $35 per kilowatt hour for each U.S. produced battery cell. That's 35% of today's average cost of producing a battery cell. Ford, for instance, could get a $3 billion tax break for the twin factories it's building in Kentucky, which will be able to produce 86 gigawatt hours worth of batteries annually. The IRS still has to figure out how exactly the credits will work. Over time, reshoring battery production should drive down the costs of EVs and lessen U.S. dependence on China. The optimist's view, By incentivizing a domestic EV component supply chain, the law will help reduce automakers' costs, and they'll pass those savings along to consumers in the form of cheaper electric cars.

Starting point is 00:17:35 In essence, the U.S. has shifted the incentives for EV adoption from consumers to manufacturers. Instead of making electrics cheaper for car buyers, the new law rewards carmakers for building EVs with U.S.-made batteries. Lawmakers are not, quote, just putting on new rules and saying good luck. They're putting tens of billions of dollars on the table to help automakers get there, said Joe Britton, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, end quote. Are we really doing this? Is the new Avatar movie really as good as everyone says? I can remember being completely blown away by the first Avatar, and then, like everyone else, I never thought about it again.

Starting point is 00:18:20 So we're just going to do that again. We'll all go see this. It'll make billions of dollars, and it will be absolutely amazing when we do it, but then we're never going to think about it again. I guess so. The reviews seem to be great. I'm on board. I'll take the kids. Maybe this weekend. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 12/15 – This Again?

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