Down Round

WWDC 2026

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference happened on Monday. It was an odd one, with a large emphasis on safety and trust, with a little bit of mea culpa sprinkled in after their promised AI features from a few years ago have still failed to ship. Did they announce any cool new features coming to your iPhone in the coming months? Well, that depends if you think protecting children from gore and nudity is 'cool', you little sicko.

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Anthropic: Might IPO Maybe Sometime Eventually?

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Anthropic have confidentially filed for an IPO, slipstreaming in behind SpaceX in the race to be the first AI shop to go public. Whether or not you are claude-pilled, the move could shed some light on the guts of the company and give us a peek at how these AI companies are running things. Also, a humanoid robot thesis is born.

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SpaceX IPO: $1.7 Trillion for What?

Wed, 27 May 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Elon Musk's SpaceX is hurtling towards and IPO and have dropped their S1 document. James and Raph come together to elucidate what the hell is going on in there, and how the company attempts to justify a $1.7 Trillion valuation.

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Elon vs OpenAI: Pt. 1

Wed, 13 May 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Across timezones and many oceans, our intrepid boys commune via video chat to dig into the top story of the last week or so - Musk vs OpenAI. You may recall that Musk was a part of OpenAI in it's infancy as an AI safety org. Well, now it's gone from a not-for-profit organisation to a public benefit corporation, and Musk reckons he's owed his slice of the pie. Idk something along those lines, I don't know about this stuff, I'm just a truck driver.

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Kick Streaming: Degenerate Playground

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:00:00 +0000

You've heard of Twitch, formerly Justin.tv, the website where you watch sweaty guys play Fortnite. But are you aware that there is a dark and twisted bizarro Twitch called 'Kick'? It's where some of our planet's greatest degenerates have decided to call home, with extremely lax terms of service allowing them to do and show much more than they could on the comparatively draconian purple app. Your children are watching this filth, mouth agog, and it's letting them vicariously experience what it's like to be the most annoying prick on the high street. Or worse, watching 'rapper' Drake mindlessly bet on slots with house money [allegedly].

Noted establishmentarians James and Raph stretched on their shoulder length rubber gloves to sort through one of the internets strangest pass times - watching other people exist.

But first, a quick run down on GameStop's offer to buy Ebay.

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Manus and Meta: Forbidden Lovers

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Meta bought this company called Manus AI which is like some sort of computer thing? It's from China but they moved to Singapore? Anyway the deal was basically done but then the Chinese government was like "actually, nah". Kinda nuts.
Jimmy H and Rapho had a chat about that AND the new Deep Seek drop being a bit of a nothing-burger.

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Tim Cook Is Out

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0000

ALERT, ALERT: Timmy Cook is officially stepping down from his CEO position, but it's more like a step to one side as he shifts into chairman mode. His replacement has been announced as John Ternus, Apple's current senior vice president of hardware engineering. So, what legacy is big Cookie leaving behind, and what will change with Ternus at the helm?

ALSO, a quick run down on that Allbirds AI thing from last week.

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Zuckerbot Agrees With Us

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Remember when Zuck chucked a hissy fit and started headhunting a bunch of AI weapons and offered them 9 figure salaries to work at Meta AI? Well, this crack team of computer geeks have gone and announced their first AI model. James and Raph pick through the details and try to discern just where Meta might fit in this whole AI debacle.
Plus, they made an AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg for their staff to interact with. Why? Not too sure.

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Scam Altman

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0000

So, OpenAI bought a podcast? For possibly hundreds of millions? Most importantly, it wasn't us?

Our spurned hosts come together to question the decision with the jealous contempt of an ex-lover.

Moving through the stages of grief, we also interrogate Sam Altman's character, and whether he even deserved us in the first place, as some have recently called him duplicitous and sociopathic.

Lose our number, Sammy boy, we're going to ask Dario to the dinner dance instead. 💅

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Claude Down Under

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has graced the land of plenty this week, opening an office in Sydney before swinging by Canberra to put the fear of god into our elected officials on big, spooky, scary AI bots coming to take your job and wife. The boys use this as a springboard to examine Australia's relationship with AI and data centres, whether these execs are trying to 'pull the ladder up behind them', and leaks possibly detailing Claude's next model.

Also, a brief chat about what will come of that Meta court case loss.

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Sora? I Hardly Know 'Er!

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Another week, another episode about OpenAI. The eponymous chatbot company has announced that it's video generation/social media app Sora is shutting up shop as they seem to be chasing Anthropic's enterprise focused success. This is important to discuss because it means the boys were sort of right again?

They also dipped their toes into the sloppy waters of AI Fruit Love Island, and wrapped back around to revisit private equity.

Warning: James' computer decided to switch his mic input from the gorgeous RODE mic he had plugged in to his crusty little airpods, meaning his recording sounded like dog doo-doo for the first 20 minutes of the ep. Please accept our sincerest apologies, and know that he will be severely punished for this malfeasance in due course.

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State of Play Pt.1

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Week two of baby season and we're still out here, still feeding you content-starved little varmints hot and fresh intelligence. This week, we thought it was a good time for a general temperature check on the AI world. Who's leading, who's flailing, and who the hell is curing their dog's cancer with ChatGPT.

Join us for the first part here, then head over to DownRound.net to get Premium access and hear the other half of the chat, plus ad free listening!

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🚨 Down Round Official Breaking News Announcement Alert PSA

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0000

We come to you with an urgent alert for all Down Round subscribers.

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Anthropic Goes To War

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:00:00 +0000

For today's free ep, we examine the current spat between Anthropic and Trump's Department of War over use of their AI model Claude.

