Bill Ackman’s Crusade, A Rabbit Wins CES, Apple Boosts Meta

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Bill Ackman’s crusade against Harvard & Business Insider 2) Why you shouldn’t plagarize 3) Was Ackman’s wife fair game for reporting 4) Whether Axel Springer should’ve gotten involved 5) Carta ending secondary share sales 6) SEC’s hacked tweet ahead of Spot Bitcoin ETF 7) Bitcoin’s price drop 8) Rabbit wins CES 9) Quora raises $75 million for a new chatbot 10) Is Apple helping Meta? --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bill Ackman is continuing to crusade. A rabbit has won CES and Apple is boosting Meta in tremendous number of ways. All that and more coming up right after this.

• 0:11Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional, cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a big week of news for you as 2024 gets underway. We're joined as always by Ron John Roy of Margens. Ron John, welcome.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Do we get to talk about Bill Ackman today, Alex?

• 1:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think we've finally it's time to talk about Bill.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna be time.

• 1:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why don't you tell us a little bit about Bill Ackman and what's been going on with him and the presidents of the Ivy League universities and then the controversy with his wife?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Well, so Bill Ackman, everyone's favorite activist investor slash billionaire hedge fund manager, you know, has been a long time and very public facing investor, especially his style of activism is being loud, being proud, making big proclamations about different companies. And he's been right sometimes in the past. He's been very wrong in the past.

• 2:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  So isn't Herbalife like one of his major ones that he's tried to go after? There was a documentary about it.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Herbalife was one where he was correct, but time-wise missed it. Like, still lost money on the trade versus, I believe his valiant was one of his big trades. He also famously, right at the beginning of COVID, managed to time kind of shorting and then longing, going along the economy as well. So overall, again, good investor, famous investor, notable investor, but then had decided recently to take it upon himself to go after the president of Harvard and all the after that disastrous congressional hearing that we did talk about here, where the presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT

• 2:56Speaker 02

  did not sound very convincing on how they wanted to combat hate speech. Bill Ackman decided he would go after Claudine Gay at the Harvard president, especially over, first over her answers, and then more plagiarism came to light that, you know, this was a problem for an academic, which we can definitely talk about. But then, very recently-

• 3:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why don't we pause and talk about that?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Okay, let's talk about that.

• 3:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is something that I've been watching with a lot of interest because, so obviously, like, this initial hearing happens, they ask whether calling for genocide would be, of Jews would be against the speech rules on campus, or the harassment or bullying rules on campus, and all three presidents basically said it depends on the context. So Ackman and a bunch of others try to go after their jobs, they get the president of Penn to resign, they do not get the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, to resign, though she does apologize. Then they come after her with these plagiarism allegations, which include numerous instances where she has effectively lifted passages or sentences from other papers and passed

• 4:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  them off on her own. Now, Gay has claimed that those, the ideas central in the papers were her own, just the sentences might have been lifted- But I don't really like, yes, there's a distinction, of course, like it's a, you know, a degree of crime, but you're the president of Harvard. Like, I don't understand there's a yes, but that's been, that's, that's come up after this. Yes, but you know, it's not the original ideas or everything. I'm like, wait a second, you're the president of Harvard. The very table stake, you know, requirement of you is not to lift other people's work. So I just, I sort of don't understand why there's been this huge move of defense here. Like, yes, that is something that you need to resign for. You won't let students do

• 4:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  it. You should not let the president do it. I don't care about anything else that's, that happened, you know, basically like, if you're gonna have people come after you, you need to be able to withstand that pressure. Like, you can't give them like, you know, clear instances of plagiarism and then call it a witch hunt. Like, you plagiarized.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think this is one time, one time where we will agree that it was pretty clear cut and you can feel the, the momentum of where that whole decision would go. Clearly, once Bill Ackman became the very public face of it, it almost became an us versus them battle rather than plagiarism is the issue. And I think that probably almost, probably bought her more time and support than otherwise she would have had. So, yeah, I think you plagiarized.

• 5:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  There are gonna be people that come after you. If you're in that position, if you're in this high level in society, you cannot be in a position where you have enough skeletons in the closet where they can get you. Like, you can't go and say this is a persecution thing where in the end, you did plagiarize and you did do the things that just were completely unacceptable for position, for a person in your position.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yep. No, that should have been vetted beforehand. I mean, I wrote, did you ever write a thesis of any sort? I did an undergrad thesis and it was like 90 pages and I remember being terrified of, like plagiarizing.

• 6:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, I wrote a book. I can tell you, like, there's no plagiarism there. Like, it's not that, it's one of those things where people are like, well, you know, there's reasons for it. It's like, it's actually not that hard to write your own original sentences.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Like I just said, I wrote my college thesis and Alex got to flex. He wrote a book. So.

