Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - podcast cover

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompsonsharptech.fm
A podcast about understanding how tech works and the way it is changing the world. Hosted by Andrew Sharp with Ben Thompson.
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Episodes

Spotify’s Royal Mess, Ford and GM Partner with Tesla, HBO Weighs Selling Content to Netflix

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm It’s a Tesla — Stratechery An Interview with The Ringer Founder and CEO Bill Simmons — Stratechery Interviews Podcast Grifting; Aggregator Lessons; Ostroff, Simmons, and Harry — Stratechery Update EV Charging Standards, Tesla’s Strategy, Tesla’s Reward — Stratechery Update Streaming Shocker: Warner Bros. Discovery In Talks To License HBO Original Series To Netflix — Deadline Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Gre...

Jun 22, 2023

(Preview) Reddit as a Business, APIs and Interest Rates and Angry Moderators, The Athletic Rethinks Its Coverage Approach

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Reddit Revolt, Apollo and Reddit’s Changes, Complement Complaints — Stratechery Update Reddit Rage, The Tadpole Shrimp of the Internet, Judge Pauses Microsoft-Activision Deal — Stratechery Update An Interview with Zeynep Tufekci About Masks, Media, and Information Ecology — Stratechery Interviews Your Distraught Season Ending Voicemails — RTRS The Athletic announces layoffs and new approach to its sports coverage — Washington Post Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg...

Jun 15, 202310 min

An All Things Apple Mailbag: AI and the Vision Pro, Gaming Ambivalence, Immersive Memories, VR Sports Rights

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Apple Vision — Stratechery The End of the Beginning — Stratechery Quest vs. Vision, Vision and the Mac, Apple Acquires Mira — Stratechery Tech’s Two Philosophies — Stratechery Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Greatest of All Talk and the Dithering Podcast as part of Stratechery Plus for $12/month....

Jun 13, 20231 hr 8 min

Clown Car History Lessons, Both Sides of the Twitter-Substack Fight, Parenthood Tech Strategies

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Substack Notes, Twitter Blocks Substack, Substack Versus Writers — Stratechery Update Substack CEO pushes back at Elon Musk, says Twitter situation is ‘very frustrating’ — The Verge Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Greatest of All Talk and the Dithering Podcast as part of Stratechery Plus for $12/month....

Apr 10, 20231 hr 4 min

(Preview) A Twitter Temperature Check, Reactions to that AI Open Letter, The Technical Logistics of a TikTok Ban

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Replit and Google, The Google Perspective, Twitter’s Bad Idea — Stratechery Update Tweet by Elon Musk — @elonmusk Twitter Has a New CEO; What About a New Business Model? — Stratechery ChatGPT Gets a Computer — Stratechery The Accidental Consumer Tech Company; ChatGPT, Meta, and Product-Market Fit; Aggregation and APIs — Stratechery Update Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter — Future of Life Institute Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Sh...

Mar 30, 202310 min

Evaluating AI Risk and Entering an Era of Incredible Unknowns

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Apple and AI, Lobotomized Lovers, XR Companions — Stratechery Update AI and the Big Five — Stratechery Welcome to Stratechery — Stratechery Who Funds the Future? — The New Yorker Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Greatest of All Talk and the Dithering Podcast as part of Stratechery Plus for $12/month....

Mar 27, 20231 hr 3 min

Appropriate Fear of Microsoft, A Workplace Efficiency Counterpoint, Artifact and Substack in the Modern Era

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm The Future of Work With AI — Microsoft YouTube Channel AI and the Big Five — Stratechery More on Google and AI; OpenAI, Integration, and Microsoft — Stratechery Update An Interview with Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger About Artifact — Stratechery Interviews Sovereign Writers and Substack — Stratechery Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Greatest of All Talk and the Dithering Podcast as part of Stratechery Plus for ...

Mar 20, 20231 hr 7 min

(Preview) A Big Week for AI, Closed Source vs. Open Source Development, Meta in the "Year of Efficiency"

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm GPT-4, Google Adds AI to Productivity Apps, Local Language Models — Stratechery Update Here are some incredible things people are already doing with GPT-4 — @LinusEkenstam Lensa and Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion and Apple Silicon, Open Questions — Stratechery Update Friction — Stratechery Meta’s powerful AI language model has leaked online — what happens now? — The Verge Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency — Meta Oscars Draw 18.7 Million Viewers — New Y...

Mar 16, 202312 min

The SVB Collapse, How the Government Responded, and the Era in Tech that Ended This Weekend

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm The End of Silicon Valley (Bank) — Stratechery Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC — U.S. Dept. of Treasury The Demise of Silicon Valley Bank — Net Interest Startup Bank Had a Startup Bank Run — Bloomberg The Uber Dilemma — Stratechery The End of the Beginning — Stratechery The End of the Beginning Follow-Up, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, Venture versus Productive Capital — Stratechery Update Get Sh...

