Spyglass - Focus Up, Not Down

SpaceX performed the third test flight of their Starship spaceship this week and it was by far the most successful test yet. It wasn't perfect, but it's getting there. And it's going to get us back to the moon. And perhaps beyond. It all remains incredibly inspiring. It's like For All Mankind, but in real life.

And it just highlights the dichotomy between what Elon Musk is executing upon here versus the non-stop bullshit on the artist formerly known as Twitter. I don't know about you, but I truly wish he would just give up on that nonsense and focus all his efforts here. Actually I do know about you. I have yet to talk to a single person anywhere who doesn't wish he would just stop whatever he's trying to do with Twitter and just go back to being an inspirational entrepreneur. Honestly maybe even hand the reins over at Tesla as well now that its seemingly back in a challenging period. Not to mention the half dozen other things he has going on...

Perhaps Jeff Bezos will be a forcing function for focus here. True competition has a funny way of doing that. So say we all.

Briefly...

Reddit’s Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering – It truly is wild that Reddit will become a public company next week. It's one of the more interesting and circuitous startup backstories – it originally sold to Condé Nast 18 years ago before being spun back out. 16 years ago, I actually created one of the first Subreddits – true story (image below)! Sadly, it was long ago abandoned and subsequently banned as it was overrun with spam. Still, that forum in no small way got me deeper into the tech ecosystem and helped kick off my career. 👽

Stripe's 2023 Annual Letter – Always a good read, but there are a bunch of nuggets sprinkled into the 12 pages this year. Big numbers: $1 trillion in total payment volume – equivalent to roughly 1% of global GDP!! Interesting tidbits: "The average tenure of a company's inclusion in the S&P 500 index has been shrinking over the past few decades: it was 61 years in 1958 and now sits at 18 years." And just fun company-building stuff: comparing code deployments to infant food allergy tests. (Disclosure: I led GV's investment in Stripe.) 💳

Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday – Inventor Tim Berners-Lee pens an open later to mark the occasion, as he does every few years. This one strikes me as two times too pessimistic, and perhaps too in favor of more regulation (more on that below), but it's obviously worth the read/think about.

My Missives (Regulatory Edition)...

Strangulation or Regulation?

World’s first major act to regulate AI passed by European lawmakersThe European Union’s parliament on Wednesday approved the world’s first major set of regulatory ground rules to govern the mediatized artificial intelligence at the forefront of tech investment.CNBCKaren Gilchrist,Ruxandra Iordache Oh boy: The European Union’s

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

The EU seeks to regulate AI from the get-go -- what could go wrong?

For Whom the Tik Toks

TikTok Turns to Creators to Fight Possible Ban Dozens of popular figures on the app have traveled to Washington to urge lawmakers to oppose a bill that could result in the platform being blocked in the United States. NYT Sapna Maheshwari & Yiwen Lu Riddle me this: if you’re a Chinese-owned

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

TikTok absurdly defines propaganda in their quest to not be banned

The EU (Slightly) Punctures the App Store Wall

Apple Will Allow Users to Download Apps Directly ...from a developer’s website, in latest EU App Store rule change 9to5 Mac Chance Miller I think it’s pretty fair to say at this point that Apple has a sense of what the EU thought of their initial proposed changes to

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Apple keeps tweaking their policies in real-time, but in fairly disingenuous ways...

Apple’s “Oh Shit, We Fucked Up” Epic EU Moment

Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account, clearing path for Epic Games Store on iPhone - 9to5MacAfter a whirlwind of events, Epic Games says Apple has reinstated their App Store developer account. The move clears the…9to5MacZac Hall Well, someone got to Apple. Either it was the EU or, perhaps

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

...and the EU is watching all of this quite closely, obviously!

Apple’s Trump Card

Apple finds itself in a weird spot at the moment. They long ago relinquished their beloved underdog status but now they’re nearing the full transition to “big baddie” in the eyes of many. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and all

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Apple still has one card to play -- a big one. What if they pulled out of Europe?

Quoteable...

"You have to make a choice. Am I doing that? Because in the prequels, Ridley made the technology thousands of years more advanced than the technology of Alien, which is supposed to take place in those movies’ future. There’s something about that that doesn’t really compute for me. I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple Store technology is not available to me."

-- Noah Hawley, the showrunner on FX's new Alien series talking about the technological direction he's taking. I love the original Alien films (even David Fincher's 3rd one – maybe less so Resurrection). I love the prequels (the mythology still infects my mind). I suspect I'll love this too.

Some Thoughts On...

🎞️ Oppenheimer dominating the Oscars...

📺 Cable TV's quickening collapse...

🐦 Xitter's quickening collapse...

🎙️ A podcast about Inception (and Dune 2)...

🦁 Brave's iOS browser-picker boast...

🍋 Don Lemon not even lasting one episode on Xitter...

🥁 Spotify's predictable baiting of Apple...

Quickly...

• Not only is The Bear's third season coming back in June, but apparently a fourth season has already been greenlit as well, and is shooting concurrently. As a huge fan from the get-go, this is just fantastic news.
• The race to succeed Bob Iger at Disney – for real this time, well, presumably – may be down to four (internal) candidates: TV chief Dana Walden, ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro, theme-parks boss Josh D’Amaro, and film head Alan Bergman...
• Every headline notes that Gerald Levine was the architect of the disastrous AOL/Time Warner merger. True enough. But the man deserves a lot of other credit – including for basically inventing the concept of cable TV. RIP.
• I saw all the Cerveza Cristal memes going around, but had no idea the old ads could possibly be this awesome in reality.
• Hey look, Apple bought an AI company. What they actually do – visually inspecting components during the manufacturing process – will undoubtedly be interesting and helpful to Apple, but probably less useful than the expertise in building out AI use-cases and infrastructure as we prepare for an aiPhone...
  • For now, Larry David uses Siri just like the rest of us do...
• The Oscars are so back, with a 4-year ratings high, right? Well, sure, Oppenheimer (and Ken) helped, but things aren't rosy, historically...
  • While Oppenheimer ruled the Oscars, Netflix and Apple were almost completely shut out of awards, despite a huge amount of noms.
  • Still, could be worse, your screenplay (for the excellent Holdovers) could be accused of plagiarism...
• Anyway, when it comes to getting people excited about movies again, Super Mario Bros. 2 should help!
• Speaking of Hollywood, there's perhaps about to be a real problem with a glut of new sound stages, built out during the pandemic content boom. But remember, Tyler Perry is really just afraid of AI, nothing to see here...
  • DO NOT show him AI Marilyn Monroe
  • Also maybe don't tell him that this guy used AI to beat Joe Biden in the American Samoa primary
• The Black Crowes are back! 1990s me is quite happy about that.
• The Apple Car may be dead, but the love of cars within Apple is not – here's Tim Cook helping to promote a partnership with Porsche (for the Vision Pro)
• Speaking of cars, while the entire EV market seems awfully depressed at the moment, BMW seems to be doing quite well for itself...
• A monolith appears... on Wales

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