Paris Marx
@parismarx.bsky.social
i criticize the tech industry
🎙️ @techwontsave.us
📬 https://disconnect.blog
📖 https://roadtonowherebook.com
In this week’s Disconnect Roundup: Apple’s new products are flops, so it’s going back to what Tim Cook knows best: raising prices to get more out of existing customers.
Plus, recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed.
Roundup: Apple wants to hike iPhone prices again
Read to the end for an important statement about X… or Twitter?
disconnect.blog“The certain knowledge that Kevin Roose is a credulous dumbass who makes a jingle-bell sound if he nods his head real fast only does so much to moderate the obscenity and offensiveness of his ascribing ‘playful intelligence’ and ‘emotional intuition’ to a predictive text generator.”
If Kevin Roose Was ChatGPT With A Spray-On Beard, Could Anyone Tell? | Defector
Where do you even start with this shit: The most telling detail of Monday’s demo, in my view, was the way that OpenAI’s own employees have started talking to ChatGPT. They anthropomorphize it relentle...
defector.comfrom here: www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/t...
A.I.’s ‘Her’ Era Has Arrived
New chatbot technology can talk, laugh and sing like a human. What comes next is anyone’s guess.
www.nytimes.comKevin Roose so desperately wants to live in the futures tech companies are selling that he’ll eagerly do their PR for them and buy into whatever illusions of intelligence they put in front of him so he can trick himself into believing they’ll actually be realized this time.
Market share of Chinese automakers “has jumped in many markets over the last 5 years, growing from 3% to 10% in Thailand, from 1% to 9% in Australia and from nothing to 13% in Mexico … Gains in Russia have been even starker, jumping from almost nothing to more than a third.”
Chinese carmakers’ global expansion “comes as major U.S. carmakers — whose once-lucrative China sales are withering — have withdrawn from promising markets such as India, Indonesia and Thailand to focus on their North American base.”
U.S. and Chinese automakers are headed in completely different directions
As Chinese manufacturers try to sell as many cars as possible, their U.S. competitors are betting on making each vehicle sale more valuable.
www.washingtonpost.comlmao yes, the webbies really did get maggie haberman to present an award to kara swisher
Remember when tech CEOs whipped us into a frenzy about generative AI changing everything? Those days are long gone.
Google and OpenAI’s latest demos show the bubble is deflating, but they’re still going to seize as much power as they can before the crash.
AI hype is over. AI exhaustion is setting in.
Google and OpenAI’s latest showcases suggest the AI bubble’s days are numbered
disconnect.blog
I’ve been looking forward to talking about BYD on the show for a while. @paologerbaudo.bsky.social was the perfect guest for it.
We dig into BYD’s vertically integrated production model and how the US campaign against Chinese automakers looks a lot like what it did with Japan in the 1980s.
Chinese EV maker BYD is challenging Tesla to become the top global EV seller. How did it get there and what does its future hold?
This week @paologerbaudo.bsky.social joins @parismarx.bsky.social to discuss BYD’s success and why the US is threatened by it.
Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/220_...
Tesla will face a class-action lawsuit alleging it misled consumers over the self-driving capabilities of its cars after claiming its vehicles would be able to autonomously drive from New York to Los Angeles by the end of 2017.
Tesla Must Face Suit Alleging Buyers Were Misled About Autopilot
Tesla Inc. must face a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that it misled consumers about its cars’ self-driving capabilities, a fresh setback for the electric-car maker just as Chief Executive Off...
www.bloomberg.commatt stoller is short circuiting. the whole of human history must be seen through the lens of monopoly. 🤖
sorry to posy a dispatch from the former twitter but this is the funniest thing i have ever seen
Even more evidence that Silicon Valley’s aggressive push into generative AI is a climate disaster. If terrible use cases weren’t enough to turn you against the tech, the environmental impact should be.
2020: Microsoft sets goal to be carbon negative by end of the decade.
2023: Microsoft's emissions are 30% higher than in 2020.