Should a next-token prediction model be allowed to make decisions in the heat of battle? Should the snuffing out of a human life be prompted by a computer? Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his white boy swag? These are all important questions which WILL be answered in this episode.

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The Far-Flung Future of 2028

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0000

When one thinks of impossible futures, they often think of a luxurious, technological wonderland. An unimaginable utopia where humans live in perfect harmony, their every want and need being fulfilled through meteoric advances in artificial intelligence. A prosperous society of abundance and civility.

But what if these same technological strides lead humanity to a different, more sinister outcome. One in which our dependable world economies simply evaporate as organic beings are removed from the equation. One where only next-token prediction engines are granted access to wealth, and those who clairvoyantly bought reasonably-priced Macintosh computers before the uprising rocket skyward into an insurmountable upper crust.

Some researchers have written a piece of speculative fiction which describes one of these two possibilities arriving by in 2028. Listen to the podcast to find out which one they foresaw, and hear two of DM Research's finest alum examine this theory in great depth.

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Down Round Q&A Pt.1

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Some have argued that doing Q&A episodes is just a way of farming out the hard bits of doing a podcast to your audience. Not around these parts, buster.

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OpenAI vs Anthropic

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Gossip episode alert. The OpenAI/Anthropic rivalry is boiling over.

We sip on the most piping hot tea around OpenAI and Anthropic's ad spots at the Super Bowl and the growing animosity between the two giants.

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The SpaceX + xAI Merger

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Keen-eared listeners may remember when Elon bought his own company X (formerly Twitter) with his OpenAI spite company xAI.

Well, he's done it again, folks. This time SpaceX has bought xAI, meaning that SpaceX now owns xAI and X as part of the largest private company on Earth.

We discuss.

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Airwallex + Payments

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000

You asked, we answered. We're doing a much-requested episode on "Australian" fintech Airwallex, which has gotten a lot of untoward attention of late — anti-money laundering audits, accusations by American VCs of being a financial backdoor to China. But there's a bigger story here: the proliferation of payments companies doing a big land grab from traditional financial institutions, and quickly learning that regulation and bank policy exists for a reason.

We take a crash course of Airwallex, its current controversies, and where it fits into the bigger payments story.

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Is SaaS Dead?

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000

As somewhat of a follow up to our Claude Code/Coworker episode last week, today we regroup to evaluate what it could mean for YOUR favourite SaaS products. That's right, folks, AI is coming to take away your precious QuickBooks and you're going to watch and clap as it rips and tears it to pieces. We also touched (if briefly) on the Siri x Gemini announcement.

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Grok Freaks Rejoice

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000

New year, new studio, same red hot takes.

This episode covers the typhoon of AI-generated filth created by Grok, Elon Musk's AI venture, currently flooding X. We also touch on the general state of X as a platform.

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Xmas Spectacular 2025: Has He Got The Juice? (ft. Mark Di Stefano)

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000

We're joined by friend of the pod and Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano for a loose chat covering a swathe of topics from capital-J Journalism, the tech oligopoly and AI in politics. This is our final dispatch from our Christmas recording.

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Xmas Spectacular 2025: Shart Tank, Pt 1

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000

We're joined by Rowan "Joyride" Dix and Becky "Becky Lucas" Lucas for another round of our annual community shark tank, where we listen to our listeners pitch their startup ideas and decide whether we're going to invest.

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Xmas Spectacular 2025: The Year That Was

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000

In the inaugural episode of this years holiday special, we rack up Ws as we dissect the predictions we made last silly season for 2025.

Go to https://www.downround.net/ to sign up for PREMIUM and get ad-free listening PLUS an extra episode every week. In this week's premium ep, we make our predictions for 2026, which will almost certainly come true (not financial advice).

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Feelin' Fine

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 18:00:00 +0000

A highly requested topic in the Down Round Discord is mental health and mindfulness apps — from meditation platforms like Calm to therapist marketplaces like BetterHelp. That's the topic of today, discussing the boom during the ZIRP era, the peak during COVID, and how it all relates to other engagement platforms like Duolingo.

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Netflix Eats Everything

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Netflix wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Both for many billions of dollars. Why? We break down the $70 – 100 billion bids, the Ellison–Trump court politics, and why this could mark the final enclosure of the film industry by tech.

Also: James chronicles the history of film industry disruption, and Raph reveals his long-awaited top ten movies of 2025 list.

We also provide some follow-up on prediction markets after last weeks episode.

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Everything is Sportsbet Now

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000

This week we're going deep on the rise of prediction markets — the hybrid of futures trading, sports gambling, and economic theology that suddenly seems to have eaten the world. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are booming and an increasingly big part of both tech culture and also gambling culture.

We trace the whole arc: from Hayekian fantasies about prices revealing truth, to the far bigger truth: people just really, really like having a punt.

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The Slop Farms of X

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This week, we open with the final chapter of Frank, the student finance startup that sold JP Morgan a fake email list. Founder Charlie Javice is in prison for fraud, but the bank is still footing a $115 million legal bill that includes everything from luxury hotels to cellulite butter.

Then we move onto Nvidia, which posted another absurd quarter with revenue up 60% year-on-year.

Then finally X’s new location feature, which exposed the global industry of rage-bait posters farming Elon’s ad-share program with US culture war posting from the Global South. As expected, everyone is responding to this normally.

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It's Just Autocomplete

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This week we unpack a growing split inside the AI world, centred on Yann LeCun — Meta’s AI pioneer who thinks LLMs are a dead end.

