Tech Time by Tim #61

Time for an AdTech vibe check! Google’s had some awkward secrets leak during its latest antitrust hearing, and Advertisers in general have to figure out how to spend their resources as 2024 rapidly draws near and the Hollywood strikes draw to a close. We’ll also be giving some tough love to promising new devices that have had less than promising initial showings. Last but not least, a dive down another open source rabbit hole!

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·       The Week That Was: An AdTech Vibe Check, The Changing Face Of Hollywood

·       Walled Gardening: No More Handheld Handholding, Don’t Pin Your Hopes On The S-Curve

·       Rules of Engagement: The Immutability of Independence, RISC-V Business

The Week that Was:

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

An AdTech Vibe Check:

Oops! A witness during the ongoing Google antitrust trial let slip that Apple pockets 36% of the Ad revenue on its devices. This slip-up happened because one of the more controversial parts of this trial is how Google pays Apple to be the default iOS and MacOS search engine. Not just Apple though, Samsung, which similarly claims to prioritize user privacy, is also on the hook for supposedly selling users out to Google. Indeed, not only is there a lucrative revenue share for ads, but many phone manufacturers appear to have benefited from a share of the $26.3 billion that Google also paid to bury a particular phone setting.

You’ve already guessed this one, you’re smart like that. I really respect that about you dear reader. Indeed, the buried setting is the ability to change your default search engine. The times in AdTech, they are a changing. Although many media publishers plan to increase their spending in 2024, the tough market conditions are also leading to yet more layoffs alongside strategic shifts. For example, WhatsApp presences are trending up, and of course, Meta is hard at work figuring out how to cram as many ads as possible into the app. At least do so more gracefully than Amazon. Please.

Like social media, AdTech is fragmenting. Publishers are shifting attention from expensive, high-profile influencers to small and medium-sized influencers. Similarly, new strategies such as cultural relevance pushes are intended to help better distinguish brands from their competitors in overly saturated markets of consumers not as easily parted from their money as before. Music marketing is hardly new in this regard, but it is rapidly gaining steam. So-called ‘niche media’ will be important to keep an eye on the coming year, it’s likely that some of the more interesting AdTech developments and success stories will occur there. LINK

The Changing Face Of Hollywood:

After 118 days, the longest strike in Hollywood’s history appears to be over. A tentative deal has been reached between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Part of the conflict was about generative AI; part of it was about residuals. Residuals are payments not just for the initial performances, but also for showing and reuse of performances or actor likenesses. As Hollywood attempts to get back on track, advertisers are also weighing their options, part of the wider strategic re-evaluations we previously covered in this very newsletter.

Time didn’t stop during the Hollywood strikes. The streaming wars only got fiercer, Disney+ and Hulu are combining into one app for example. Not only that, but Nintendo, a gaming company well known for its cross-media merchandising capabilities is moving in on the box office. After the major success of previous game-to-film adaptations such as Pokémon and Mario, it has now been announced that The Legend of Zelda will get an adaptation. I look forward to how they’ll try to explain to moviegoers that the protagonist of this franchise is actually called ‘Link.’ 

I say that partially as a joke, but it’s no laughing matter for Hollywood’s old guard, such as Disney-owned Marvel Studios. Though masked by the drama and immediate threat the strikes represented, franchise fatigue with such properties as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has some wondering whether or not video game movies might take over as the star performers at the cinema. This whole thing kind of reminds me of the game musical chairs, where everyone has to dance around a bunch of chairs, and for every round one chair is removed. The music stops and everyone scrambles to find a seat, the last to do so is eliminated. If game companies get into movies, streaming services stream shows, music, and games, and cinemas have to compete with all of them, that’s going to be a hell of a crowded room. LINK

Walled Gardening:

Observing walled gardens and monopolies in the tech world.

No More Handheld Handholding:

I was surprised to find this week that Apple paused iOS development to focus on bug fixes. Apple? Really? One of the biggest arguments in that company’s favor has always been the seamless experience of its devices and ecosystem. Lately though, this hasn’t so much been the case, with the iPhone 15 launch being particularly, uncharacteristically rocky. Worse still, since regulators are still on the war path, it’s also more difficult to crush upstarts breaking into the walled garden.

