Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Wednesday, November 6, 2024. I'm Brian McCullodt today. The Tech Angle To The Election News yesterday, and interestingly, a lot of it is crypto-related. The EU Commission looks like it will find Apple and has opened a case against Corning. Proplexity is raising another massive new round, and a pretty definitive piece about how drone tech has changed warfare. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
Well here's the Tech Angle on the election for you from yesterday. A bunch of things, so I'm just going to do a grab bag. Trump media and technology groups stock jumped more than 35% in pre-market trading, hitting a greater than $7 billion market cap. Tesla is up more than 10% in pre-market. Looks like Elon Musk's gamble on Donald Trump paid off. Trump gave Musk a lengthy shout out in his victory speech, calling him a super genius.
Bitcoin has past $74,000 hitting an all-time high, and other coins have also jumped. Bitcoin is up nearly 70% year to date. Republican blockchain entrepreneur Bernie Moreno defeated Senate banking chair Sherrod Brown in the Ohio Senate race. Crypto packs gave more than $40 million to defeat Brown. And actually, a lot of the winning angles here are about crypto. For example, the prediction markets, they're largely built on blockchain-related
technologies, right? Polymarket, CalShi, predicted, which heavily favored Trump for months, does this vindicate them? Quoting coin desk. To those who'd been watching the odds on Polymarket, CalShi predicted and similar betting sites over the course of the year, the results were long within the realm of possibility. Now, markets were far and away the best forecast of the 2024 election said Coleman strumped
a professor of economics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. While pollsters said too close to call, or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is favored, markets identified Trump as the favorite end quote. The vindication comes after several weeks in which the mainstream media harped on the theory that Polymarket wish runs on crypto rails and has seen billions of dollars in trading volume this year was being manipulated by pro Trump forces to inflate
his odds. None of the hysterical claims about how markets would damage democracy or other woes came to pass. Strump said, although the Associated Press, traditionally the gold standard had not called the race in the wee small hours of the morning Wednesday, Polymarket was giving Republican candidate Donald Trump a 98.8% chance of retaking the White House from about 60% 24 hours earlier. For most of the late summer and fall, polls were giving the
edge, albeit small and sometimes within the margin of error, two Democrats. But by 1.25 am Eastern time Wednesday, even the New York Times, hardly in the tank for Trump, was giving him a greater than 95% chance of victory. The newspapers online needle was forecasting he would win 306 electoral votes, well more than the 270 needed to win. None of this is to say that polls and other forecasting methods still don't have their place as even proponents
of prediction markets were quick to point out. The lesson is that markets are great and forecasts are an input to those markets said, has seen quesherry a managing partner at Dragonfly and investor in Polymarket. Both are valuable and in this case they didn't disagree by much, but markets were probably adding in some alpha into the raw forecast
that was missing. Aaron Brogan, a lawyer who has studied prediction markets caution against making sweeping conclusions from the fresh data, this outcome is consistent with both the prediction market accuracy and an unremarkable polling error modestly biasing traditional polling aggregates. Brogan said, polling aggregators felt this race could swing either way, so
this correct prediction market outcome could easily be the result of pure chance. While this result is vindicating for prediction markets to the hypothesis that highly liquid markets produce reliable election signals is best demonstrated over time across a number of races. Sources are telling Bloomberg that EU regulators are planning to fine Apple under the DMA after it failed to let developers steer users to cheaper deals and offers outside
the app store. Quote, the penalty under the Tuft new digital markets act is set to come just months after Cupertino, California based Apple was hit with a 1.8 billion euro fine for similar abuses under the block's traditional competition rules involving music streaming
service Spotify. The European Commission could still unleash the fine before current EU competition commissioner, Margeth Vestiger is due to leave office later this month according to the people, but there was a chance it could be pushed back to later this year they said. The fine could also be accompanied by a periodic penalty payment system levied on Apple until it complies with the law said the people adding that the decision was still
being drafted. The move follows a warning to Apple in June that it must give developers effective means to steer users away from its app store or face future penalties. In contrast to traditional antitrust law the DMA is designed to head off anti competitive behavior before
it is too late and wrecks markets for good. Under the law EU regulators have powers to find the world's most powerful tech firms 10% of their global annual sales 20% in the event of repeated infringements or periodic fines of as much as 5% of the average daily
revenue. Earlier this year EU antitrust regulators also managed to force Apple to allow third parties to use the iPhone's payment chip to handle transactions a move that allows banks and other services to compete with the Apple pay platform and quote. And I don't know how much this is tech but it's certainly tech adjacent and it's just
interesting. The EU commission has also opened an antitrust investigation into smartphone glass maker corning over allegedly abusing its market dominance to squeeze out rivals. Quoting Bloomberg the European commission said Wednesday it had concerns the company may have distorted competition by forging exclusive agreements with mobile phone manufacturers. The Brussels based EU executive said the agreements may have also blocked competing glass