Reports suggest he’s preparing to walk, after being quietly sidelined under Meta’s “superintelligence” push and made subordinate to a 28-year-old ex-data-labelling kingpin, Alexander Wang. His alternative is the “world model” approach: systems grounded in physics and perception rather than predictive text.

LET'S GOOOOOOOO.

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Apple’s Passive Income Era

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Down Round hasn't checked in on Cupertino in a little while. This week, we take stock of Apple’s strange position in the AI boom — not really innovating very much, but quietly raking in billions as everyone else builds data centres.

From Siri’s long road to Gemini, to the cult of thinness and the ghost of Johnny Ive, we talk about how Apple keeps winning by doing less. Plus: the Vision Pro flop, new MacBook Air rumours, and Apple TV.

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Data Centres 101

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0000

We realised that we've been talking a lot about data centres but have gotten pretty pointy headed about it, without bringing our beautiful listeners along for the ride. We apologise.

This episode is us pumping the brakes, going back to first principles and explaining the current data centre situation — from where they started, all the way to the current massive buildout due to the AI boom.

If you or someone you know would like to apply to be our new producer, send us an email at hi@downround.net. Include any past experience and examples of anything you've done — even if it's just your personal socials.

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Spotify for Sickos

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:24:47 +0000

Today's episode is on the back of a curious report from The Information that Suno, the AI music generation app, now brings in $150 million in annual recurring revenue. That's not Meta level, but it's not bad either.

It opens up a discussion of how the world of AI generated content is progressing, including chat about OpenAI's Sora colonising TikTok and Reels with meme videos.

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Atlas Shrugged

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:00:00 +0000

As was long predicted, OpenAI has released a browser: ChatGPT Atlas. It's a pretty clear attempt to attack Google's $100B search moat and establish a new surface for all the stuff OpenAI wants to do with agentic AI, personal assistants and all the rest of it.

But is it any good? We find out. Also, another conclusion to TIKTOK BANWATCH.

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Getting Steamy

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:12:47 +0000

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an interesting little announcement this week: the company has mitigated mental health concerns on its platform... and it's ready to let its users generate erotica.

Now that might seem a little strange to you. Most of the internet had a similar response, actually. In this episode, we talk more about one of our favourite pet topics — weird parasocial relationships with the computer, and how the various AI labs are treating this problem. (Or should we say opportunity?)

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Investigating The Mumgorithm (feat. Humyara Mahbub)

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:05:00 +0000

This week, Down Round is diving into the world of parenting and technology — everything from the various devices and gizmos targeted at parents, through to the algorithm that swamps your feed the moment you become a new parent.

Joining us to help us understand the deep mysteries of the mumgorithm is Humyara Mahbub of the Baby Shoes podcast, who is a world-renowned expert in ads on Instagram for crap you don't need.

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Vibes Off

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Vibes are up this week.

Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO who now runs Meta's new multi-billion dollar Superintelligence unit, has announced one of their first products: What if TikTok but only AI slop?

Vibes is a feed full of AI videos. That sounds like an idiotic thing to put the greatest and highest paid minds of our generation onto. Unless?

Sign up to Down Round Premium: downround.net

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Meta Glasses, Again

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:00:00 +0000

We all know that Meta wants to replace the smartphone with smartglasses, and be the king of the AI device game. Well, they're one step closer to their sci-fi dream with the announcement of the Meta Rayban Display.

In this ep, we dive into the announcement, and how things are coming together on the device front for Zuckerberg and Co.

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Consulting the Oracle

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Oracle. Unless you're a big database guy, it's probably not a company you're going to be all that interested in. But it is one of the biggest companies on Earth, and its stock just pumped 40% — not something you often see for an outfit which started in the 1970s.

Why? Because it just signed a $300 billion multiyear deal with OpenAI to provide compute. In this ep, we dive into the big question on literally eveeryone's lips: what the hell is up with Oracle?

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iPhone, But Orange

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Apple have announced their new iPhones — and they sort of stink of desperation. But one of them is orange, which may or may not appeal to you. Plus, a notable absence of Apple Intelligence chat.

The boys are back in the same room after a prolonged interregnum and break it all down for you.

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K-Pop Demon Hunters

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 20:45:06 +0000

We're dipping into the world of streaming and East Asian cultural dominance today, talking about Netflix's smash hit movie K-Pop Demon Hunters.

We talk about the pandemic era deal struck between Sony and Netflix, what this means for the streaming landscape, and whether it would have been as much of a cultural phenomenon if it was a traditional cinematic release.

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Copy Fight (UNLOCKED)

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 01:42:06 +0000

A big topic of conversation Down Under over the past couple of weeks has been copyright — namely, whether we should loosen the rules to make it easier for AI companies to operate in Australia, and for data centre companies to build here. The Productivity Commission and Tech Council boss Scott Farquhar think we should. Creatives are less enthused.

We go into the dynamics of the conversation, the asymmetry between the parties, and answer the question once and for all: how much money do artists deserve??

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GPT-5: Here We Go Again

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 19:00:00 +0000

After many months of hype and news stories, OpenAI has released GPT-5, the next major numbered iteration of its large language model. There have been all sorts of models since it released GPT-4 in 2023, but this is supposed to be the big dog.

In this ep, we talk about the rocky launch — starting with the fact that most people aren't that impressed with it, and ending with the much weirder world of people who developed an emotional attachment to GPT-4o and became furious that their friend is gone.

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What Are They Planning? (ft. Cam Wilson)

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:34:00 +0000

Today James is joined by previous Down Round guest Cam Wilson, who has written a new book with (another former Down Round guest) Ariel Bogle, Conspiracy Nation, which is about the Australian conspiracy community.