• 6:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know. Maybe more people read your thesis than read my book. But anyway, long story short, I can tell you it's hard to plagiarize. You literally have to copy and paste and reformat. Like, why would you even want to pass somebody else's work off as your own? It's ridiculous.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  But that brings us to the latest part of the story where Business Insider published a piece, and actually two pieces then, covering Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, and acts of plagiarism that she had committed, which included lifting entire passages from Wikipedia, 15 passages. And then this story got even more fun for bystanders like us, because Bill Ackman not only defended lifting, he essentially defended lifting passages from Wikipedia, saying that in 2009, when these papers were written, that Wikipedia was the Wild West and it was just, there's no standards around how to cite it. And so

• 7:31Speaker 02

  this was amazing because, again, it's one thing to plagiarize. It's another thing to plagiarize 2009 vintage Wikipedia. I mean, that's a whole other level of laziness that you didn't even go and read the academic papers. You just went to Wikipedia and lifted directly from there.

• 7:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ackman's wife is not the president of Harvard, but I'm going to remain consistent here and be like, if you plagiarize, that's wrong and you can't continue to, you know, work in academia if that's the case. You're not gonna like, you're gonna fail your students if you saw them copying from Wikipedia. So, like for Bill Ackman, also this like backward explanation of like, well, like that was like the Wild West. Like, come on, man. Like, you just like held somebody else to a similar standard and got them fired. Like, you can't now, you know, bend over backward. Like, the intellectual dishonesty on that front is fairly remarkable.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  But then the most important tech angle for me, the main character is back. Like, for longtime Twitter users, I feel it's been a while since we've had such a central quote unquote, main character. And again, this idea that periodically on social media, especially Twitter, one person, one will bubble up to the top. There's been famous ones over the years. And Bill Ackman has given us to start 2024, one of the more incredible main characters that I remember. So does this mean? Twitter itself is back in relevance more than we've been giving credit for because this is all this ain't taking this is not taking place on threads. This is still a pure pure Twitter thing.

• 9:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, first of all, I would say that like you don't have to look too much back into the recent past to find the main character before Ackman, and that's Elon. So like, I don't think it's a new thing that there's a main character. And second of all, like, yes, is Twitter declining and diminishing in relevance 100%? Is Twitter less relevant than threads? Not a chance. I mean, even the data that I cited and published, which continues to show up in my feed where people are like, see Twitter's dying, shows that they only lost like 14% of users last year. And so that is a significant chunk, but it does not take a platform that, you know, was the beating heart of the, I don't know, public conversation and say it's no longer

• 9:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  relevant, it's a little less relevant, but it still packs a punch.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yep, no, I think, I'm curious to see whether we can go back to the the golden days of multiple main characters on a rolling basis. You're right, you're right. Elon dominated our minds, especially on Twitter. And maybe that was purposely done via algorithmic changes for all in 2023.

• 10:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was purposely done. Yeah, yeah. We know that.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Didn't he fire someone who said that his reach wasn't enough? Something like that.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, the good old days.

• 10:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I I thought you were actually going to bring up the finance angle of this. So the drama continues to unfold, which is that. So Business Insider published this story about Ackman's wife plagiarizing. Okay, so obviously shouldn't plagiarize. I don't think there's any defending that. There's been a big question of like whether his wife was a fair target and they did reach out to him about his wife and not his wife about the story, as far as I can tell. What do you think about that? Is it is it fair for Business Insider to be like, the wife of this guy who who, of course, the wife is well known, but the wife of this guy who's on this crusade also plagiarized? Is that fair reporting process?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I, the, the actual reporting process, I think it's worth like, and then also they had given only, I think it was like 90 minutes or three hours or something to respond to many accusations.

• 11:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  But I still feel the, what's interesting is I actually, I'm not going to say prior to Bill Ackman, I definitely knew about him before, but I knew of her for a long time. She was very, the whole topic of like, design as a central way of approaching technology. She, at MIT Media Lab, she's done multiple TED Talks that I've watched that are good. She was a very, very public figure in the way, I knew her name well before, I did, I was surprised when I learned that she was actually Bill Ackman's wife, because I'd already watched her, known her, like, from her writing. So, yeah, I think she is a public figure, but I agree that why then go to Bill Ackman directly as opposed to her?

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Then you are saying this is, we're writing this because it's Bill Ackman's wife. So, I think that's a fair criticism.

