Techmeme Ride Home – Details, episodes & analysis

We missed a pretty big story this weekend. X getting banned in Brazil. I’ll try to catch you up on all the contours of this. Canva’s raising prices and it’s pissing people off because, I mean, they are REALLY raising prices. And the two pretty big success stories in crypto this year that we haven’t spoken about yet.

Sponsors:

• DataTribe.com/challenge
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Links:

• Brazil’s Most Powerful Judge Is in the Spotlight—Again (Americas Quarterly)
• How Brazil’s Experiment Fighting Fake News Led to a Ban on X (NYTimes)
• Canva says its AI features are worth the 300 percent price increase (The Verge)
• HP to Pursue $4 Billion Damages After Mike Lynch Yacht Death (Bloomberg)
• Pump.fun surpasses $100 million in revenue as Polymarket outshines NFTs in August (The Block)

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At this point it would be quicker to name the big tech company that’s NOT investing in OpenAI’s latest round. Amazon’s new Alexa service is just going to be Anthropic’s Claude in drag disguise I guess. I’m starting to get really worried about Intel y’all. And, of course, The Weekend Longreads Suggestions.

Links:

• OpenAI Funding Round Tempts Nvidia as Big Tech Leans on ChatGPT (Bloomberg)
• Apple, Nvidia Are in Talks to Invest in OpenAI (WSJ)
• Ask Claude: Amazon turns to Anthropic's AI for Alexa revamp (Reuters)
• ChatGPT’s weekly users have doubled in less than a year (The Verge)
• Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split to Stem Losses (Bloomberg)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

• Sunk cost (the Open Sea story) (The Verge)
• The secret inside One Million Checkboxes (eieio.games)
• I Watched Footage of Jerry Lewis’s Unreleased 1972 Holocaust Film (The New Republic)
• End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell (AnandTech)

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New Raspberry Pi 5. Waymo’s rolling out its new self-driving tech. A major developer draws plaudits for going anti-AI. The tragic and odd story of that tech exec who is missing after his yacht sank. And after six months, how is the Apple Vision Pro evolving? What if it kind of isn’t?

Sponsors:

• TakeThesis.com code RIDE

Links:

• Raspberry Pi 5’s new 2GB model benchmarked: Do you need 2, 4 or 8GB? : We test against the 4 and 8GB versions (Tom's Hardware)
• Waymo is developing a roomier robotaxi with less-expensive tech (CNBC)
• Procreate’s anti-AI pledge attracts praise from digital creatives (The Verge)
• Search continues for British tech magnate and 5 others after luxury superyacht sinks off Sicily (AP)
• Apple Vision Pro review: six month stasis (Apple Insider)

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Google has fired 28 employees for political protests yesterday. A well-known coding school has been fined by the CFPB. Game emulators come to the iPhone. TikTok’s Instagram clone is rolling out. Has Sony perfecting Mini LED TVs? And the Atlas robot has been reborn in a new body!

Links:

• Google fires 28 employees after sit-in protest over Israel cloud contract (The Verge)
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines BloomTech for false claims (TechCrunch)
• Third-party iPhone app store AltStore PAL is now live in Europe (The Verge)
• TikTok Notes starts rolling out as a new rival to Instagram (The Verge)
• US Air Force confirms first successful AI dogfight (The Verge)
• Sony might have perfected Mini LED TVs with its new 2024 lineup (The Verge)
• Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot goes electric (TechCrunch)

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You can now use Bitcoin to buy a Tesla. You can now DM anyone on Slack. Intel is now doing what Ben Thompson has been telling them to do for years. What Medium is doing to journalists is dumb. What Verizon is doing with Yahoo+ is dumb. And is the Chief Impact Officer title a real role, or is it… dumb?

Sponsors:

• The Hello, User Podcast From Ping Identity
• BuyRaycon.com/tech for 15% off

Links:

• Elon Musk says people can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin (CNBC)
• WhatsApp for work: Slack is turning into a full-on messaging app (Protocol)
• Trading App Robinhood Says It Filed Confidentially for IPO (Bloomberg)
• Intel invests $20 billion into new factories, will produce chips for other companies (The Verge)
• Exclusive: Qualcomm is planning an Android-powered Nintendo Switch knockoff (Android Police)
• Medium Tells Journalists to Feel Free to Quit After Busting Union Drive (Motherboard)
• Verizon to center media arm around new subscription platform Yahoo+ (Axios)
• Amazon hires former executive Adam Selipsky to run AWS (CNBC)
• Prince Harry Is Taking on a New Job Title: Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp (WSJ)

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Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy Discord but Discord might just take itself public instead. A ton of video game news including an Xbox rebranding, a new Niantic partnership with Nintendo, and new rumors of that upgraded Nintendo switch. A new consortium wants to take the pain out of browser compatibility and Apple faces a class action lawsuit over the butterfly keyboards.

