Tech Time by Tim #65

The final standard newsletter of the year is extra chunky! Let’s sail the high seas and talk about piracy! We’ve also got quite the Fortnite fight on our hands and the rich are…eating themselves? Huh. If you’d prefer something a little more like a fairytale than a horror movie, how about ‘Three Little Models and the Big Woke Wolf? It was quite a complicated (re)search to find that. Last but not least, tech bubbles and stagnation band-aids.

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·?????? The Week That Was: If Buying Isn’t Owning Then Piracy Isn’t Stealing, The Fortnite Fight

·?????? Walled Gardening: When The Rich Eat Themselves, Three Little Models And The Big Woke Wolf

·?????? Rules of Engagement: A Complicated (Re)Search, Tech Bubbles And Stagnation Band-Aids

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

If Buying Isn’t Owning Then Piracy Isn’t Stealing:

Sadly we need to take another swing at Sony because due to a breakdown in negotiations with Discovery owner Time Warner, PlayStation owners will be losing access to 1318 seasons of Discovery shows that they’ve already paid for . No refunds. The response to this by the community can be most elegantly expressed by the title of this very item, one borrowed from writer Cory Doctorow. Whilst Sony isn’t directly to blame in this case, it can be held accountable for enabling such an event. To quote Doctorow, “The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades.”

This is especially painful in light of game studio Bethesda once again trying to re-release its paid mod system . The reason why this system has been so hated that it kept failing is because Bethesda’s games are (in)famous for how modders are the ones that make them playable . Thus, should monetizing mods become an industry trend, both the broken game and the solution could then be individually sold. At present, we call broken games with individually sold fixes ‘live service’ games, but those still require paid (albeit easily fired ) contractors. Monetized mods are so desirable for the likes of Bethesda since they are free labors of love by the customers themselves. Perhaps Bethesda thought that no one would notice amidst the predictably record-breaking Grand Theft Auto (GTA) VI trailer ? It was released last week and is still dominating the conversation this week.

Why did I wait to cover such a big thing until now though? Remember how I said that I didn’t like jumping the gun? What I wanted to know before writing about GTA VI was who leaked it. It was a developer’s son . This is pretty amazing given the series’ history with controversies , primarily with regards to ‘Think of the children!’ style moral panics. Not thinking enough of the children is how we all got this early preview though. More ironic still is what kind of Grand Thefts are at the forefront in 2023, and who gets to make money off of them.

Did you know, for example, that one of the most effective means to acquire pirated games is Amazon? That rather defeats the point of pirating if you ask me, but it does point to the inherent paradox at the heart of ‘subversive’ media such as GTA or anything in the Cyberpunk genre these days. They are supposedly about downtrodden rebels defying the mega-corporations who rule the world. Yet none of the main characters in such works of fiction would be allowed to say that if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing. LINK

The Fortnite Fight:

A few Lego bricks finally fell into place this past weekend. Lego, by some unfathomable miracle of incompetence and lack of foresight completely missed the boat on the wildly successful game Minecraft which, for all intents and purposes, was functionally digital Lego. This past week, the brand sought to rectify its mistake and launched Lego Fortnite which is…basically Lego Minecraft. Anyone who’s ever played Minecraft or played with Lego can probably guess how well this turned out. For those that haven’t played either, first of all, may your preferred deity have mercy on your soul. And second, since its launch, Lego Fortnite has seen peaks of 2-4 million concurrent players , the vast majority of which seemed rather positive about the experience. ?

Meta’s quest headsets also have a Lego building game, a more conventional Virtual Reality (VR) Lego experience which has received positive reviews . I must admit to being a bit surprised. Though there have been very successful Lego video games in the past, these have tended to just be popular media franchises like Star Wars represented with Lego. The famous bricks were just a means to an end here, rather than the stars of the show.

Another thing stuck out to me about Lego Fortnite though, namely that you can transfer cosmetics from the ‘main’ game. Fortnite creator Epic Games is gradually converting more cosmetics as they go, but this represents a rather interesting and lucrative revenue stream. Fortnite is famous for introducing such monetization tactics as a battle pass (reward track that doles out goodies as you hit targets) that people actually care about, and a rotating selection of cosmetics meant to trigger Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

And wouldn’t you know it, looks like Epic and Lego can just split the profits between themselves on Android devices, rather than having to give a 30% cut to Google. Because unlike its loss to Apple, Epic has won its antitrust case against Google. To paraphrase Ben Thompson, of Stratechery, this may be because Google isn’t the best at fairly representing what people are signing up for with the Google Play store. He goes on to guess if perhaps the Jury ruled that feigning an open ecosystem is anti-competitive and that this is what Google was doing. By this logic Apple would be telling users and developers up front that they have no choice and can only do as Apple says. Thompson believes that perhaps having this closed nature actually be part of the value proposition could have made the difference. That’s pretty hilariously screwed up if accurate, but we’ll likely find out more details as Google inevitably appeals the initial verdict. LINK

Walled Gardening:

Observing walled gardens and monopolies in the tech world.