• 12:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  There's some nuance that I think I should unpack for, you know, listeners. I'm not sure this is how it went, but I'm, I, this is, this is kind of how it goes in reporting sometimes, where Business Insider doesn't then, you know, say, oh, Bill Ackman is on this crusade, let's go dig through, like, they don't have the money to put reporters on, you know, an investigation to look through all of his wife's writing and all of his writing to find plagiarism. What probably happened was some group who was pissed that he got Claudine Gay fired, started looking through the writing of all of his associates and found this plagiarism by his wife, and then dropped it in the lap of Business Insider. And then if you're Business Insider, I think it's like, okay, well.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, no, of course, of course. But which also brings that last part of the story, is that Business Insider famously got bought, Henry Blodgett, very good at market timing relative to other media startups, sold to Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate for, I think it was like 300 million, 350?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  And they are the owner and then K K R.

• 13:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is the finance. This is what I was waiting for you to comment on.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so K K R, private equity giant investor in Axel Springer itself. So Bill Ackman had made a huge push, you know, I'm talking to Axel Springer, people on the board. I'm talking to K K R. We're gonna go after Business Insider, basically trying to what Peter Thiel did to Gawker. Well, no, he's doing it more publicly versus completely secretly try to, you know, end this organization, Business Insider. That to me was shocking to make public declarations around. Cause again, what's the point? There's no, if you're really gonna do this, go straight Peter Thiel and just do it in the background quietly.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  To me, there's no advantage. Business Insider, it almost, Axel Springer is still a journalistic organization. People, majority of people involved still are gonna know that, okay, if the facts are correct, you know, we're not going to pressure our journalists. And then the fact that they said they were looking into it and launching some kind of investigation, still I think was a very bad move on their part because you lose the trust of every writer after that, but.

• 14:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And that's, by the way, that's probably what Ackman is trying to do. Is just pressure them into taking the story down and pressure Axel Springer into making a move like this. Like it is pretty incredible that Axel Springer was like, we are reviewing like the decision to publish.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  But there's no taking the story down at this point.

• 14:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  No.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I mean, it's out there.

• 14:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's out there. Exactly.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. But Twitter's back.

• 14:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Main characters are back.

• 14:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's the thing.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Thank you for not having Elon as our main character for a week.

• 14:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I'm trying to take out, look at the big takeaway here, like what this says about our society, what it says about Ackman or.

• 15:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Journalism, I think the main thing is just like, don't plagiarize. Like, it's very easy to not get into a plagiarism war by just not plagiarizing. Just do not hit Ctrl V after you hit Ctrl C. It's really

• 15:18Speaker 02

  That's, put that, put that on a T-shirt. That's a good lesson.

• 15:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk about some other interesting sort of questionable behavior in the tech world. And that's with Karta. So Karta, if anyone has invested in a startup knows it's like a place where you or works at a startup, they know it's a place where you keep your, your tabs on your shares. And this is like the sort of, it's the manager for a stock before it hits the public market. And it puts Karta in an interesting position because they know how much, you know, shares of stock are floating out around there and maybe can help facilitate the sale of some of it. But the company got into some hot water this week as they were accused of using some proprietary information to try to sell secondary shares in a startup and then promised basically to not do this anymore.

• 16:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rajan, what's your perspective here on what Karta did?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was a really interesting story to me because, again, that idea of trust from a company. So Karta, as you said, you upload all of your private share data to there and they'll manage your cap table for you. So, you know, what's the current valuations of shares? Who has what? How much do they have? Getting notifications around it, taking care of any kind of like securities, law concerns around it. So then they have all that information. And then a founder, startup CEO Kari Sorenin, received, someone he knew received an email about his company, basically offering to sell shares.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Like, so you can realize, like, are you interested in buying these shares on the secondary market? Which has kind of been a dream for the private investing over the last decade. No one has really cracked it, like a highly liquid secondary share market for private startups. And clearly they're going after that. And, and if you think about it, paying them a subscription fee, I believe it's pretty expensive again. I mean, it's like 50K or it's like, it's an expensive piece of SaaS. But It's you can make a lot more money being a middleman for any kind of share transfer and being some kind of brokerage. So obviously, it's a buzzy startup, raised a bunch of money. They're going to start leaning into potentially higher margin, more lucrative businesses.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  But then, all that data is completely confidential as far as founders are concerned and the companies are concerned. Maybe the terms and services allowed, terms and conditions allowed for this? And it seems that they did because people never talked about that side of it. It was more just a general trust issue, which I think they broke. But again, reminder, they need to shoot big and this is a bigger opportunity than what they are currently doing. So were they doing the right thing?

