Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 12/07 – SBF Tried To Give Taylor Swift $100M? (She Said No)

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

In an attempt to keep their acquisition of Activision… active, Microsoft wants to bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo Switch. That time SBF tried to give Taylor Swift $100M. She said no, apparently. You don’t have to give Telegram your phone number anymore. Mark Gurman rumor dump about the scaled back ambitions of the Apple Car. And yes. ChatGPT probably has Google over the classic innovator’s dilemma barrel. Sponsors: InternetSociety.org/techmeme Storyblok.com/ridehome Links: Microsoft says it will bring Call of Duty to Nintendo (Washington Post) FTX held talks with Taylor Swift over $100mn sponsorship deal (FT) Tim Cook says Apple will use chips built in the U.S. at Arizona factory (CNBC) Telegram drops SIM requirement for sign-ups, adds Global Auto-Delete timers (9to5Google) SpaceX unveils ‘Starshield,’ a military variation of Starlink satellites (CNBC) Twitter’s Rivals Try to Capitalize on Musk-Induced Chaos (NYTimes) Apple Scales Back Self-Driving Car and Delays Debut Until 2026 (Bloomberg) Google Faces a Serious Threat From ChatGPT (Bloomberg) 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 TechMeme right home for Wednesday, December 7th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. In an attempt to keep their acquisition of Activision active, Microsoft wants to bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo Switch. That time, SBF tried to give Taylor Swift $100 million. She said no, apparently. You don't have to give Telegram your phone number anymore. Mark German rumored dump about the scaled-back ambitions of the Apple car. And yes, chat GPT probably has Google over the classic innovator's Dilemma Barrel. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Still pushing to assure everyone, this merger is a good thing. Microsoft has reportedly agreed to a 10-year deal to bring call

of duty to the Nintendo Switch for the first time ever, contingent, of course, on the FTC approving its Activision merger, quoting the Washington Post. The deal guarantees that Microsoft, which is awaiting federal approval of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion would make available the popular first-person shooter series on Nintendo Switch for the first time in 10 years. It also announced a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on the PC game store Steam. The deal does not specify the first year a Call of Duty title would be available on the Nintendo Switch. A future call of duty title would likely be the first to arrive on the Switch, though Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told the Washington Post in an interview that the entire portfolio

would need to be examined to see which games would be brought over to the Switch. There's no set date for when Call of Duty would first arrive on the platform. Activision Blizzard has been made aware of the agreement, and Spencer said they were in a planning phase. Spencer pointed to Microsoft-owned titles like Minecraft making their way to the switch as examples of how the company has experienced bringing games to different platforms. We would do this with Minecraft as well, where we would do specific work to make the game run well on Nintendo Switch and their Silicon and support their platform. platform completely, Spencer said. We do the same thing when we ship on PlayStation 5, end quote.

When asked if the switch had enough technical specifications to run Call of Duty smoothly, Spencer said, quote, Minecraft and Call of Duty are different games. But from how you get games onto Nintendo, how you run a development team that is targeting multiple platforms, that's experience we have, end quote. The Financial Times says that FTX had at some point reached the late stages of talks with Taylor Swift over a $100 million sponsorship deal. This was all supported internally by Swift superfan Sam Bankman-Fried, although the deal reportedly faced opposition from other FTX execs. Quote, the discussions included a ticketing arrangement with digital certificates known as non-fungible tokens

from the record-breaking anti-hero singer-songwriter, according to people familiar with the matter. FTC's talks with Swift and the nine-figure sum being negotiated underscore the ambition and reach of the crypto group's drive for celebrity partnerships before it fell into bankruptcy last month. FtX had struck deals with U.S. football star Tom Brady and supermodel Jusel Bunchin, as well as tennis star Naomi Osaka and basketball player Shaquille O'Neal and Steph Curry. People with knowledge of the talk said the process also highlighted FtX's unorthodox internal decision-making and clashes between Bankman Fried's inner circle and more experienced executives brought in from outside. 30-year-old Bankman Fried initially third.

favored the deal in part because he's a fan of Taitay, what employees said using Swiss nickname. Claire Wanatabi, a senior executive in FTX's business development team, was seen by former employees as a driving force behind the pursuit of Swift and was also a fan of her music. Wanatabi could not be reached for comment. Those pushing to scrap the talks, which began last autumn and ended the spring, employees said, thought the partnership with Swift was too expensive and questioned whether previous celebrity deals were delivering value for money. Another former employee said FTX had sought a light degree of endorsement from Swift on social media. A person close to the discussions said Swift never contemplated agreeing to endorse the exchange. Taylor would not and did not agree to an endorsement deal. The discussion was around a potential tour sponsorship that did not happen. The person said, end quote. By the way, at that grand opening event for that Arizona chip fab yesterday, Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA all indicated plans to buy chips from TSM's future Arizona fabs. remember expected to open in 2024 and 2026, quoting CNBC.

