Down Round

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Fun times create happy people, happy people create lovely times, lovely times create fun people.

It's another loose, shot from the hip premium ep, folks. ChatGPT’s voice mode is finally here, while OpenAI itself s going through more weird palace intrigue for us to pick through. 

A digression into AI podcasts.

Meanwhile, all the VCs and founders are arguing about drugs. So we will too.

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In last week's premium episode, we sounded off about the state of VR and smart glasses. In true Down Round fashion, Meta had already announced its concept product, a pair of AR-enabled smart glasses named Orion, by the time the ep aired.

We will never admit we were wrong. Instead, we press forward. In this ep, we talk about Orion, Meta's plans, and why it seems like everyone is now locked in on the idea that smart glasses are the smartphone successor.

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Intel may have more or less invented modern digital computing, but it hasn't been going so crash hot lately. Following decades of strategic missteps and blunders, it's now experiencing weakening earnings and stock price declines as it attempts to engage in the mother of all turnaround jobs with a little help from the US government. Now, the sharks are circling, with Qualcomm popping up as a potential acquirer.

In this ep, we discuss what brought Intel to this point, what might happen next, and some general microchip chatter.

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This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

After 2 months of cringe-posting references to strawberries, OpenAI have released their latest model: o1. And AI heads are losing their minds.

Ostensibly, it's intended for the kind of thorny math and reasoning problems that LLMs tend to struggle with. The guts aren't public, but it seems to use chain-of-reasoning prompts to really force itself to 'think'. 

So, is it any good? Is this a huge step change on the path to AGI. We investigate.

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We didn't cover the Apple iPhone keynote last week because it wasn't particularly exciting and there were virtually no surprises. But, having been given a week to ruminate on it, we have thoughts.

In this ep, we talk about why analysts have been obsessed with an AI-driven iPhone supercycle, why Apple has backed itself into a corner by overcharging for RAM, and the slow death of the smartphone.

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This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Social media. Is it too dank for the malleable and developing mind?

The Australian government seems to think so. Labor has joined the ranks of a number parties and bodies in various jurisdictions in attempting to set a lower age limit for social media. 

We consider the following questions:

• Why?
• How would it work?
• Who is to blame for society crumbling? 

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For decades, technologists have fantasised about the ultimate prize: a humanoid robot, available to consumers and industry, which can perform a range of humanlike tasks. The recent AI moment has reignited those aspirations, with everyone from Tesla to Apple – and a handful of ambitious startups – either openly or secretly working on humanoid robot projects.

In this ep we round up the rumour mill, and talk about what these things could actually be useful for, and why they're suddenly everywhere. (In spirit, if not actuality.)

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This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

The tech world has been ablaze over the past week or so, both ironically and unironically, about the concept of Founder Mode.

Inspired by a short essay by Paul Graham, 'founder mode' vaguely posits that there's a natural point in a startup's existence where it gives up being led by a single founder with a ton of agency, and instead becomes led by professional managers via delegation. Graham, and others, suggest that you don't need to do that, and can keep running even very big tech businesses as a lethal operator calling all the shots.

In this freewheeling ep, we discuss.

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Brazil has slapped a ban on X, as the culmination of a dispute between the platform and the country’s judiciary over censorship. It’s weird, because Elon Musk’s platform has complied with government requests from other countries, like Turkey and India.

So what’s the deal? In this ep, we talk about Musk's free speech crusade, the Brazilification of the web, and the general vibes around the X business right now.

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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested over the weekend in France, with prosecutors  accusing him of violations discovered as part of an investigation into child exploitation material, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform.

It’s more than plausible that stuff like that is happening on Telegram. But there’s certainly something unusual going on here too. Telegram has evolved from a messaging app into a full-blown social media platform – and one that is relatively uncensored and pretty wild. And despite the discourse over the past few days being focused on end-to-end encryption, that’s not really what people use Telegram for.

In this ep, we dive into the weird world of Telegram, and engage in some healthy, baseless speculation about Durov's arrest.

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