When The Rich Eat Themselves:

I came across a rather macabre article the other day about how in the 1600s, members of a small Dutch town apparently ate the rich . I don’t know, maybe they were upset about the extortionate supermarket prices and got…Ahold…of the culprits? Back in those days, meat was a luxury product that only the rich could afford with any regularity, so there’s an extra layer of irony here. But all right, what am I getting at? I’m getting at the topic of ‘greedflation ’ which is inflation caused, not by general economic forces, but by specific individual greed . Back in the 1600s greed came around to bite the culprits, so I’m curious to see how things might pan out today.

You see, I’ve noticed how financial and commercial cannibalism and even self-cannibalization are getting a bit out of hand in the tech world. Cannibalization refers to members of the same species eating one another. And what I mean in this context is that the excessive actions of high-profile individuals are drawing regulatory attention to longstanding collective misbehavior. Regulators are, as the saying goes, beginning to show their teeth. These regulators themselves tend to be of the same privileged class as misbehaving executives, so hence why I’m calling it cannibalism when they chow down on misbehaving executives.

Some examples of what I mean are the weird way Intel called out AMD for misrepresentation that Intel itself also does. Some new AMD chips look awfully familiar , and thinking it was being clever, Intel scored a bit of an own goal calling this out. Continuing on, former Spotify CFO Paul Vogel took quite a chunk out of the company, cashing in $9.3 million in shares as the stock price soared . Why did it soar? Because another 1500 jobs are being cut. Speaking of cashing out… A former Apple lawyer, Gene Levoff, was convicted of insider trading. He was responsible for enforcing policies against insider trading. Funny that .

You’ve probably had your fill of ‘eating’ metaphors for now, so let’s finish this up shall we? I believe that greed overextending itself is a bad thing in the short term, but a net positive in the long term. One of the most direct examples of greed is the gambling industry, and under normal circumstances, a direct attack on this industry is doomed. We’ve seen that time and time again. However, when people don’t have enough wine and games to distract them when most people are struggling with greedflation, and mad at the ones causing it… There’s a chance that the lawyer who successfully took on big tobacco in the past might go for seconds (ok I’m sorry, I’ll stop now). I mean, I wouldn’t bet on it, but his odds aren’t looking too bad. LINK

Three Little Models and The Big Woke Wolf:

Aside from OpenAI, there are plenty of other controversial companies of debatable stability to talk about. So why haven’t I? We’ve covered Meta’s LlaMA, we’ve covered Stability and Anthropic…but what about Elon Musk’s supposed efforts, what about Google? It’s quite simple really. I haven’t covered them because there wasn’t much to cover until now. Google became a laughingstock for releasing (bad ) press releases rather than models, and Elon…well I don’t like jumping the gun. Jumping the gun is a great way to get yourself shot. So I waited for there to be enough to show of each model to actually say something meaningful about them. In that regard, we’ll also be taking another look at French AI company Mistral which, unlike OpenAI’s employees, did accept Marc Andreesen’s offer to join him .

So, let’s be fair here. Google’s Gemini model and Mistral’s latest effort both seem genuinely impressive. Yeah, faking a demo and lying about it was phenomenally stupid , as many articles have already pointed out. And I also continue to have strong moral objections to Mistral’s online airdrops of models without any guardrails via magnet links (torrents are hard to track, harder to take down). But at least these models aren’t…dare I say it…? WOKE. Do you know what is woke though? Elon Musk’s ‘Grok ’ chatbot, is available to Twitter premium subscribers. Those tracking Musk’s messy descent down the conspiracy-riddled rabbit hole of the far-right can probably appreciate the irony. Those awaiting him at the bottom were less thrilled.

Much like people, AI's cannibalize each other too. In fact, AI cannibalism is more a rule than an exception. As public pressure to avoid taking content without permission ramps up, model training comes to rely more and more on existing models, on existing data sets. As the pool of available training data shrinks it becomes ever harder to separate one model’s output and biases from the others. This is what I and others have referred to as ‘AI eating itself.’ Keep that in mind when reading this interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Gemini and the ‘coming age’ of AI, as he puts it. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

A Complicated (Re)Search:

The EU has finally managed to settle on the preliminary setup for its long-anticipated AI sovereignty bill. One of the greatest issues towards implementation is that companies such as the previously mentioned Mistral, and popular model repository Citiv are particularly difficult to regulate . Why, well, you may have heard this from me before but…the Open Source problem. How do you address big tech companies such as Meta employing user data in ways that may not be fair or equitable without entirely killing off innovation and small companies? That’s one of the core questions that have made the AI sovereignty bill such a complex issue thus far.

