Down Round

Discord has gone from being an ultra low latency voice platform for League of Legends heads into one of the major social platforms of 2023.

We talk about its rise through the pandemic, its challenge to both Slack and traditional social media, and we give Raph ample space to evangelise Microsoft Teams, his favourite piece of software on Earth.

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In the second part of this week’s topic, we talk about the current state of the microchip industry.

Thanks to the insane complexity of making them, chip supply chains are incredibly fragile, and it’s dominated by a tiny handful of companies. This is highly unfortunate, because we need microchips to do things like drive to the shops and watch TikTok for …

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Microchips. They’re extremely tiny and very cool. (You can quote us on that.) This week, we’re doing a two-parter on the modern world’s most important technology.

In the first part, we chat through the development of the microchip and how we got where we are today. In the second half, we’ll go into the incredible weird, fragile state of the industry today.

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This week we’re tackling not one but two topics. And they’re both kind of related to Elon Musk.

First we’re giving you an update on what’s been going on with Twitter, which despite our unshakeable faith Musk’s stewardship seems to not be doing so well. Then we dig into some new developments in the world of AI, including an open letter calling for researc…

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For the past few years we’ve had to listen to Western governments repeatedly threaten to ban TikTok and then ultimately not do much about it. But it does seem like the conversation is heating up. Will they do it? Or will an army of Zoomers addicted to those videos where a robot voice reads Reddit posts over Minecraft footage stop them?

We discuss.

Links

• Project Texas: The Details of TikTok’s Plan to Remain Operational in the United States — Lawfare Blog

• Australia-wide ban of TikTok on government devices announced as senior politicians quit the app — The Guardian

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We’ve alluded a few times on the pod to the weird developments in tech industry politics over the last few years. Bitcoin! Conservatives! New societies! Things are getting weird.

In today’s ep we go a little deeper, diving into the political tendencies currently driving Silicon Valley.

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Shein is one of the world’s most insane companies, and yet flies weirdly under the radar. One of the most popular shopping platforms in the world, it is revolutionising the fast fashion industry with its incredibly vertically integrated manufacturing, marketing and e-commerce machine.

We’re joined this week by writer, podcaster and former Triple J host Veronica Milsom, who recently hosted Threads, a series about the fast fashion industry.

We talk about fast fashion, Shein’s particular business model, and what the future of fashion holds for certifiably swagged out and drippy boys like Raph and James.

Links

* Shein: The TikTok of Ecommerce - Packy McCormick and Matthew Brennan

* How Shein beat Amazon at its own game and reinvented fast fashion – Rest of World

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Every time we think we’re done with AI episodes, they release something else. Can we catch a break?

Last week, OpenAI dropped GPT-4, the latest version of the large language model which powers ChatGPT. It’s now more creativ and less frequently wrong, and it’s caused another minor freakout online.

Is it all that? We discuss.

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Recent reports have indicated Apple is gearing up to announce its mixed-reality headset, which the company wants to be the next iPhone. CEO Tim Cook reportedly wants it to be his product legacy.

So, we thought it was a good time to take a look at Apple in 2023. At the precipice. What are they up to? And are we ready to put big clunky headsets on and enter the Cookverse?

Links

- Tim Cook bets on Apple’s mixed-reality headset to secure his legacy – Financial Times

- Inside the Tech Powering Apple’s Envelope-Pushing, Risky Mixed Reality Headset - The Information

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Down Round listeners who don’t work in software development or associated fields are always asking us about Atlassian. What the hell do Atlassian do? Why do devs complain about Jira all the time? Why do I have to see Mike Cannon-Brookes on TV?

Well, we’re here to answer your questions, and slightly more. If you know nothing about Atlassian, you’ll walk o…

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