• 18:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know. I spoke with, so Albert Wenger was on the show on Wednesday from Union Square Ventures. And they are an investor in Carta and I tried to get him to comment on it. He ended up basically saying nothing. So I cut it out of the episode. But it is, it is kind of, I mean, if you're going and trying to sell shares in companies that don't want their shares to be sold, that is kind of a scandal. Although on the other hand, like, it seems like everybody should want this, right? Like, Carta should want this and startups should want this. And maybe it's just like a UI thing, right? Maybe it's just like you need a toggle inside this software to be like, list my shares or don't. But that's too simple of a solution.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  The concern was, like, there's a lot of people, especially at the private level, don't want to be known as investors. So the idea of disclosing that information for the purpose of selling shares definitely is problematic. But yeah, all right, you just solved it. Toggle. Allow my cap table to be shown, allow you to pitch things. I agree. It's, people have been trying to do this at every level and it only, especially now when fundraising has become incredibly, it's far more difficult. Ability, some kind of liquidity in the private market seems to be a good thing.

• 19:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Yeah, I think we just like, we know that toggles are like the number one solution for most tech problems. Show paper with plagiarism, show paper without plagiarism, sell my shares, don't share my, don't sell my shares. These type of things can make a difference. Card if you're listening, definitely put that into place. So, speaking of things that need a toggle, it was definitely the SEC's two-factor authentication on Twitter. They apparently did not have two-factor authentication and right before they approved this spot Bitcoin ETF, they, their account was hacked and then someone tweeted that they approved. So, I'm curious what your perspective here is on the SEC's account

• 20:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  getting hacked. Actually, it turns out that almost all of the run-up of this ETF being approved was priced into Bitcoin because when that tweet went out, I take a look at the, I took a look at the pricing and Bitcoin went up from like 45,000 to 46,000 per coin and now it's like even falling. It's at 43,000 time of recording. So, maybe it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but definitely an embarrassing start for the SEC as this thing got underway.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, this killed me. This killed me. I just, can we get just like a straight, I mean, this was supposed to be the cleanest, most corporate thing that has happened in cryptocurrency out of all kinds of ridiculous joke-like things that have happened over the last three years. And of course, the most corporate thing that was supposed to happen to Bitcoin ended up just a joke. And so, again, SEC finding out that they do not properly lock down their Twitter accounts, making it not using two-factor authentication to make sure, to lessen the chances that it gets hacked and then just looking, coming

• 21:21Speaker 02

  out of this looking bad at a point that they were finally ready to play nice with the crypto community after Gary Gensler, the chair, has been pretty aggressive against it for a long time. So, I, I'm disappointed overall, I have to say, but, but I still think, to me, and we talked about this last week, I just do not understand the point of a Bitcoin ETF. Can you explain to me why this is interesting? Because it's pretty easy to buy Bitcoin.

• 21:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think it's probably for the institutional buyers, right? Like Coinbase is nice if you're an individual, but you need it as an ETF to be offered through financial systems and be made available to, let's say, institutional investors who want to add a little risk to their portfolio.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but why, like, what does that say about Bitcoin?

• 22:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, that's another question. That's a different question.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it says that the promise of Bitcoin is a lie.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Okay, as long as we're, as long as we're on the same page there.

• 22:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  I, it's like.

• 22:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Not fully a lie, like their, their functionality is still, you know, it could still work. It just, this idea of separating from the modern financial system after the 2001 crisis, which was Satoshi, Satoshi Nakamoto's main idea, just kind of, that was a blind spot for Satoshi. It was just never going to end that way. And certainly this is a, a inevitable conclusion.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this is going to be a very, I, I'm excited to watch this play out because you remember, like, once all these ETFs that have reasonably high fees on a relative basis, if the price goes down, I mean, what does that do to this whole thing? Like finally, you've got the ETFs, more and more people can now have access to being put at risk on the price of Bitcoin and it's a lot easier. So yeah, I guess you don't have to open a Coinbase account anymore. You can do it directly in your Schwab or Fidelity account. So, oh, this is going to be an interesting year for crypto.

• 23:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  I did, we didn't talk about it that much the last half of last year.

• 23:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  No.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Or we've already.

• 23:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, we did. We talked about SBF a lot, but.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Actually talk about less scam, more potential, but who knows? It was, can you really de-link the two? I don't know. Uh, the, the, the thing is, yeah, you're right, that it's now going down. And I was like sitting in the kitchen Monday morning and be like, hey, should we buy some more Bitcoin? You know, I was just like really glad we didn't do that. So it's like, oh man, if I buy the peak again, I'm gonna be so pissed.

• 23:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  You see Kathy Wood is saying it's gonna go to like 1.5 million per coin.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Kathy Wood is back. 2024.

• 24:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, she's not. The ARK Innovation Fund is still down by like 50% from the peak.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  I know, but as long as I can hear the name Kathy Wood just a few times a week, I'll be happy.