Apple is not alone in having a bit of trouble staying the course though, as Sony recently released its first handheld since 2012’s PS Vita. This device, called the PlayStation Portal, is completely worthless if you have neither a PS5 nor an internet connection good enough to stream games from your PS5.

To be honest, I foresee this ‘PSP’ being decidedly less successful than the original PlayStation Portable of decades past. For those who don’t know, the PSP was the Vita’s predecessor. It wasn’t that much of a hit globally but was a phenomenal domestic success in Japan.

The quality of Sony’s hardware is outstanding, but rather than another example of that particular strength, this device feels more like an expensive and awkward admission of just how badly Sony is lagging as far as streaming is concerned. It now finds itself pincered between the rapidly developing handheld PC sector on the hardware front, and new rivals such as Netflix trying to come at its gaming market share via the cloud.

Here’s the thing though. Media overload is causing a flattening of user experience (UX) design. People are used to particular User Interfaces (UI’s) on their favorite services, so rivals trying to poach these users will take what works from rivals and try to streamline and simplify as much as they can. The end result is everything ultimately looks the same. And herein lies the opportunity for the likes of Sony and Apple. They make excellent hardware, driven by clean, elegant, and distinct UX which rivals have thus far failed to emulate. Apple needs to stop being lazy and sloppy, and Sony needs to get its handheld head out of its ass, but there’s definitely a way forward here. LINK

Don’t Pin Your Hopes On The S-Curve:

Articles about hands-on sessions with the ‘AI Pin’ from startup ‘Humane’ continue to trickle in. Having seen the actual device meant to end up in the consumer's hand…er…clothes… I’m kind of wondering if we can still call it a pin at this point. I mean, it looks to be roughly the size of an AirPod case. A big deal has been made of the collaboration with OpenAI, and in a promotional video meant to showcase the wearable’s capabilities, it made two relatively basic mistakes about astronomy and nutrition. OpenAI itself also had plenty of issues to contend with after its first developer conference.

Humane was founded by ex-Apple staff who poached around 90 fellow (former) employees on their way out. OpenAI is actively trying to poach Google’s AI experts. If recent surveys are to be believed, they might want to poach Nvidia talent instead. Who knows, perhaps they’ll give a bit of an expertise head start with using the upcoming H200 GPU. That’s kind of the Achilles heel of the so-called S-curve narrative that Humane appears to be quite a fan of. The S-curve theory believes that every 15 years, a new cycle of technology happens and the old must make way for the new. I disagree. It’s a lovely sales pitch for sure, but history has shown us that evolution, rather than revolution, tends to drive tech forward.

The problem with the S-curve today has to do with the laws of thermodynamics. These dictate that you can only make devices so small and light before they can no longer handle the power (and resulting heat) of whatever high-performance hardware you put into them. As a result of that, this Pin has to outsource most of its core functionality.

And that’s my problem with it. Voice control and AI are already dependent on external parties such as OpenAI and telecom providers (for connectivity). As a concept, I love this pin. I think it has wonderful potential that deserves to be iterated upon. Combine a device like this with a good pair of smart glasses to add the necessary visual elements and there could well be a killer combo. The pin has a projector in it, but that’s not enough to cover everything. Similarly, smart glasses have their own limitations. These devices could cover each other and synergize, which is ultimately where I believe the true value proposition will end up being. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

The Immutability Of Independence:

This past week, gaming publication ‘The Escapist’ lost its entire video team after popular Editor in Chief, Nick Calandra, was fired by parent company ‘Gamurs’. Some of the other staff were fired along with him, others quit in solidarity. Independent workers, especially in fields such as gaming, tend to be referred to as ‘indies (a shortened form of independent).’ Both the number of indies, as well as high profile indie success stories, keep rising. The relationship between indies and corporations actually mirrors that between open source and corporations, so I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about that.