manufacturers from making deals with smartphone makers. We are investigating if corning a major producer of this special glass may have tried to exclude rival glass producers thereby depriving consumers of cheaper and more break resistant glass EU competition chief market vestager said in a statement. While corning still has the opportunity to offset the commission's concerns it could eventually face hefty penalties of up to 10% of global
annual revenue. Corning markets alkali aluminum silicate glass used as cover for displays of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones tablets or smartwatches under the gorilla glass brand among others. Back to the election but through a regulatory lens if the republicans have all three pillars of government now what does that do to the regulatory environment for tech you'd think it would change right starting with perhaps Lena con quoting the times in the run up to
the election Lena con chair of the federal trade commission was called a dope partisan and unhelpful by democrats and republicans democratic donors including the billionaires read Hoffman Barry dealer and mark Cuban called for her ouster from the agency last week a report
from the republican led house judiciary committee accused her of having a far left agenda and weaponizing the agency con quote will be fired soon Elon Musk the owner of X and a supporter of former president john will j Trump wrote on his platform on Thursday few government
officials elicited such intense bipartisan attention ahead of the election making speculation regarding the future of mizcon nominated in 2021 by president Biden one of the most avid parlor games in washington the fixation on mizcon 35 is uncommon for a leader at the
long under the radar ftc which regulates companies that subvert competition and deceived consumers it reflects the high stakes of the Biden administration's wide ranging program to dampen the power of america's biggest corporations which either presidential candidate
could reverse if victorius scrutiny from the ftc and the justice department has led to the collapse of billions of dollars in recent corporate deals lawsuits filed by the agencies could break up big american brands like google amazon and the parent company of ticket
master mizcon has argued to regulate artificial intelligence ordered companies to make it easier to cancel online subscriptions and banned non compete agreements which stop workers from taking a job with a rival employer the backlash from the business world and its washington
allies has been fierce and it ramped up before the vote it's now clear that chair con will stop at nothing to accomplish the radical left's desired and said representative james are comor republican of kentucky in a statement announcing a house oversight committees report
critical of her leadership last week in a september interview with the new york times mizcon acknowledged that she had been under fire but dismissed much of the criticism when you say something like well there's a lot of visceral dislike of what our agency is doing i think
you have to first of all figure out which are the voices that you're privileging and focusing on she said we try to open our doors and make sure we are keeping the full country in mind rather than people who have access to power and quote she could not quote predict what's going
to happen in november or after that and quote one more because i wonder if this is regulation related as well the mozilla foundation is laying off 30 percent of its employees and told staff in an email that it is eliminating its
advocacy and global programs division the reason i wonder about regulation is let's imagine google is forced to stop cutting exclusivity deals with folks like web browsers to be the default search option is mozilla may be getting ahead of that possibility or maybe after yesterday they don't
have to but quoting tech ranch when reached by tech ranch mozilla foundations communications chief brian and bourman confirmed the layoffs in an email the mozilla foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical
future for us all that unfortunately means ending some of the work we have historically pursued and eliminating associated roles to bring more focus going forward read the statement shared with tech ranch according to its annual tax filings the mozilla foundation reported having 60
employees during the 2022 tax year the number of employees at the time of the layoffs was closer to 120 people according to a person with knowledge when asked by tech ranch mozilla spokesperson did not dispute the figure this is the second layoff at mozilla this year the first affecting dozens
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lumen.me slash ride to get 15% off your lumen that's lumn.me slash ride for 15% off your purchase thank you lumen for sponsoring this episode today's episode is sponsored by the washington post but you don't really need me to tell you
about the washington post when it comes to their tech coverage because i quote from them all the time back of the envelope i think they're easily in the top three of sources we quote from on this show but it's not just tech that they're good at they're one of my personal go-toes for things
beyond tech too i even signed up to get the post for you newsletter which sends me my very own personalized roundup of stories every evening based on my interest in reading history their app makes it easy for me to stay up to date on the latest news save and share stories and follow my
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to washingtonpost.com slash ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year that's 80% off their typical offer so this is truly a steal once again that's washingtonpost.com slash ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year sources say perplexity is
finalizing a five hundred million dollar round led by ivp that would value the a i startup at nine billion dollars triple its report evaluation from just a few months ago quoting the Wall Street Journal the venture firm institutional venture partners which also holds a board seat in
