Down Round

Anyone who spent any time online over the past few years will be intimately familiar with the constellation of cool ways to get rich online. Youtube grindset hustlers have been promising us for years that dropshipping and affiliate marketing are your ticket to financial freedom.

In this ep, we dive into this weird world. And hell, maybe you’ll learn how to become a billionaire along the way.

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It's been a little while since we opened the dusty Down Round mailbag and answered some listener questions.

Today we're answering a range of inquiries we got via Twitter and Substack, on everything from Linktree and Twitter to online booze subscription services and AI Drake.

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One of the most underrated battles currently emerging in the tech world is the fight over who will control your in-car experience.

Apple and Google have already made serious headway into controlling car entertainment systems, but now they want more. Now, some car companies are openly wondering whether they should ditch the big dogs altogether and go the Tesla route of owning the whole experience.

For James, proud owner of a 2012 Hyundai Getz with zero screens, this is barely relevant. But for Raph, an even prouder owner of a 2022 Skoda Kodiaq… it’s personal.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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Instagram was undeniably the most influential social network of the 2010s, and certaibnly one of the most important generators of 2010s culture.

But it’s looking a bit worse for wea these days. This week we dive into Insta, where it’s been, and where it’s going.

Editor’s note: we apologise for conflating Marilyn Manson and Slipknot.

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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.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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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.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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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

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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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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