Main cause? The relentless push to meet AI demand, which requires new data centers built out of carbon-intensive steel, cement, chips.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
I remember the days when people were furious Google was scanning their emails to serve ads. Now we’ve reached the point that everything you send and receive is being filtered through its AI model and you’re expected to love it.
Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more | TechCrunch
In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.
techcrunch.com
Tesla charging chief Rebecca Tinucci cut 15-20% of her team after Musk demanded it.
She felt that would justify a major Supercharger network expansion, but when she met with Musk he wanted more layoffs. When she pushed back, he fired the whole team.
The inside story of Elon Musk’s mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff
Insiders tell the story of the firings that have upended a network widely viewed as a signature Tesla achievement and a key driver of its EV sales.
finance.yahoo.com
Amazon workers in Laval, Quebec have been granted union accreditation after a majority signed cards to form a union.
Now Amazon isn’t just contesting the decision, but challenging workers’ rights to form a union without an election by signing cards.
Workers can form union at Amazon warehouse in Laval, Que., a first in Canada | CBC News
The first Amazon warehouse to be unionized in Canada got its accreditation from Quebec's labour tribunal on Friday.
www.cbc.caRemember all the times Elon Musk said Tesla is so amazing for the environment? The company is being sued for violating the Clean Air Act hundreds of times in recent years by emitting harmful pollutants from its Fremont factory into nearby neighborhoods.
Tesla is sued over air pollution from factory operations in Fremont, California
A California nonprofit has sued Tesla over what it calls the company's "ongoing failure to comply with the Clean Air Act" at its Fremont assembly plant.
www.cnbc.comGoogle is feeling so emboldened by the AI hype that it wants to take another swing at Google Glass. Not only this product, but the entire company needs to feel consumers’ wrath if it dares to even try.
Blink and you missed it: Google has a new pair of prototype AR glasses
Proof of life for Google’s AR hardware ambitions?
www.theverge.comthe dune 2 4k blu-ray doesn’t even come with a digital code in canada 🫠
far too much tech journalism is little more than boosterism, as we see again this week with the string of stories on OpenAI’s attempt to recreate Her
Apple’s industry-defining products made it the juggernaut it is today. But as iPhone sales continue to stagnate and the Vision Pro vastly underperforms, the company’s long-term prospects look increasingly dicey.
My latest for @businessinsider.com:
Tim Cook is running out of ideas
The tech giant needs a cool new product — but it seems like Tim Cook is running out of ideas.
www.businessinsider.comI keep seeing these stories about huge investments Microsoft, Amazon, and other major tech companies are making around the world. They’re almost always for massive, resource-hungry data centers to power their AI ambitions.
I feel conflicted about this because I know journalism is in a rough spot, but I also hate the online ads so much. Usually I’d say this would be a nudge to force them to change course, but give the media’s in such dire straits, I’m not so sure this time.
Newspaper groups warn Apple over ad-blocking plans
UK press says proposed ‘web eraser’ tool in next iOS update threatens journalism’s financial sustainability
www.ft.comIn this week’s Disconnect Roundup, Apple delivered an insult to life itself by crushing all human creativity into an iPad Pro in its recent ad. Plus, recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed.
Roundup: Apple delivers an insult to life itself
Read to the end for Sam Bankman-Fried’s new prison financial scheme
disconnect.blog“Inside Tesla’s sprawling factory in Austin, Texas, known as Giga Texas, the company on Monday took a striking step to adjust to its new reality. It was the first day without a night shift for the Model Y … which effectively cut the company’s output of the vehicle in half.”
At Tesla, a Wild Week That Defined the Company’s Future
On Feb. 28, Elon Musk used X, the social media service he owns, to make a bold promise about a product from one of his other companies, Tesla. In a post, he said a new version of the Roadster—a succes...
www.theinformation.comThey are better than gas/diesel vehicles, but still far worse than transit, trains, bikes, walking, etc.
The United States is protecting is uncompetitive automakers addicted to expensive SUVs and trucks from facing a real challenge that would force them to innovate and could accelerate the EV transition by making cheaper models much more accessible.