the startup will lead what would be perplexities fourth funding round this year the funding round would turn perplexity into one of the most valuable young a i startups to emerge out of the generative a i boom it was valued at just five hundred and twenty million dollars at the start of
this year perplexity which provides answers to questions based on information he gathers from searching the web has been widely criticized by news companies for using their reporting without fair compensation Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones recently sued perplexity and the
New York Times sent it ac synthesis notice perplexity chief executive arvand sreen of us said at the Wall Street Journal's tech live conference last month that he wants to reach revenue sharing partnerships with news publishers the company also said it would defend itself against the lawsuit
the new funding comes as perplexity is facing increased competition from open a i which recently added a search engine to chat GPT google also introduced an a i powered feature in its search engine called a i overviews in may perplexity has grown quickly since it was founded in 2022
last month it was on pace to generate around fifty million dollars in annual revenue the Wall Street Journal reported up more than four times from earlier this year its prior investors include Jeff Bezos in video and the venture firm new enterprise associates and quote
finally today a bit of a long read although actually it's entirely a long read but i stumbled across this and found it fascinating because it's so detailed from foreign affairs which i'm pretty sure is a venue we've never quoted from how advances in a i and autonomous systems like
drones and lower costs are shifting global wars towards precise mass or the mass deployment of uncrewed systems in other words recent wars and conflicts around the world have shown that the future of warfare might be well swarms quote for millennia commanders considered mass that is
having numerically superior forces and more material than the other side critical to victory in battle an army stood a greater chance of vanquishing its foes if it could deploy a greater number of troops whether armed with spears bows and rifles or sitting in tanks this principle dictated
how militaries especially those of great powers pursued and achieved victory from roman legions in galt to the Soviet army on the eastern front of world war two having the biggest navy allowed the british empire to rule the seas and having more planes and powered the allies to bomb the
axis powers to smithereens mass has never been everything better prepared smaller militaries can thwart bigger and ostensibly more powerful ones but it has traditionally established the odds in wars countries long believe that they could achieve success on the battlefield by having more
troops equipment and provisions than their opponents the weight of numbers would deliver victory the thinking went but in the late nineteen sixties that theory started to change the US military began seeing virtue and precision over sheer quantity us forces sought to identify track
and hit targets with ever greater accuracy that emphasis reduced the number of platforms and weapons necessary for military operations while also helping the united states comply with international humanitarian law by limiting the likely collateral damage of strikes the will has
turned the united states no longer enjoys the vast lead in precision strike capabilities that it once did the technology underlying those capacities conventional munitions sensors and guidance systems have become cheaper over time and accessible to many countries and militant groups
beyond the united states from azure bajan to north korea other forces can strike some targets with the precision power and range that were once the preserve of the us military they have benefited from advances made in the private sector in artificial intelligence and the widening availability
of sensing and communications platforms such as global positioning systems with this proliferation of know how technology and weaponry warfare is changing crucially advances in manufacturing and software have lowered the price of key equipment a cheap commercial drone equipped with weapons
guided by another cheap drone packed with sensors can hit specific far away targets or conduct surveillance operations and because they are relatively inexpensive such aircraft can be deployed at scale militaries are beginning to realize that they don't have to choose between precision
and mass they can have both systems of this kind are in military parlance a tritable that is their relatively low cost makes the loss of any one system relatively insignificant they are inferior in comparison with the most advanced weapons deployed by the us or Chinese militaries
and f 35 stealth fighter for example or a long range anti ship missile but these systems can be deployed at a much greater scale than their most expensive counterparts their unit costs are low enough that their aggregate capabilities are more affordable it's also much more expensive at
present to defend against such attacks than it is to launch them in april iran flung more the 300 weapons including one way attack drones cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at israel with support from the united states and a handful of middle eastern countries israel repulsed almost
all of the weapons but at what cost one report suggests that the strike cost about 80 million dollars to launch but one billion dollars to defend against a wealthy country and its allies could afford that sort of expense a few times but maybe not 20 times 30 times or 100 times
fending off this form of attack is not only expensive but also difficult and a silent can strike at an adversary with a variety of systems that adversary may be able to repel one specific system but struggle to deal with others commanders and analysts are only beginning to figure out how to
counter precise mass at scale and quote hey if you want to break from election headlines over on the rad history feed this week's episode is about the answering machine not just what it was like to use and have one in the 80s and 90s but also the actual history of the technology itself and my guess for this one is the television actress Tony Trucks she's wonderful we get really nostalgic so old era tech history check it out talk to tomorrow