Job security and financial stability are why developers submit to corporate control. Given present circumstances, this may not seem particularly convincing, but it has been the case historically. Freedom and passion are what push open source forward. Neither are inherently good or bad. On the contrary, they exist in equilibrium. Corporate technology parasitizes open source development and open source development gains attention and resources from corporations. Sometimes corporations invest directly. It’s quite common for corporations to make contributions to open-source projects to condition developers to use that corporation’s tools and infrastructure, or to make it easier for the open-source code to be integrated into that corporation’s closed-source projects.

Other times, there might be some scandal or unpopular update that pushes end users to look for alternatives. Open-source projects benefit from such events. These days, big tech also needs the open-source community to serve as a shield against regulation. Taken as a whole, it is impossible for big tech to ever kill open source, just as it is impossible for open source to truly escape from the grasp of big tech. For better or worse, they need each other. Calandra and star (former) Escapist creator Yahtzee are launching a new platform together with many of the Escapist Escapees, the announcement stream of which goes over a lot of the tensions we’ve just discussed. LINK

RISC-V Business:

A TikTok trend caught my attention this past week, one where influencers repackage the contents of newspapers as ‘drama’ for their audiences. It stands out due to wider news media efforts to gain footholds in various chat apps and short-form video platforms. One example of that is the news organizations building a presence on WhatsApp. The reason why the drama angle is successful is because some people, especially younger audiences need a translation layer between them and the news in order for the information to register properly. That’s an interesting monetization avenue if handled well.

Monetization continues to be a sore spot for TikTok, which is overhauling its payment program for creators again in search of marketable success stories. Speaking of marketable success stories, TikTok’s struggles match the uphill monetization battle faced by the RISC-V instruction set architecture. This is pronounced ‘risk five’ but can also be read as ‘risk v’ which sounds a lot like ‘risky’ and I thought that was funny. RISC-V is an alternative to instruction set architectures such as x86 (popular for Windows devices) and ARM (used by Apple’s M-series chips).

RISC-V is an open architecture, making it difficult to regulate since all the necessary information is right there out in the open already. All the more reason to pay extra attention to recent hardware developments in China. Not only has a large RISC-V commercial cloud been launched, but a Chinese chip maker SophGo is developing a RISC-V chip based on designs from US company SiFive. 

TikTok gets a lot of flak for its Chinese ownership, yet US companies are also largely dependent on China both for production and for the share of total revenue that China’s huge population represents. Should China successfully create a RISC-V-based infrastructure, the leverage it has over the likes of Meta would become even more problematic for US lawmakers to contend with. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Tomb Raiders LINK

Jungle Gym Birthday LINK

Latour’s Shrooms LINK

Save The Spire LINK

Right To Repair LINK

Cockroach Comet LINK

East & West UX LINK

Eye and Face Transplant LINK

Spinal Solutions LINK 

Smog Solutions LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of long-form content recommendations.

Free Level Design Book:

A free eBook on level design in the Unity game engine. LINK

The Mirai Confessions:

Three teens broke some of the biggest platforms on the internet then got hired by the FBI. LINK

Only Fans Expose:

An in depth look at creator economics through the lens of top performers on OnlyFans. LINK

Game Economics Theory:

The principles behind building a prosperous game economy. LINK

Steam Deck OLED Review:

A technical breakdown of what makes this refined steam deck effective as a product. LINK

One More Thing…

I think I might have accidentally angered the advertising gods or something by exposing all those advertising secrets in my recent newsletters. I always go for walks in the dunes, and there are some very high stairs there. So, same as I do every day, I set out one fateful morning this past week to walk my dog, Millie. I saw the first rays of sunshine in what felt like forever reflecting off of metal plaques that had never been there before. Each individual step of the long, long stairs towards the highest point of the dunes had a plaque on it. You’ll never guess what was on the plaques. Advertisements.

I thought that was darkly comedic. Even in the heart of nature, some people will still find a way to make you look at their ads. The reflectivity of the metal made it impossible to miss these plaques, though the lower ones were caked in mud and impossible to read. I guess that might have been symbolic for pages further on in search results, who’s to say? So anyway, Millie, my dear dog, enthusiastically waddled up to one of those dune ads and…took a piss in front of it. I was now looking at my cute little pet instead of the advertisement she’d blocked with her fluffy butt. Ah yes, even in the heart of nature, some people will still find a way to block your ads.