In order to find out exactly what is fair and equitable you need research. In order to find out if, and to what extent platforms are responsible and accountable for problematic content and behavior, you need research. Research costs a lot of money. So, you’d think that a $500 million dollar donation to a university would be really good right? Eh…it’s complicated. There’s this Dutch saying that can be roughly translated to “the one that pays the bill gets the final say.” Indeed, it’s not just about whether or not the EU can lead the world on regulation , it’s also about whether or not it’s financially feasible to resist the influence of big tech, be it for research institutions or even entire industries.

So it goes that a Harvard disinformation researcher Joan Donovan is now accusing Meta of forcing the shutdown of her media manipulation research project back in 2021. She was recently dismissed from her position entirely, and thus decided it was whistleblowing time . One of the reasons why I myself didn’t want to pursue a career in academia was because I too once worked on a project (as a student researcher) that got buried. The major institution it concerned really didn’t like what we showed them. I’m obviously not breaking my Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), but funding is truly the Achilles Heel of research. It’s rather hard to speak truth to the power that keeps your lights on. LINK

Tech Bubbles And Stagnation Band-Aids:

Remember phone maker Nothing cracking iMessage, and me saying there was no way this would be the last we’d seen of that? Well, look what we have here! Another big ol’ hole in the wall of Apple’s beloved garden. Initially, the ‘Beeper Mini’ app was swiftly crushed with claims that it endangered users of iOS. At the time of writing Apple and Beeper Mini are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game. On one side is Beeper Mini, constantly coming up with workarounds but at risk of running out of funds because it can’t charge users whilst the chase is on. On the other side is Apple, which of course has the means to crush Beeper, but can only go so far in its efforts. Apple is in an especially precarious position because of the previously detailed court loss of Google to Epic with regards to the Android ecosystem.

How much control particular companies can exert over their ecosystem and those operating within it has never been under such intense scrutiny as it is now. Ironically, it seems that scrutiny extends to users as well, since it was recently revealed that governments can actively spy on iOS users via push notifications . Apple was barred from revealing this by order of the US government. NDA’s again, huh? Suddenly the weird situation of the game studio Bungie also makes a lot more sense. Bungie has long struggled with allegations of a pervasive culture of fear and abuse . Some guessed this to at least be partially responsible for lackluster performance. Recent reports show that Bungie was allowed to maintain full independence after a Sony takeover only if it ‘earned it.’ Oh dear .

One of the most hated parts of present-day Bungie is the excessive monetization of its marquee title Destiny 2. Those players who stubbornly remain despite everything lament the lengths to which Bungie will go in order to justify these systems. This is a symptom of a problem with design in tech that I, and others, fear may repeat and get even worse as AI tools and workflows continue to proliferate. Indeed, the Scientific American’s Ed Zitron warns that AI is already becoming a band-aid over bad, broken tech industry design choices. And it could be so much more than a band-aid, we could do so much better than reselling stolen quality of life back to users at a premium. We could do so much better than turning genuinely amazing virtual worlds into glorified storefronts! I want to believe that there’s so much better in (app) store for us. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

DOOM At 30 LINK

Dead Last LINK

Hedged Out LINK

Brain Chips LINK

Taste-E LINK

Get a Li-Fi! LINK

Aid Cube LINK

CRISPR Cure? LINK

Bacterial Concrete LINK

Self-Cleaning Teeth LINK

Wooden Screens LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

If It Truly Is a COPout, What Alternatives Is There?

An opinion piece examining the chances of success for alternatives to the Conference Of the Parties (COP) climate summit. LINK

The Sweet Science:

A person with Parkinson’s Disease takes up boxing and explores what it can and can’t do for them. LINK

Dated Design:

An extensive critique of the game Starfield. LINK

GTA Q&A:

A Q&A session with Digital Foundry regarding their analysis of the GTA VI trailer, for those wanting a closer look under the proverbial hood. LINK

One More Thing…

You’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of names in this edition of the newsletter! That’s because I’m changing my citation style in preparation for voiced versions of the newsletter. I’ve been wanting to record spoken versions for quite some time now and am still working towards finding a good way to integrate this into my workflow. However, one of the ways in which I can already prepare for that is to directly cite the names of publications and individuals in my texts. Whilst it’s easy enough for readers to click my links and go directly to their sources, this isn’t possible for any potential ‘audio only’ subscribers I might get down the line. So going forward, I’ll be directly naming names where relevant and non-disruptive to the overall flow of my texts.

Moving on, as previously noted in the past two issues of the newsletter, this is the last normal newsletter of the year. Next week you’ll get the special edition ‘The Year That Was’ in your inbox, and then I’ll be off for a week. I look forward to seeing you all in the new year, which we’ll start off with another special edition where I make my predictions for 2024.