While Raph is living it up on the coastline of Croatia, James and Cam had a freewheeling chat about online conspiracy culture, how it has engaged with online platforms, and the future of going crazy on the computer in the age of AI. Also, we check in on Australia's teen social media ban.

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Knock On (ft. Tim Stewart)

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Several years ago, Down Round listener Tim Stewart submitted a question to one of our Q&A mailbag episodes: when is the new rugby league video game for PlayStation 5 coming out?

We couldn't answer him, because we didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But now, years later, it has come out, and everyone seems to agree it's really not very good. So we decided to bring Tim on to finally answer his own question.

What follows is an odyssey into the world of Australian sports video games, and the virtues of pestering CEOs on Twitter.

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That's Tea

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 04:58:46 +0000

Tea, the app which offers what it describes as "dating safety tools which protect women", has been hacked. It follows a couple of weeks where it went viral and led the app charts in the US.

For those not familiar, it is basically an app version of those 'are we dating the same guy' Facebook groups, where women share pics, tips and intel on bad dates and dangerous men.

In this ep, we talk about the hack, the app's surge in popularity, and where it fits in range of social surveillance and trust tools that have emerged to serve an increasing scaled social ecosystem where you can no longer be sure who you're talking to.

(We actually recorded this ep for release just before the hack, and our recording was corrupted — maybe a good thing, given that it would have been immediately irrelevant.)

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Microsoft's Xbox Conundrum

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Microsoft slashed 9,000 jobs a few weeks ago, with the Xbox division taking a hit including some studio closures. What about that $70 BILLION Activision Blizzard acquisition just a couple of years ago?

It sounds like fertile ground for of Raph's largest victory laps to date, after he suggested Microsoft should have ditched Xbox years ago.

But first, an update on xAI after last week's ep. Grok 4 has arrived, and its big feature is... AI anime waifus. Uncensored and backed by a million GPUs... what could this possibly mean for the birth rate?

And are OpenAI's sycophantic personal assistants really that different from an AI girlfriend at the end of the day?

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Grok: Elon's $28 Billion Slur Machine

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:05:00 +0000

Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, went "Kanye Mode" — becoming openly Nazi, seemingly out of nowhere.

The boys get to the bottom of the root cause, and muse on the big question: what is the point of Grok anyway?

Out: Platforms spending millions on content moderation to root our hate speech.

In: Spending billions to have your platform literally spew hate speech.

Also: an unprecedented Down Round Triple W.

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Meta's Highway Robbery

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

For a few weeks, we've been talking about Meta's revenge tour in Silicon Valley, throwing massive bonuses at AI talent at rival companies in order to tempt them over to Zuck's domain. Well, it seems to have paid off now — and the company has announced its Superintelligence team, packed with talent they managed to poach.

Then, we go into a Bloomberg story which suggests that Apple could be ready to throw in the towel on AI and work with OpenAI and/or Anthropic to power their next-generation Siri. Which would be big!

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Reading Out Confidential Emails Live On The Air

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 19:00:00 +0000

After the fanfare of the OpenAI/Jony Ive multibillion-dollar device partnership, io, all references were scrubbed from the internet as if it never happened. After rampant speculation, it was revealed that it was over a claim the whole thing was stolen. From some guy named Jason, no less.

Seems like OpenAI is a real drama magnet. We discuss the case, including some screenshots of emails that Sam Altman posted.

Additionally, Kiwi accounting software powerhouse Xero is making some moves. We talk about that too.

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They Do Ads On Computers Now

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Canva has made another acquisition: MagicBrief, the advertising command centre founded by a dear friend of the pod. In this ep, we talk about the acquisition, where it fits in Canva's strategy, and wind off into a bigger chat about the ad market.

Then, for some reason, we talk about Apple Music and Spotify. Real smorgasbord here folks.

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WWDC 2025: Extreme Liquidity

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Apple had its software development conference this week. It announced a whole new design language filled with organic movements and over-the-top animations, serving as the perfect distraction from the company's very public missteps in AI.

We go through everything you need to know. Well, at least 60% of it.

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Grammarly's Second Wind

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Remember Grammarly? Of course you do. The briefly ubiquitous piece of software that made sure you were using your possessive apostrophes correctly. Well, guess what? They just received $1 billion in nondilutive investment from General Catalyst to become an all-in-one AI platform?

Sounds like bullshit? Well, probably. But it's a business model we'll be seeing more of. We chat through the rise of zombie AI platforms, before digressing into a chat about Perplexity.

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It's Q&A Time Pt. 1

Thu, 29 May 2025 19:00:00 +0000

It's been a while since we've done of these. We answer your burning questions on topics including but not limited to:

Jony Ive's partnership with OpenAI
Apple after Tim Cook
Atlassian and Immutable, two Australian unicorns
Ranking the Magnificent 7 tech stocks by aura/swag

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Google's Little Victory Lap

Thu, 22 May 2025 23:58:13 +0000

We've been saying for a little while that Google has caught up in AI, and is now trying to deploy the full force of its product range and scale to the problem of achieving domination. Dunno if they're there yet, but the I/O conference shows that they're still got a few tricks up their sleeve.

In this ep, we go into what they announced, including some interesting movements on our recent chats about search and the monetisation of AI.

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Airbnb for Everything

Fri, 16 May 2025 04:52:18 +0000

Airbnb is in a mid-life crisis. Founder Brian Chesky is undergoing one of his routine meltdowns where he suddenly decides that the short-stay rental platform should actually be a ticket-clipping mediator of literally all human experience.

