December 18, 2023: Michael's Interesting Reads of the Week
Here's this week's roundup of a few of the cool things I've read, listened to and tinkered with:
👀🎵She’s here. She’s there. She’s every f*ckingwhere, Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift.🎵 Can’t watch football without seeing her. Can’t go to ESPN or even the Weather Channel. Can’t drive my kids to school without her. And now she’s boosting economies wherever she goes (the Fed has noticed). Taylor is an absolute force, and it’s incredible to watch (though I just want to get through a football game without being on Taylor-watch).
👀🤬 Despicable. Harvard's board has doubled down on antisemitism, giving full support to Claudine Gay and her "it depends" answer as to whether calling for the genocide (systematic mass murder) of Jews is harassment. Nice to see that their history of systemic hostility towards Jews is alive and well. Oh, they also apparently don't care about plagiarism.
👀 🇺🇸🤑Andreesen Horowitz has formally entered politics, throwing their 💰 around. "We are non-partisan, one-issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them," writes Ben Horowitz.
👀 👩⚖️ 🏛️ Antitrust, antitrust, antitrust. Apple beats Epic. Google loses to Epic. Watching what happens to app stores from here will be very interesting and consequential. Ben Thompson has a quick roundup, though I expect we'll hear more from him soon.
👀 🍎Speaking of Apple, they're now worth $3 Trillion! No big deal.
👀 🧐 OpenAI is paying Politico's parent company to train on its content. So, are they going to pay for all publications? What about startups? Are they going to get sued? Is OpenAI deploying its considerable cash war chest as its moat as LLM become commoditized? Is their differentiation strategy to force less-funded competitors to spend their OPEX on content to train?
👀 🛰️🚀 Space, the final frontier. True Anomaly, founded by former US Space Force members, raised a fresh $100M to secure it ("it" being Space).
👀 🕵️ 🤖 The one and only Bruce Schneier: "We are about to enter the era of mass spying," due to AI, as AI moves to interpreting intentions vs simple observation. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-mass-spying.html
👀 🕵️ Speaking of spying, my love of spy novels and the COO role have unexpectedly crossed paths. Former Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek stole $2B from them. Oh, he's also a Russian spy. Worst COO ever.
👀 👩⚖️ Well, that's not nice. TikTok changed its terms of service to make it more difficult to sue. Don't worry, only the NYTimes (and I) noticed.
😂😂😂 Love Kathy Bates. Hate Elon. Idk how to feel if she plays him.