• 24:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Look, when Bitcoin goes to 1.5 million a coin, I will apologize to her, but.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Oh, Bitcoin's down 6% today. It's well below, it's at 43,400. It's well below where it started when all this news was breaking, so.

• 24:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do think it's kind of funny that this entire debacle with the Twitter account happened on a platform run by a guy or owned by a guy who said the SEC stands for Blink, Elon's Blink.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm not saying that he passed along the credentials, which I don't think he did, but it is just.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  I just say, I enjoy any story that starts with, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but.

• 24:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess Elon's always said the funniest outcome is the one that's most likely, and so here, Elon, you've had it. We're here on Big Technology Podcast. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about this rabbit gadget that won the CES conference. It's an AI-powered handheld thingy that Ron Johnson's going to talk a little bit more about. I watched the presentation. It seemed pretty interesting. And then we'll follow up by discussing whether Tim Cook is actually helping Meta succeed, because I think that, I think he and Apple, they really are. So, all right, why don't we take a break and we'll come back right after this.

• 25:34Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 26:35Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:20Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, ready to do our big CES roundup that we do every year. Just kidding, I don't think we've covered that last year. But let's just do a quick segment on who won CES. Clearly, it was this Rabbit device. It was this, it's an, let me just read the headline. So this is from The Verge. The Rabbit R1 is an AI-powered gadget that can use your apps for you. Rather than a ChatGPT-like large language model, Rabbit says Rabbit OS is based on a large action model. And the best way I can describe it is sort of as a universal controller of apps. First of all, great branding, large action model. Okay, they say it. It's an idea similar to Alexa or Google Assistant.

• 28:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rabbit OS can control your music, order you a car, buy your groceries, send your messages and more, all through a single interface. No balancing apps and logins, just ask for what you want and let the device deliver. The R1's on-screen interface will be a series of category-based cards for music or transportation or video chats. And the screen mostly exists so that you can verify the model's output on your own. This just seems to be like this new category of devices that are starting to become much more prevalent in the age of AI. Ranjan, you are clearly a huge fan of the rabbit, so make the bull case for the rabbit.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  I am excited because even from like a product design perspective, it's fun. It's kind of cute, which I guess with the name rabbit, that's kind of what they're going with. It's again, it's this little box, there's a screen on it, you talk to it. And I thought, I agree with you, I thought the branding of instead of large language model, large action model is brilliant because it's the idea that rethinking the way we interact with mobile phones, and I recommend people go and watch the presentation. Like, we have used this interface of apps over the last, what is it, 14 years now or 17 years? It hasn't changed that much.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Certain things, like widgets on your phone, try to make certain actions that you take simpler. Shortcuts from Siri is kind of a disaster, at least from when I've used it. Trying to kind of code your own Google Assistant or Alexa pathways of actions and trying to do different things. I'm a smart home nerd and I've spent hours and hours, and first using Alexa and now using the Apple Home ecosystem to try to get everything working together. Like, there's so many actions we take every day on our phone. Being able to make them smoother and just simpler and voice activated, I think is, has always been interesting.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  And to do it in kind of a new interface and new little gadget, I'm excited about. Like, I think we should all be supporting going back to a time when it felt like we can have an entire new class of gadgets, you know, that we don't have to all just, everything's going to be on your phone or a helmet that you wear on your face.

• 30:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's incredible how dominant this thing was at CES. And there was basically, you would have thought that CES was just one big launch event for the Rabbit. I didn't hear about any other products there. Like, the second product that I heard about at CES was, you know, let me finish this sentence will make sense, that the Vision Pro, and they weren't even there. So like, it was just the Rabbit show. So, they already said that their initial 10,000-unit run of these devices has sold out. I guess, like, do you think that it makes sense to have this Rabbit in your hand and then a phone in your pocket? Like, isn't it too many devices?

• 31:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And how long is it? If this thing is really successful, isn't Apple just gonna say, okay, like, we're gonna build this right into the phone?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, if Siri was not hot garbage, maybe they could finally do the things that Rabbit is saying that it can do. So, I agree, as I'm watching it, on one hand, I agree, thinking that if Siri just worked, if Google Assistant was very good, maybe you just use it existing with your phone anyways, or whatever device you have on you. But this is where I feel like, and even the, so that I got, I recently started subscribing last year to the phone and data service on my Apple Watch. I'd gotten the Ultra, and I'd started leaving the house with no phone and just the watch, and taking calls, or receiving texts, and

• 32:15Speaker 02

  even dictating back texts and stuff like that, and starting to see that no-phone future, what it could look like. And I think, I don't know what the timeframe is, but the idea that we walk around everywhere with our phone in our pocket and hand at all times, I think in five years, does not exist. So, maybe we're wearing a pin, maybe we're carrying around these little rabbits, maybe we have glasses on, or maybe we never leave the house because we live in the metaverse, but... I don't think, I don't think the phones will look like and act like they do now, five years from now, which is good.