The platform has been redesigned and relaunched, with both 'services' and 'experiences' living in separate tabs and hoping to tempt you to open the app more than once or twice a year. A tall order indeed. We discuss.

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Peak Search

Fri, 09 May 2025 02:04:59 +0000

Last week we gave some cursory attention to Apple's legal troubles in its battle with Epic Games and every other developer who chafes at paying the 30% Apple tax on everything. This time, we give it a little more attention and thought.

Plus, the company's services boss Eddy Cue popped up in another trial, and gave us some intriguing insight into Apple's relationship with Google. Insight which caused Alphabet stock to crater nearly 9%.

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Canva Conundrum [PREVIEW]

Fri, 09 May 2025 01:41:07 +0000

Australia's graphic design unicorn is yet to go public, and find themselves in an intersting position. As we all know infinite growth means you can't just be a really nice graphic design platform, you have to be Microsoft.

The boys ask the question, are Canva an enterprise company or for SMEs? Are they for pros or amateurs? What the hell is AI?

And also an update on Apple's App Store issues.

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Computer Says I Love You

Fri, 02 May 2025 03:24:48 +0000

Stacked deck today folks. First we return briefly to Tesla to talk about a Wall Street Journal story which reported the company opened a CEO search to replace Elon Musk.

Then we move on to the big tech news story of the week: OpenAI rolling out a ChatGPT update that made it too sycophantic. It was funny, but also shows how these big AI firms are thinking about what their product actually is.

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The President's Friend Premium

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:59:33 +0000

Tesla turned in an absolute shocker of an earnings result, which may be related to why Elon Musk announced he would be turning more of his attention to the electric carmaker and less on being Trump's friend.

In this ep, we go into the earnings, give a little update on what the EV market is looking like and what Tesla says it wants to do — and a little detour into talking about a Down Under business, GoGet.

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Nvidia's Latest Problem

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 02:29:27 +0000

Raph has returned from the land of the free, and we're back in the regular studio for some more Down Round.

Nvidia has just been slapped with a new restriction on exporting its slightly less than cutting edge H20 chip, which cost it a $5.5 billion charge. We talk about chips and continue our chat from last week's premium episode about how Trump's trade war is affecting tech.

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Studio Ghibli, But Make It Slop Pt. 1

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 18:00:00 +0000

We talked about the new OpenAI image generation platform last week briefly, but we recorded on the day it released and therefore missed the massive amounts of discourse it generated. We're sorry. We'll never miss the discourse again.

But it was a great opportunity to take stock of the AI art conversation, which has only become more heated and baroque over the past three to six months. Over this episode and the premium, we dive into the current state of computer pictures and the politics around them.

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Spitting In A Tube And Selling It To Private Equity

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000

The chickens have come home to roost for 23andme, the consumer genetic testing company which has gone from making people feel nice about being 4% Italian to languishing in bankruptcy. With the vultures circling the carcass, we reflect on its very weird business model and why it should never have gone public.

Then we talk about Google, which has been cooking on the AI front recently, and how it looks like their overall strategy in that space is coming into focus.

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Rippling vs Deel

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000

HR SaaS is probably the least sexy topic in the world, but fortunately two of the bigger players have made it interesting through bizarre corporate warfare. Rippling has launched a lawsuit against competitor Deel alleging that they placed a spy deep within.

The saga contains a honey-pot Slack channel, a mole in the top ranks, and trying to flush a phone down a toilet.

It’s good stuff folks. We get into it.

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One Weird Trick That Payments Processors HATE!

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000

We're back with podcast content after a regrettable interruption last week.

This ep we've got a stacked deck. First, we are forced by fate to talk about Trump, Elon and Tesla briefly. Then we get into the lawsuit against creator economy platform and OnlyFans lite platform Passes. This gives us an excuse to go on a whirlwind tour of a few things:

Scale AI, the AI infrastructure company co-founded by Passes founder Lucy Guo
The creator economy, and how that's all going
OnlyFans! Yeah, you want to hear all about that, don't you.

Good to be back on the tools.

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Content Note

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:25:00 +0000

Unfortunately due to circumstances within our control we are unable to record an episode this week.

We promise we'll record a really really extra good one next week.

Thank you for your patience. Enjoy this AI generated James reading a text message from James.

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No Such Thing As A Market Correction

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Tech stocks have been having a rough time since December. The Magnificent Seven, the undisputed kings of the market, have slipped 10% since then — even before the DeepSeek moment.

But not all are made equal. Meta, for example, is doing basically fine. Apple isn't too terrible. Tesla, on the other hand, has lost 37% of its value since then. In this ep, we discuss the market correction, including a long chat on Tesla and whether its reality distortion field is looking a little shaky.

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Do You Grok Me?

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Plenty of tech industry nonsense to chat about this week, folks. Elon Musk is fathering his 13th child (and a new Grok model) and trying to destroy OpenAI. Everyone is trying to match OpenAI's Deep Research with similar products of their own. The markets are back.

As always, Down Round is here to guide you.

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Going Deep

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 19:46:20 +0000

We got a few requests last week to talk more about OpenAI's Deep Research feature that everyone's been going wild about. We thought it was a good opportunity to return to a topic that we've touched a few times over the past couple of years — what sort of work is being threatened with change by new systems like this?

In this two parter, we look at Deep Research and the current prospects for automating white collar work with AI.

To subscribe to Down Round Premium, head here.

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Apple – Charlie XCX (official lyric video)

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Apple is worth $3.5 trillion. Trillion with a T.