Today is only the beginning, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, Today we're combining TSM's expertise with the unrivaled ingenuity of American workers. We are investing in a stronger, brighter future, we are planting our seed in the Arizona desert, and at Apple, we are proud to help nurture its growth. Apple had to buy all the advanced chips from overseas. Now they're going to bring more of their supply chain home, President Joe Biden said, it could be a game changer. Cook tweeted on Tuesday that Apple would be the site's largest customer. The TSM plants will produce 600,000 wafers per year when fully operational, which is enough to meet

U.S. annual demand, according to the National Economic Council. The U.S. plants will be a small fraction of TSM's total capacity, though, which produced 12 million wafers in 2020. AMD CEO, Lisa Sue, said in remarks on Tuesday that AMD plans to be a significant user of the TSM, the Arizona Fabs. American Chip Company Intel has also said it wants to compete for Apple's business and is building chip factories in Arizona and Ohio, which are expected to be potentially subsidized by the Chips Act, end quote. You don't need a phone number to sign up to Telegram anymore. Well, you do, you just don't need yours. That's because they've partnered with Fragment to let users create an anonymous number to join the service, removing the need for

a SIM card and expanding security features overall. Quoting 9 to 5 Google, Not every device out there utilizes a SIM card, therefore restricting sign-ups to devices that had a SIM card or ESIM installed always felt a little exclusive. Today, Telegram announced a drop in that restriction, opening up signups to anyone, even those without a phone number. Since the process still needs verification, Telegram has teamed up with Fragment. Fragment will allow the users to create an anonymous number to sign into Telegram with. That number is private and exclusive to you, much like a SIM card would be. With that, Telegram is bringing along some experienced security features. One that may be familiar is the auto-delete timer for certain chats. Now the messaging app is adding the option to set a global auto-delete timer, which wipes all chats after a certain period of time. Once the timer is set, all new chats will have a countdown specified by you. Users also have the option to include older chats in that auto-delete timer as well. For those who frequent large group chats, Telegram is updating a couple of features within large messaging threads. The first is a new Topics 2.0 upgrade, which sorts group topics into multiple threads, giving the large chat

the feel of a forum rather than an unorganized cacophony of messages. The second feature for group settings is a new aggressive anti-spam filter. Rather than relying on third-party options to block and report spam, Telegram's new aggressive algorithm is able to take care of more spam messages to protect users in group chats of over 200 members that have signed up. Admins have the ability to report false positives, as may often be the case with a more forceful tactic, end quote. SpaceX has announced Star Shield, expanding Starlink to the military and other government applications, initially focusing on imagery, communications, and hosted payloads, quoting CNBC. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Star Shield is designed for government

use, the company wrote on its website. A few details are available about the intended scope and capabilities of Star Shield. The company hasn't previously announced tests or work on Starshield technology. On its website, SpaceX said the system will have an initial focus on three areas. Imagery, communications, and hosted payloads, the third of which effectively offers government customers the company's satellite bus, the body of the spacecraft as a flexible platform. The company also markets Starshield as the center of an end-to-end offering for national security. SpaceX would build everything from the ground antennas to the satellites, launch the ladder with its rockets, and operate the network

in space. SpaceX notes that Starshield uses, quote, additional high assurance, cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, building upon the data encryption it uses with its Starlink system. Another feature, the inner satellite laser communications links, which the company currently has connecting its Starlink spacecraft. It notes that the terminals can be added to partner satellites, so as to connect other companies' government systems into the Starshield Network, end quote. Really, you'd only be surprised if they didn't.

think about doing this. Sources say, seeking to capitalize on the chaos over at Twitter, META has discussed several product ideas, including expanding Instagram notes or building a text-focused app that would maybe clone a bit of Twitter, quoting the New York Times. Among the ideas, META's workers talked over was a more extensive rollout of a feature called Instagram Notes, where people can share short messages on the photo-sharing site with their followers and friends, according to posts of the conversation that were viewed by the New York

Times. Others said meta should build a text-focused app using Instagram's technology or add another feed to Instagram. They floated names for the features such as real-time, real reels, and instant. Twitter is in crisis and meta needs its mojo back, one meta employee wrote in a post, let's go for their bread and butter, end quote. No word on how far these conversations have actually gotten. Once more, the whole Apple Car project continues to be a Schrodinger's cat situation. Mark German is back with new rumors saying Apple has rained. in its ambitious self-driving plans for its electric vehicle, delayed by the way to 2026 now, according to Mark, and also now including a steering wheel, also pedals and highway-only autonomy,

which longtime listeners of the show will remember. That's all I've been asking for from day one, quoting Bloomberg. The car project dubbed Titan inside the company has been in limbo for the past several months as Apple executives grappled with the reality that its vision for a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals isn't feasible with current technology. In a significant shift for the project, the company is now planning a less ambitious design that will include a steering wheel and pedals and only support full autonomous capabilities on highways, said the people who ask not to be identified because the information is private. Apple currently plans to develop a vehicle that lets drivers conduct other tasks,