Links:

• Microsoft in Talks to Buy Discord for More Than $10 Billion (Bloomberg)
• Microsoft rebrands Xbox Live to Xbox network (The Verge)
• Pikmin is the next AR game from the makers of Pokémon Go (The Verge)
• Nintendo to Use New Nvidia Graphics Chip in 2021 Switch Upgrade (Bloomberg)
• Microsoft, Google, and others join forces to improve browser compatibility (Neowin)
• Facebook will bring back F8 on June 2 as a pared-back, single-day, virtual-only conference for developers (TechCrunch)
• Angry MacBook owners get class action status for butterfly keyboard suit (The Verge)
• Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold as an NFT for an oddly specific $2,915,835.47 (The Verge)

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Red hot app Dispo is losing some big name investors and the founder is leaving the startup’s board. As anticipated, Zoom goes platform. Microsoft is beginning a soft HQ reopening. The secret sensor found in the HomePod mini. And the smart startup that has cloned Amazon’s biggest competitive moats, to make them available to everybody.

Sponsors:

• Kiwico.com, promocode "ride" for 30 percent off!
• BuyRaycon.com/tech for 15% off

Links:

• David Dobrik, Losing Sponsors and Fans, Steps Down From App He Co-founded (NYTimes)
• Spark Capital decides to “sever all ties” with David Dobrik’s Dispo app weeks after leading deal (TechCrunch)
• Zoom introduces new SDK to help developers tap into video services (TechCrunch)
• Microsoft to start reopening headquarters on March 29th, with hybrid workplace focus (The Verge)
• Apple’s HomePod Mini Has a Secret Sensor Waiting to Be Switched On (BLoomberg)
• Inside the Democrats' strategy to bombard Big Tech (Axios)
• On-demand logistics and fulfillment startup Flowspace raises $31M (VentureBeat)

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Last weekend a listener to this show, Ti Zhang, (@zero_chill_tea) tagged me on twitter around a conversation they were having about NFTs and the degree to which, lots of folks in the art world are not so thrilled with the advent of NFTs. They said, sure, we see all the headlines around famous artists and celebrities and all the money being made. But was I aware that artists were seeing their work stolen and sold as NFTs? That artists were taking their work down from the internet to make sure it wasn’t scraped and used on a blockchain somewhere? I was not. They started sending articles and links, some of which I posted in the show notes and I was like, hey, instead of just educating me about the NFT thing from the artist perspective, come on the show real quick and educate us all. So, the first half of the show is that. Thank you Ti, for being such a great resource.

Then, after a break, the second half of the show will be just some of the Interesting Raises from the Interesting Raises episode that RideHome+ subscribers got this weekend. Less than half the content. If hearing these gives you a bit of FOMO, of course you can always sign up for the RideHome+ feed anytime, at tech.supercast.tech. As always, link to sign up for that feed is in the bottom of the show notes.

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It’s app platform product news day! Instagram is working on a version of the service suitable for kids. Twitter wants you to watch YouTube in-stream. Telegram is basically adding all the Clubhouse features I’ve been dreaming of. Was an anti-Apple rebel alliance born last night in a Clubhouse room? Why China is banning Tesla in some cases. And of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.

Sponsors:

• EditorX.com
• Molekule.com, code "techmeme" at checkout to save as much as $120!

Links:

• Facebook Is Building An Instagram For Kids Under The Age Of 13 (BuzzFeed News)
• Twitter begins testing a way to watch YouTube videos from the home timeline on iOS (TechCrunch)
• Telegram takes on Clubhouse with Voice Chat 2.0 (XDA Developers)
• Zuckerberg: Facebook may actually be in a ‘stronger position’ after Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes (CNBC)
• China to Restrict Tesla Use by Military and State Employees (WSJ)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

• The End of Silicon Valley as We Know It? (O'Reilly)
• Moore's Law for Everything (SamAltman.com)
• Empathetic Robots Are Killing Off the World’s Call-Center Industry (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Loans that hijack your phone are coming to India (Rest of World)
• How a social app you’ve never heard of became a haven for Gen Z (Protocol)

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It’s an Apple rumor Thursday from both the boys, Gurman and Kuo. Sony is taking what it’s learned from the DualSense controllers and bringing that to VR. YouTube rolls out its TikTok rival. Spotify wants you to know it gets artists paid. And I do my best to explain the whole creator economy controversy that has sprung up over at Substack.

Sponsors:

• Tovala.com/ride

Links:

• Apple Nears Launch of New iPads After Stay-At-Home Sales Boost (Bloomberg)
• PS5's VR 2.0: First Look At New Controllers (GameSpot)
• YouTube Shorts arrives in the US to take on TikTok, but the beta is still half-baked (The Verge)
• Spotify says over 13,000 artists’ catalogs earned at least $50K in royalties last year (The Verge)
• Here's why Substack's scam worked so well (The Hypothesis)
• Substack is for independent writers (Substack Blog)
• Crypto marketplace OpenSea raises $23 million to be the ‘Amazon of NFTs’ (Fortune)
• Intel puts Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac’ guy into new ads praising PCs (The Verge)

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