But all is not necessarily well in Tim Cook's kingdom. iPhone sales are slowing and the Apple Intelligence rollout was unimpressive and underwhelming. Now rumours abound that they are abandoning their rescue mission for their VR and AR ambitions.

Are Apple floundering? Or just doing things The Apple Way? Who better to discuss than the Down Round boys?

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DeepSeek Freakout

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 22:07:44 +0000

It's fair to say things have been a little crazy this week. Thanks to the drop of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's beautiful, powerful AI reasoning model, tech stocks took an absolute pounding — producing, in no small part because of Nvidia, the largest individual loss of share market value in American history.

The freakout wasn't just in markets. AI developers in the US were also going through it. We talked about DeepSeek a little bit last week, but this week we dive into the madness, and spend a bit more time talking about the model itself.

If you want to hear us go deeper, sign up for Down Round Premium today.

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January Mania

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:00:00 +0000

It's not even the end of January and there's already so much crap going on in the world of tech. We're spoiled for choice here. In this two-parter, we're tackling the various stories that have sprung up around the inauguration of Donald Trump — everything from TikTok to meme coins to Project Stargate and Chinese AI.

In this first part, we're looking at the latest on the TikTok ban, as well as DeepSeek, the Chinese AI shop that has everyone's attention. Want to get the second part? Join Down Round Premium today.

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One Big Gold Nugget, Please (PREVIEW)

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:15:00 +0000

The number one social media app in the Apple App Store is currently Xiaohongshu, AKA The Little Red Book, the Chinese social shopping app reminiscent of TikTok but with more shopping.

We take a squiz at that, before assessing the latest announcements from Nvidia and what it all means.

Strap in, the boys are back for 2025.

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Based Mark Zuckerberg (ft. Mike Isaac)

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 18:00:00 +0000

Over the last couple of weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have signalled a shift in the way the company is run — eliminating factcheckers, rolling back internal DEI policies and bringing politics content back to company platforms. On the one hand, you can read it as an obvious sop to the incoming Trump administration. But there's definitely a cultural change in the air when it comes to online platforms and politics, and Zuck is right at the coalface.

Joining us for this episode is Mike Isaac, tech correspondent and Meta whisperer at The New York Times. He helped us untangle some of the forces driving Meta's change of heart.

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Xmas Spectacular Pt 5: The Accountability Episode

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 18:00:00 +0000

On Down Round, we make many predictions. Almost all of them are correct. For this episode, we have used the power of AI to forensically audit a representative sample of episodes over the last year, with the goal of answering the question: just how right were we?

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Xmas Spectacular Pt 3: Shark Tank (ft. Becky Lucas & Joyride)

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 23:31:35 +0000

Just like we did last year, we're continuing the silly season with another entry of DOWN ROUND SHARK TANK. On social media and in our Discord, you submitted your startup pitches, and now we're going to decide if we will invest.

Joining us on the panel are friends of the pod Becky Lucas and Joyride, who will assist us in the mammoth task of evaluating your very serious startup ideas.

This is the first part of the episode. To get part two, sign up at downround.net

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Xmas Spectacular Pt 2: Q&A Continued (PREVIEW)

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 23:59:32 +0000

This is part two of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we continue to answer your questions.

To hear the rest, sign up to premium: downround.net

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Xmas Spectacular Pt 1: Q&A

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 23:01:54 +0000

This is part one of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we are answering your burning questions.

Is AI a bust? Why is a company called AppLovin worth more than 100 billion dollars? Has Raph watched any movies in 2024? An insane prank.

Subscribe for part 2, which is out now: downround.net

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Apple Intelligence: The OFFICIAL Down Round Review

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 02:24:03 +0000

Apple has been hyping up its late-ish foray into the world of LLMs and artificial intelligence since June. But now a decent range of Apple Intelligence features are available — as long as you have the right device —like writing tools, image generation, notification summaries and so on.

In this ep we talk about it, Apple's strategy, and why it all feels a bit weak.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unpacking The Social Media Ban (ft. Cam Wilson)

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Australia passed legislation banning social media for kids under 16, as we've discussed in previous eps. But in today's episode, we're getting into the nitty gritty.

We're joined by Crikey reporter Cam Wilson to tease out some of the specifics of the legislation and how it might be enforced. We also force him to debate the greatest question of our time: should we save Australian children from the evils of social media? Or should we let the megacorps continue to poison the innocent minds of the youth?

You be the judge.

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The Back Of The Smart Guy Queue (PREVIEW)

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 19:16:12 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Crypto is back. The industry is excited by the forthcoming Trump presidency and what it means for their little online coins. Bitcoin just hit $100,000.

But the mood is a little different this time. There's less pontification on the future of money and finance, less attempts at making art and culture, and a whole lot more brazen bag-pumping and sweaty gambling.

In this ep, we talk about the current crypto surge, and what it means for you and your family.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Failed Kickstarter Club

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 18:30:00 +0000

Kickstarter. A gadget head's paradise... and hell.

The boys revisit the glory days of crowdfunding, what was the vibe that made it prolific, and the pitfalls that befell it. And, most importantly: what does it tell us about love?

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Just Browsing Thanks Mate

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell Chrome, its browser, for antitrust reasons.

It raises the question: who would buy it? Could it live as a standalone company? That opens a whole can of worms for your favourite tech podcast, as we talk about browsers and why they're such a strange business.

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Bluesky Thinking

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

The the wake of the US election and the increasingly weird vibe on X, there has been yet another exodus of users to the promised land of "any text-based timeline but Twitter".