US set to impose 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicle imports
Move marks latest effort by Biden administration to protect domestic industry from cheap competition
www.ft.comRemember how Western countries spent the year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine going on and on about the rules-based international order and respect for the UN Charter? Now they’re supporting a genocidal state shredding it in front of the General Assembly.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN just wound up his speech before today’s vote on Palestinian statehood by shredding the UN Charter from the UNGA rostrum
When Phil Spencer took over Xbox, he sold himself as a fellow gamer to win player support. He used that vibe to convince them industry consolidation would benefit everyone.
But now we’re seeing the real costs: layoffs, closures, and fewer games. Spencer was always serving the company.
Phil Spencer isn’t your friend
The Xbox head uses his gamer image to sell terrible corporate decisions
disconnect.blogi used to listen to way more before i started actually making my own 😅
Begging the DoJ to make my dreams come true by nailing Elon Musk for securities and wire fraud 🙏
Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claims
Elon Musk has promised fully autonomous vehicles for years.
www.theverge.comonly pods i listen to regularly are The Town with Matthew Beloni to keep up on the entertainment industry and CBC Front Burner for Canadian politics
It’s always great to chat with @niedermeyer.io, but this one’s essential. We not only dig into what’s been going on with Tesla recently, but structural factors in the auto industry that explain why it did so well in the past few years and why that success was so fleeting.
Tesla has long depended on hype to survive, but as Elon Musk does mass layoffs and bets the company on bad self-driving tech, is its time running out?
This week @niedermeyer.io joins @parismarx.bsky.social to discuss why Tesla is failing as a car company.
Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/219_...
Not a paid subscriber? I also keep a list of recommended tech books over on Bookshop that anyone can check out!
Paris Marx Bookshop
Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic. He hosts the award-winning Tech Won’t Save Us podcast and writes Disconnect, a ...
bookshop.orgEvery few months, I take a look at the critical tech books coming soon to give Disconnect subscribers a look at books they might want to check out. Sign up and check out the list!
A critical tech reading list for mid-2024
13 book recommendations to get you through the next few months
disconnect.blogOn May 23, I’ll be speaking with Information editor-in-chief Rune Lykkeberg in Copenhagen for a conversation on “The lies of the tech companies.” Make sure to join us!
Techselskabernes løgne
De kom hurtigt, ødelagde en masse ting, og da det gik op for os, at deres løfter for fremtiden ikke passede, var de blevet så store, at de var meget svære at skubbe tilbage. Samtale mellem den canadi...
butik.information.dkFar-right Italian prime minister (and Musk BFF) Giorgia Meloni is trying to transform the Italian public broadcaster into “the megaphone of the ruling party” as journalists face increasing editorial interference from a board stacked with party loyalists.
Rai journalists strike over ‘suffocating control’ by Meloni’s government
Union calls for end to politicians’ interference in state broadcaster amid debate over censorship
www.theguardian.com
This week in the Disconnect Roundup I’m reflecting on how bias affects tech coverage as I find my own positive views toward Sony affecting how I see the Paramount acquisition talks. Plus, the usual recommended reads, labor updates, and other tech news!
Roundup: How bias can creep into tech coverage
Read to the end for a perfect example of worst person you know just made a great point
disconnect.blogJK Rowling is so deeply transphobic that even Elon Musk is telling her to lighten up a bit 🫠
This might help: www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars
Dangerous, polluting SUVs and pickup trucks took over America. Lawmakers are partly to blame.
www.vox.com“The Cybertruck is not road-legal in China, although that hasn’t stopped Tesla from displaying the rust-prone electric pickup in some of its Chinese showrooms. Likewise, Tesla has just announced plans for a European Cybertruck tour. But, just like in China, the EV pickup cannot be sold in the EU.”
Elon Musk Can’t Solve Tesla’s China Crisis With His Desperate Asia Visit
Tesla’s deal with Baidu isn’t new, the mapping data Tesla will collect likely can’t leave China, and Full Self-Driving can’t compete with the more advanced Chinese alternatives.
www.wired.com