say watching a movie or playing a game, on a freeway, and be alerted with ample time to switch over to manual control if they reach city streets or encounter inclement weather. The company has discussed launching the feature in North America initially and then improving and expanding it over time. Apple's previous vision for the car was to offer level five autonomy, the pinnacle of self-driving technology which no automaker has attained. The current plan is considered below that because of its more limited scope. It's the latest strategy shift for the Apple car team, which has faced turnover in its executive ranks ever since its inception a decade ago. Current leader Kevin Lynch has aimed to

bring more stability and a focus on practical goals after years of priority changes and some layoffs. Lynch, who is also in charge of the Apple Watch operating system and health software, took over at the end of 2021. He initially instructed the team working on the car known as Special Projects Group to focus on a fully autonomous vehicle for a debut by 2025. Now he's dialing back those expectations, but with the goal of ensuring that a product actually reaches the market. The heart of Apple's technology is a powerful onboard computer system codenamed Denali, after the tallest mountain peak in North America, and a custom array of sensors. The processor's performance is equal to about four of Apple's high-end Mac chips

combined and is being developed by the company's Silicon Engineering Group. The chip has reached an advanced state and is considered nearly production-ready, though Apple may scale it down before the car's launch to lower costs. Having an onboard computer to handle automated tasks is similar to an approach used by other carmakers, including Tesla. Apple, however, plans to differ from Tesla by using a combination of LiDAR and radar sensors along with cameras. The setup helps the car determine its location, see driving lanes, and assess how far it is from other objects and people. Tesla relies on cameras while Waymo and others use a combination. In addition to the onboard hardware, the system has a cloud-based component for some artificial intelligence processing. Apple is relying

on Amazon Web Services for hosting, costing, costing the iPhone maker about $125 million per year. But that's just a sliver of the roughly $1 billion. The company is spending on the car project annually. Apple is exploring the idea of a remote command center to assist drivers and control cars from afar during emergencies. The company is also discussing offering its own insurance program to customers. Apple had expected each car to sell for more than $120,000, but the company is now aiming to offer the vehicle to consumers for less than $100,000, according to the people. That would put it in roughly the same price range as the entry-level version of the Model S from Tesla and the EQS from Mercedes-Benz. Apple hasn't yet settled

on a design for its car and the vehicle is considered to be in the pre-prototype stage. The company is aiming to ready the design by next year and have the features set by the end of 2024. It then plans to put the car through extensive testing in 2025. Apple had previously discussed launching a car that looks similar to Cano's lifestyle vehicle. The idea was to have a limousine-like interior where passengers could face each other. Now the plan is to produce something more like a traditional car with a driver's seat. The company has held discussions with a number of suppliers about obtaining an electric vehicle platform known in the industry as a skateboard, but it's still seeking a partner. Apple earlier talked to several

companies about licensing their platforms, but the only serious negotiations occurred with Volkswagen several years ago, end quote. Finally, today in Bloomberg, Parmy Olson makes the point that I made just yesterday. ChatGPT presents a potential serious threat to Google by offering quick, comprehensive answers to difficult questions that require no further searches. Quote, I went through my own Google search history over the past month and put 18 of my Google queries into Chat GPT, cataloging the answers. I then went back and ran the queries through Google once more to refresh my memory. The end result was, in my judgment, that Chat GPT's answer was more useful than Google's in 13 out of the 18 examples. That underscores Chat GPT's prime threat to Google down the line.

It gives a single immediate response that requires no further scanning of other websites. In Silicon Valley Speak, that is a frictionless experience. something of a holy grail when online consumers overwhelmingly favor services that are quick and easy to use. Google does have its own version of summarized answers to some queries, but they are compilations of the highest-ranked web page and typically brief. It also has its own proprietary language model called Lambda, which is so good that one of the company's engineers thought the system was sentient. So why doesn't Google generate its own singular answers to queries like chat GPT? Because anything that prevents people from scanning search results is going to hurt Google's transactional business model of getting people to click on ads.

Some 81% of Alphabet's $257.6 billion in revenue in 2021 came from advertising, much of that being Google's pay-per-click ads, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It's all designed with the purpose of, let's get you to click on a link, says Sridhar Ramosami, who oversaw Google's ads and commerce business between 2013 and 2018, and who says that generative search from systems like chat GPT will disrupt Google's traditional search business, quote, in a massive way. It's just a better experience, he added. The goal of Google search is to get you to click on links, ideally ads, and all other text on the page is just filler. Ramoswami co-founded a subscription-based search engine called Niva in 2019, which is planning to

roll out its own generative search feature that can summarize web pages with footnotes in the coming months, end quote. Google's business model is in trouble, but how much do you kill the golden goose to keep the goose alive or something? It's the textbook iteration of the innovator's dilemma, isn't it? Yesterday, the show was two hours late, simply because I forgot to, you know, press the publish button. Today, the show is running about an hour behind schedule, but not because I spent an hour this morning playing the new Mario Kart courses.

No, of course I didn't do that. Why would you say that? Why would you even accuse me of doing that? Talk to you tomorrow.