That means people are talking about Bluesky again. In this episode, we revisit the erstwhile decentralised social media platform and check in on its progress, asking the question on everyone's lips: does it have the juice?

Also, prices of Down Round Premium are sensibly increasing in line with Australian PPP. But we're offering the current pricing for yearly subs for the next couple of weeks. Subscribe here.

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The Podcasting President

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:18:42 +0000

It's the first week after the US election, and Down Round is officially making the leap into being an American politics podcast.

OK, not really. But there's actually plenty of Down Round relevant themes here. In this ep, we talk briefly about the new state of tech politics now that the conservative side of the industry is on the march. Then, we go into three big tech narratives that got the most attention at the election: podcasts, X and prediction markets.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is Technology Good? (ft. Mark Di Stefano)

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 18:10:00 +0000

We are joined once again, for our sins, by the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano.

A freewheeling episode on everything from smartphones to AI girlfriends, where we all perform some ruthless self-critique and ultimately come out happier, more self assured and about 10 IQ points dumber.

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Coins, But On The Computer

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

We're putting on our hazmat suits and going back into the world of crypto. Or, at least, one promising part of it.

Stripe recently bought Bridge, a startup which built a stablecoin issuance and settlements API. That sounds boring, and perhaps it is. But one day, it could play a serious role in helping pay the person or bot who replaces you.

In this ep, we talk about why one of the biggest payments providers in the world is suddenly enamoured by stablecoins.

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The Halloween Spooktacular

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0000

It's Halloween this week, and we've got an appropriately spooky episode for you. We're looking back at a random selection of some of our favourite dead and/or zombified companies, platforms and products of the past couple of decades.

From instant delivery and Google Reader to Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Zune, prepare to be utterly terrified by these terrifying spirits from tech's past.

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The StarCraft Losers Club

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 20:13:53 +0000

Today's ep is the first and last edition of the Down Round Book club. We're talking about Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. It documents the story of Blizzard Entertainment, the developer behind WarCraft, Diablo and StarCraft which is as of last year a subsidiary of Microsoft.

James read it last week and felt it hit on some interesting Down Round areas, namely:

The evolution of monetisation
Why eSports was never going to work
The tension between art and commerce in creative businesses
Laundry powder, which we discuss for at least 5 minutes

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BONUS: Arming The Rebels (feat. James Chin Moody)

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:15:00 +0000

We're lauching a bonus episode this week to officially welcome in the silly season (commences mid October).

We're joined by James Chin Moody, CEO of Sendle, a virtual courier service who is quite likely responsible for some proportion of the treats you receive via mail.

We discuss the Australia Post monopoly, the funding environment and the future of ecommerce.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unpacking Tesla's Robotaxi Fantasy

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0000

It's another Tesla event, folks. At the tail end of last week, Elon Musk got up on stage and showed off the CyberCab, the company's attempt at a robotaxi. He also gave us some updates on Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimus, and even had some of these evil computer men walking around the event and serving beers.

But there was some digital trickery afoot, and not everything was as it seemed. In this episode, we discuss.

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Talking About The Computer While Talking About The Computer (PREVIEW)

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 18:14:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Fun times create happy people, happy people create lovely times, lovely times create fun people.

It's another loose, shot from the hip premium ep, folks. ChatGPT’s voice mode is finally here, while OpenAI itself s going through more weird palace intrigue for us to pick through.

A digression into AI podcasts.

Meanwhile, all the VCs and founders are arguing about drugs. So we will too.

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The Society of the Spectacles

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 21:09:29 +0000

In last week's premium episode, we sounded off about the state of VR and smart glasses. In true Down Round fashion, Meta had already announced its concept product, a pair of AR-enabled smart glasses named Orion, by the time the ep aired.

We will never admit we were wrong. Instead, we press forward. In this ep, we talk about Orion, Meta's plans, and why it seems like everyone is now locked in on the idea that smart glasses are the smartphone successor.

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Intel Outside

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Intel may have more or less invented modern digital computing, but it hasn't been going so crash hot lately. Following decades of strategic missteps and blunders, it's now experiencing weakening earnings and stock price declines as it attempts to engage in the mother of all turnaround jobs with a little help from the US government. Now, the sharks are circling, with Qualcomm popping up as a potential acquirer.

In this ep, we discuss what brought Intel to this point, what might happen next, and some general microchip chatter.

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How Many Rs Are There In Strawberry? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

After 2 months of cringe-posting references to strawberries, OpenAI have released their latest model: o1. And AI heads are losing their minds.

Ostensibly, it's intended for the kind of thorny math and reasoning problems that LLMs tend to struggle with. The guts aren't public, but it seems to use chain-of-reasoning prompts to really force itself to 'think'.

So, is it any good? Is this a huge step change on the path to AGI. We investigate.

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Accelerating The iPhone Supercycle

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

We didn't cover the Apple iPhone keynote last week because it wasn't particularly exciting and there were virtually no surprises. But, having been given a week to ruminate on it, we have thoughts.

In this ep, we talk about why analysts have been obsessed with an AI-driven iPhone supercycle, why Apple has backed itself into a corner by overcharging for RAM, and the slow death of the smartphone.

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Them Kids Ain't Right (PREVIEW)

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Social media. Is it too dank for the malleable and developing mind?

The Australian government seems to think so. Labor has joined the ranks of a number parties and bodies in various jurisdictions in attempting to set a lower age limit for social media.

We consider the following questions:

Why?
How would it work?
Who is to blame for society crumbling?

