In Elon Musk's brain, companies not placing ads on X isn't a sensible business decision to not have their brands affiliated with a dumpster fire after being told to "go fuck yourself" (remember that, lol), but is, in the words of X's CEO Linda Yaccarino, an "illegal boycott" that's so severe, they're suing the World Federation of Advertisers and several large corporations like Unilever, Mars, CVS and Orsted. Musk said on X about the lawsuit that "we tried peace for 2 years, now it is war", with the suit itself arguing that the advertisers getting together to boycott X was an illegal antitrust action to force X to adhere to its own brand safety standards. Suing the industry we want to be our customers is some real 4D chess next level brain activity.
Google is snuffing out the Chromecast, kinda. The cheap and cheerful little dongle that goes in the back of your TV is no longer, with Google selling a US$100 "Google TV Streamer" instead. Basically an Apple TV, but by Google. 4K output, Dolby Vision & Atmos, can even use the Pixel Buds Pro for spatial audio. It also acts as a hub for Matter and Google Home, just like the Apple TV and HomeKit. Because this is Google and it's 2024, they've shoved in Gemini to provide "full summaries, reviews, and season-by-season breakdowns of content" and some AI-generated screensavers. Goes on sale September 24th. Nvidia's Shield TV Pro from 2019 is still the GOAT of media players though.
Intel's resurrection relies on how long it takes them get 20A and 18A process nodes on sale and if they can pull off their plan to become a foundry for other chip designers (aka catching up with TSMC). Today Intel announced that "their first 18A chips are back from the development fab and are successfully booting operating systems", are "yielding well" and is "ahead of schedule on its product qualification milestones". If that pace continues, the first CPUs using 18A should go on sale in the 2nd half of 2025. On the foundry side, Intel's "first external customer chip design will tape out in the first half of 2025", but they aren't naming that customer yet. The share price is still down in the US$19-$20 range compared to the US$30 range last week.
404 Media is back with another excellent story in their series on Facebook's AI slop, discovering that Meta is actually paying people to make this shit. A big driver of the slop is Facebook's Creator Bonus Program, which pays people "a few cents per photo to hundreds of dollars per photo if it goes megaviral". Folks in poor countries are using AI to generate bizarre and grotesque images that idiots all over the world react to. The more reactions they get, the more chance that the Creator Bonus Program will give them a few bucks. Not worth it for us, but for them it's decent money when done at scale. Good for them, stealing money from Zuck is a cause I can get behind.
As NASA's two Voyager spacecraft travel out into deep space, they carry a small American flag and a Golden Record packed with pictures and sounds - mementos of our home planet. This picture shows John Casani, Voyager project manager in 1977, holding a small Dacron flag that was folded and sewed into the thermal blankets of the Voyager spacecraft before they launched 36 years ago. Below him lie the Golden Record (left) and its cover (right). In the background stands Voyager 2 before it headed to the launch pad. The picture was taken at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Aug. 4, 1977. (Wikipedia)
📻 Butthole Surfers - Jingle Of A Dog's Collar
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