• 32:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, I'm hopeful also. I will say that every time I'm on vacation, first of all, like, my vacation begins with me just deleting apps, like deleting Twitter, deleting whatever else. And then the best parts of my vacation, I just experienced this over the winter break, is leaving the phone in the house and then just going out and being like, alright, like, phoneless and actually like living in the world as it is now. Maybe I have a unique problem with the smartphone, but I don't think so. I think that just like,

• 33:19Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 33:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  That separation is really terrific.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so imagine, imagine being able to still do the things you need to do. Call an Uber while you're out and uh,

• 33:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just with my rabbit?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Just with your rabbit?

• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you gonna order the rabbit?

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I, I actually tried to preorder and it was already, it was sold out, I think, when I checked, yeah?

• 33:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  That's just some good old fashioned product hype from not one of the big technology companies. That's exciting for me.

• 33:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and so what about, so, okay, you couldn't get the rabbit, why aren't you now online to get this humane pin?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  So,

• 33:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  By the way, as a refresher, what the, your main pin is this basically a similar thing that you pin on your shirt? And then you could talk to it and stuff like that, and it will do things for you.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  This is such a reminder to me of how important a launch video can be. Cause if, if you think about it, they're very similar devices. The difference with Rabbit does have a screen, a small screen, and you carry it around the humane pin. There's no screen, but you can do this crazy projection onto your arm, which is cool. Yet, the launch video was so bad, the founders just kind of looked like bored to be there. They spoke in the most non-relatable way. And this could have been, this could be, this should be equally as interesting a piece of technology as the Rabbit. Whereas Rabbit started with the problem, here's the problem, you have apps, the way we use our phone has not changed.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  We're gonna change that. Whereas Humane started with like talking about the different weird color names that were available. So, so overall,

• 34:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's the future, Ranjan. That's just kind of how things work in the future.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  I'm just a hater.

• 35:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  With the colors, you gotta be monotone, you gotta look very somberly into the camera. This is how you convey a future. I'm pretty sure that's what was on the creative brief.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  I'm so, yeah. Unfortunately, Humane, they announced, this one blew my mind. They haven't even released the device yet and they're laying off 10 employees, which is 4% of their workforce, but their CTO is leaving the company. So for your CTO to leave the company of a very tech-heavy product before the product launches, not a great sign. But again, in the, in the Humane versus Rabbit battle, let's see.

• 35:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, they said, as we begin this new chapter of Humane, going from stealth to consumer-facing, we're making some changes to best prepare us for continued growth. I mean, talk about the, some of the worst jargon.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  I hate corporate speak.

• 35:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why would, do you see this week, there was this, so apparently CloudFlare, I hope I'm getting the, the company right. CloudFlare, uh, uh, uh, let me make sure I get it right.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Alex is currently Googling to make sure we do not name the wrong, uh, the wrong company here.

• 36:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so CloudFlare did this layoff of people and, but they didn't call it a layoff. They said it was for performance reasons. And there, they had been going around like a sales team, apparently. And they get to this one account executive and she films the entire thing. And they're like, we are laying you off for performance reasons. And she goes, what are you talking about? I was in a three-month ramp. I'm doing everything I need to be. I've had, gotten good performance and, um, you know, feedback. And this is definitely not performance-related. So if you're just cutting people, you gotta say what it is. And this entire layoff is captured in, or not the entire, but almost all of it is captured in a minute and 42-second TikTok, totally recorded and

• 36:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  broadcasted by her. It's pretty fascinating, just seeing her turn the tables on the people that are like trying to facelessly cut her job. I don't know if you want like someone who you've never met laying you off, or an email, or I guess like basically companies should square with people about the reason why they're laying them off. And when it's not performance, just don't say that it's performance-related.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if you think about it, I'm guessing legally, They almost have to provide some kind of cover. Cause again, even if it's just, you know, we're, which it should be, the business is hurting. At least our growth plans are not being met, so we have to make cuts. That obviously sounds a lot more honest, but then why am I the being the, the one being laid off? Introduces a different kind of liability. That, that would be my suspicion on this, but I think, yeah, it's a reminder that this stuff went like there's imagining how much random little corporate jargon-y BS takes place on a given day.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  And when that stuff comes to light, it's why it goes viral, cause it's awful and cringe worthy and trashy and hilarious.