Mar 13, 20231 hr 12 min

(Preview) Xbox History and VR’s Future, The TikTok Ban, Much to Consider Before a Pivot from Big Tech

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Spotify Stream On 2023 — YouTube I don’t think Meta knows it’s a game company — The Verge Status as a Service (StaaS) — Eugene Wei Meta and the Quest Pro; Meta and VR as Console; Microsoft, Activision, and the EU — Stratechery Update FCC relaxes rule limiting foreign ownership of media stations — Washington Post White House backs Senate bill to boost US ability to ban TikTok — Reuters Exclusive: Senator's TikTok whistleblower alleges data abuses — Axios MLS ...

Mar 09, 20239 min

What the NBA Can Learn from Formula 1, Why ESPN May Need to Pivot Too, The EPL Outlier and Apple's MLS Experiment

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm What the NBA Can Learn from Formula 1 — Stratechery ESPN wants to be the hub of all live sports streaming — even if it helps its competition — CNBC The Intel Opportunity — Stratechery r/formuladank — Reddit MLS on Apple TV, The MLS Perspective, The Apple Perspective — Stratechery Update The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports — Amazon Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Strate...

Mar 06, 20231 hr 6 min

The Google Culture Question, A Law of Large Companies, Twitter's Algorithm Plans, Apple's Attempt at Glucose Monitoring

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm The Google CEO Question, Steve Ballmer and Peacetime CEOs, About That Bard Mistake — Stratechery Update Evaluating Sundar Pichai, EC Announces New Google Investigation, Amazon Blocks FLoC — Stratechery Update The maze is in the mouse — Medium Google Executives See Cracks in Their Company’s Success — New York Times App founder quits Google, says company doesn’t serve users anymore — Ars Technica Welcome to Stratechery — Stratechery Elon Musk suggests Twitter ...

Feb 27, 20231 hr 8 min

(Preview) What Spotify Learned About Podcasting, The RSN Train Wheezing Along, Does ESPN Need the NBA?

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Spotify’s Future Isn’t Exclusive Podcasts. It’s Advertising. — Bloomberg Lessons From Spotify — Stratechery Spotify’s Podcast Aggregation Play — Stratechery Spotify Earnings, Spotify Exclusives, Spotify vs. Apple — Stratechery Update Spotify Buys Megaphone, Spotify’s Podcast Strategy, Spotify’s Megaphone Strategy — Stratechery Update How Spotify's podcast bet went wrong — Semafor “Not, like, the nine greatest experts on the internet”: Justices seem leery of ...

Feb 23, 202312 min

A Viking Funeral for Sydney the Chatbot, Meta’s Verified Experiment, Algorithms and Liability as Section 230 Takes Center Stage

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm From Bing to Sydney — Stratechery Microsoft Puts New Limits On Bing’s AI Chatbot After It Expressed Desire To Steal Nuclear Secrets — Forbes Ben Thompson on Twitter — @benthompson The Four Horseman — Stratechery Google and Microsoft’s Events, Monetizable Panic, Paradigms and Hardware — Stratechery Update Mark Zuckerberg — Facebook Biden and Republican senators join forces in attack on Big Tech at Supreme Court — NBC News New Bing Errors, User Preferences and...

Feb 20, 20231 hr 1 min

(Preview) The Bing to Sydney Epiphany, Search as an AI Red Herring, Moving to a Cabin in an Undisclosed Location

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm From Bing to Sydney — Stratechery New Bing Errors, User Preferences and Company Reputations, Section 230 and LLMs — Stratechery Update Eric Schmidt Is Building the Perfect AI War-Fighting Machine — Wired Get Sharp Tech Premium, Sharp China, Stratechery Update, Stratechery Interviews, Greatest of All Talk and the Dithering Podcast as part of Stratechery Plus for $12/month....

Feb 16, 202312 min

(Preview) Google vs. Bing Begins, Bear Cases for AI, Apple's Lost Hardware Opportunity, The Implications of the Bally Sports Bankruptcy

To email the show: email@sharptech.fm Google Stock Tumbles Nearly 8% After Bard Ad Shows Inaccurate Answer, AI Race Heats Up — Investor’s Business Daily New Bing, and an Interview with Kevin Scott and Sam Altman About the Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership — Stratechery Interview Why TV Has Resisted Disruption — Stratechery In Paris demo, Google scrambles to counter ChatGPT but ends up embarrassing itself — Ars Technica Here's Why Apple Isn't Making a Television — Time Magazine Disney to cut 7,000 job...

Feb 09, 202310 min
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