• 38:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know. I think it's, it shouldn't be too much to ask a company that when you lay somebody off, you'd like, and it's not, if you're just doing broad cuts, just say it's broad cuts and don't like tell a person who you've hired that they're not doing good enough to be there.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Oh, the Quora news. I almost forgot about this. So Quora just raised 75 million from Andreessen Horowitz to Grow Po, which is its AI chatbot platform. This is according to TechCrunch. They want to do a, basically like give people the opportunity to build their own bots. So the CEO, Adam D'Angelo says, we expect the majority of the funding to be used to pay creators of bots on the platform through our recently launched creator monetization program. Quora obviously like was going to be one of the companies that was well positioned for this LLM revolution because they have so much knowledge just on the, you know, within their side of people that have like earnestly answered questions for others and maybe didn't think that they were training a chatbot, but they have been.

• 39:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, so do you think this is like, are we at like chatbot overkill at this point? Or do you think this has a potential of really being an impactful investment for Andreessen Horowitz?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Quora, as we've talked about, as you said, you know, one of the more valuable data sets on the internet. I think like literally people, it's prompt answer, prompt answer, prompt answer, answer, answer over and over and over again. And people, I, I was very active on it. Like it's, it was kind of sad what happened to it, that it just kind of was such a reminder of when a great platform could just be overrun by spam. And unless it's combated really closely, but brilliant information on there. So training a chatbot based on that, really interesting to me. The thing I don't, the whole creator economy angle based around AI chatbots felt

• 39:53Speaker 02

  a little buzzwordy and kind of nonsensical to me. Again, like ChatGPT, and actually, we didn't even bring it up yet, launched the GPT store. And this whole idea of, you know, people building small custom apps and models and stuff, I think is interesting. But that this is some new major part of the creator economy, I find. I don't know. I just don't think it's going to be that interesting the same way like YouTube creators, like YouTube helped create the content creator economy.

• 40:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And I happen to think the the actual idea of a creator economy is kind of a lie, or at least a very exaggeration. Maybe not a creator economy, a creator sector.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Creator surfdom, creator surfdom.

• 40:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think anytime you say creator economy, all I think about is large platform monetizing and making lots of money and a few creators doing very well and then being highlighted and then lots of other creators trying and not making any money.

• 40:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Which could be okay, but.

• 40:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it does do this thing, kind of blend culture together in some ways. And Kyle Chaitka, who's a New Yorker writer, is has this new book out about algorithms, and he's going to be on the podcast on Wednesday. We're about to record that. So I'll sound equally sick on that one, but I'm eager to hear what he has to say. I've read this book. It's pretty interesting. Okay, let's let's end with this. So I was writing about WhatsApp this week. And I don't know if you know this, but WhatsApp is really doing well in the US. It's up 9% this past year. Businesses are up 80% in terms of daily active users over the past year. And very interesting stat that I got from the company, which is that most of the WhatsApp users in the United States are iPhone owners, which is very interesting.

• 41:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's not really an Android thing in the US as much as it is an iPhone thing, which just shows you that they're looking for different defaults outside of Apple's messages. And if you think about it, you've had Apple help Meta in some very serious ways, right? So because Apple refused so long to be compatible with messaging apps on Android.

• 42:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  You've had people move to WhatsApp. So they get this cross-platform compatibility. It doesn't break their groups. You also have the Vision Pro, which is like creating this category that Meta has tried so hard to popularize and Apple is going to do the work for them there. And then this Ask App Not to Track stuff, which initially hurt Meta by cutting off their ability to track conversions. Now you have Meta running away with the field because they've been able to build the technology to effectively get around what Apple is doing while everybody else hasn't. So if you think about all this like big talk from Tim Cook trying to say, hey, Apple is the company that, you know, is going to basically hamstring Meta.

• 42:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, he didn't say that explicitly, but that has been the strategy. It turns out they've bolstered Meta maybe more than any other company. I mean, what do you think about that?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  That is a hot take.

• 42:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think I'm writing about it next week.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  I have not heard this one before. I think.

• 43:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm coming in 2024 hot, man. Just ready to just shoot out flames.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yep. I, I think you present a convincing case there. I agree because like iOS 14.5 comes out, Ask App Not to Track. And everyone's like Meta's advertising business is dead. And all that happened is now they figured workarounds because they have such a powerful internal data set, whereas like Snap, Pinterest, all these other companies have been getting killed in their ability to track and their targeting in advertising has gotten progressively worse. I do think, yeah, the Vision Pro brings interest to whatever we're going to call it, Metaverse, VR, Extended Reality. The WhatsApp thing, I agree.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I even personally, yeah, I've seen that more that in the past it was only with friends outside the US that we were using WhatsApp. And now it's definitely become more of a default within, because it's frustrating. If you have one Android user in a chat group, the way links render, the way media renders.

• 44:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's annoying.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, why, why do that? And again, but the blue versus green bubble thing was an incredible.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Powerful branding and lock-in mechanism for a long time.

• 44:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  So you it had value, but yeah, I Tim, just sync to Android.

• 44:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, once the so blue and green messages was tolerable. This is what I wrote in the piece that once we started going to more rich messaging formats. When someone likes your message and you get a message that says X user liked your message.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you don't see the thumbs up. That's when I think people started saying, well, F this, we're gonna go to WhatsApp. We're gonna we'll actually see the thumbs up. You don't want to know that somebody thumbs got thumbs up to you or hearted you. You actually want to see those emojis. And the rise of group messaging, I think, really plays into this in a serious way. Where all of a sudden, the email chain and Google Groups and Yahoo Groups became.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  And everyone's moving over, yep.

• 45:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  And if you're doing group texts, where are you gonna do them? You're not gonna do them on your traditional SMS apps. First of all, you don't get like the same rendering of URLs. You don't get the same rich experiences. And so you move to WhatsApp. And now, like, parents groups, for instance, in schools are all WhatsApp. And that is, you know, then people start, OK, well, where do I know my friends from? I know them from WhatsApp. You talk to each other and then the usage grows.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  And there I feel there's especially for more kind of like second and third degree connections. There's something less committing to getting someone's WhatsApp versus their phone number. Phone number feels like, you know, this is kind of serious.

• 45:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's intimate.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  You're only you're only getting your friends' phone numbers, but WhatsApp, who cares? I'll take anybody, just WhatsApp us will accept.

• 45:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Or I'm promising that from Alex's side.

• 45:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and they also have the I started these, they have channels now, WhatsApp has channels.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, broadcast, oh, so broadcast channels, maybe we'll start talking about this more. I think is very interesting.

• 46:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I do, too.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  I've started following a bunch of news organizations on WhatsApp broadcast. And it's actually like kind of a secret Twitter replacement.

• 46:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Basically, it's the equivalent of people can tweet-ish format, post articles, Washington Post, New York Times. And I check it multiple times a day and get some interesting content out of it, so. Broadcast channel sleeper hit of 2024.

• 46:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Substack also has these, uh, these channels that they, they have it in the chat function, which I use for the first time this week. I saw you participated. I asked like whether people use, uh, Amazon Prime, and I think that's also pretty cool. So this is a like pretty interesting burgeoning form of social media that's worth paying attention to. All right. Let me wrap this segment by asking you, do you think Apple is aware of just how much they're benefiting Meta? And it's almost like none of their moves have been exactly to do this, right? Like they've all been offensive moves that have ended up backfiring. Like the attempt to hamper Meta's advertising. Um, okay. Yeah, fine. That's how helped app install ads on, on the App Store, but it's also

• 47:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  helped Meta more than anybody else. The Android thing has basically led to a replacement or begun the process of replacing iMessage with WhatsApp and the Vision Pro is going to lift Meta, um, you know, in the category with a, you know, almost as functional and much cheaper device. Think Apple is aware just how much they're helping Mark Zuckerberg and co. over there in the meta, meta world?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  I think Killer Tim Cook might have something up his sleeve. I don't know what it is. You make a convincing case, but I just, I cannot, the way they've executed over the last number of years, I feel, uh, they could be up to something, something. I don't know. I don't know how they're gonna do it. Maybe Facebook does. Maybe they launched their own social network. They keep talking about Vision Pro is going to introduce this level of socializing and connecting and memories and photos and videos that we've, none of us have ever experienced. Maybe Apple launches their own Facebook.

• 48:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, I have to say they, they do promise this like, you know, uh, what is it? Like in-depth photos where you can go like the videos that you take on the iPhone 15 that you can go inside them and stuff like that. I'm pumped. I cannot wait to see how this, how these photos and videos look like when you put them spatial.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yep. Oh, spatial video. That's what they call it. Yeah. I'm excited about that one.

• 48:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm ready for it.

• 48:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, everybody. Well, thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Ranjan. Really appreciate you being here. And again, we'll be back on Wednesday with an interview with Kyle Chaitka from The New Yorker, talking about his new book, all about how algorithms have started to flatten society. And then Ranjan and I will be back next Friday with another week of news to talk with you about. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here, week after week. It's been great seeing such a return surge after the holiday break. We hope you all had a holiday, great holiday break, and it's great to be kicking off 2024 with you. So we will leave it there, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 49:20Speaker 03

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