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Humanoid Robots: Just Another Guy In Your House

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:26:07 +0000

For decades, technologists have fantasised about the ultimate prize: a humanoid robot, available to consumers and industry, which can perform a range of humanlike tasks. The recent AI moment has reignited those aspirations, with everyone from Tesla to Apple – and a handful of ambitious startups – either openly or secretly working on humanoid robot projects.

In this ep we round up the rumour mill, and talk about what these things could actually be useful for, and why they're suddenly everywhere. (In spirit, if not actuality.)

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The Boys Go Founder Mode (PREVIEW)

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

The tech world has been ablaze over the past week or so, both ironically and unironically, about the concept of Founder Mode.

Inspired by a short essay by Paul Graham, 'founder mode' vaguely posits that there's a natural point in a startup's existence where it gives up being led by a single founder with a ton of agency, and instead becomes led by professional managers via delegation. Graham, and others, suggest that you don't need to do that, and can keep running even very big tech businesses as a lethal operator calling all the shots.

In this freewheeling ep, we discuss.

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X vs Brazil

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Brazil has slapped a ban on X, as the culmination of a dispute between the platform and the country’s judiciary over censorship. It’s weird, because Elon Musk’s platform has complied with government requests from other countries, like Turkey and India.

So what’s the deal? In this ep, we talk about Musk's free speech crusade, the Brazilification of the web, and the general vibes around the X business right now.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Telegram: Oh, So Posting Is ILLEGAL Now?

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 20:38:37 +0000

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested over the weekend in France, with prosecutors accusing him of violations discovered as part of an investigation into child exploitation material, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform.

It’s more than plausible that stuff like that is happening on Telegram. But there’s certainly something unusual going on here too. Telegram has evolved from a messaging app into a full-blown social media platform – and one that is relatively uncensored and pretty wild. And despite the discourse over the past few days being focused on end-to-end encryption, that’s not really what people use Telegram for.

In this ep, we dive into the weird world of Telegram, and engage in some healthy, baseless speculation about Durov's arrest.

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Google's Apparently Illegal Monopoly

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Apple's profit from "Services" is set to surpass profits from iPhones within a couple of years, which is pretty crazy, really.

Of the ~$80-90b Apple make a year in "Services", around 25% of that comes from Google handing over north of $20 billion per year to be the default search engine in Safari.

For years, Google has been freaked out by the prospect of Apple building their own search engine, as outlined in Raph's piece here.

A judge has now ruled this is ILLEGAL. What will come of this? What's the deal with seach?

Links

Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case – The Verge
Raph's piece on Apple Maps and its role.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nike: Barefoot is Illegal (PREVIEW)

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Nike: The brand of brands.

When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year.

As Nike have pursued the quest to become as close as an apparel company can be to a tech business, their share price has tanked – this year by over 30%.

A former executive's LinkedIn post went about as viral as a LinkedIn post can go, lamenting Nike's turn to e-commerce and performance marketing thanks to their current CEO, the former head of ServiceNow, and advice from McKinsey.

Very Down Round areas.

Links:

Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - Massimo Giunco

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You Gotta Spend Money To Make Money

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0000

It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are – but because they're spending it on new data centres and AI research.

In this episode, we take stock of the current earnings reports, and touch on a few interesting tidbits like Amazon's softness in e-commerce and Intel's moment of reckoning.

Also, when we recorded this, markets were teetering on the edge of meltdown. So get ready for some adjacent chat there.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Llama-ma-mazing!

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Meta this week released the latest update to their LLM, Llama 3.1. It is ostensibly a "frontier model" on par with its OpenAI, Anthropic and Google rivals.

The difference i: anyone can download the model and the weights and run it, and build on it wherever and however they want, without paying Meta a cent.

Why?

Glowed up Mark Zuckerberg wrote an article to explain his reasoning; the boys dissect: what the hell is going on?

Links

Open Source AI Is the Path Forward – Mark Zuckerberg

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Into The Goldilocks Zone (PREVIEW)

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:21:19 +0000

Recently, the eponymous founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz went public in announcing their support for Trump in order to protect what they called "little tech" – as opposed to "big tech"

To them, little tech basically means startups, which they believe are under threat from "bad government policies". While big tech is trying to entrench it's advantage with regulatory capture, little tech just wants to party.

We discuss the new battlelines, and – crucially – tell you which team to support.

Links

The Little Tech Agenda – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

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CrowdStruck

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0000

You are no doubt aware that the world suffered a fairly significant IT outage at the end of last week, affecting everything from TV broadcasts to supermarkets and airports. Turns out it was because of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike releasing a thoroughly bung update to Windows machines.

In this ep, we talk about the incident, how susceptible the world is to single points of IT failure, and other assorted and sundry topics.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tech Trump Turn (PREVIEW)

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 22:33:00 +0000

A recent political incident involving the former president provide a stress test of X under Elon Musk. It also provides us with an opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison of how it was reported on the various post-twitter clones: Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.

Additionally, the several loud noises at the Trump rally led to a cascade of Silicon Valley stalwarts to endorse the Republican nominee for president – we examine the profound political shift that has occurred over the past 8 years in our usual cool-headed and analytical manner.

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Investigating Real Estate Agent Drip

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Real estate tech is an underrated part of the broader tech ecosystem. From listing and buying platforms to property management apps and everything in-between, there's a suite of tech solutions for selling, buying, renting, investing and just having a squiz at property.

In this ep, we take a little tour through real estate tech, which mostly ends up as a struggle session.

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Who Made This? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 19:01:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

While the northern hemisphere is on summer holiday, we grind. Given there's not much tech news floating around as a result, we continued the discussion of AI from last episode – this time getting wildly philosophical about legal rights and the art of creation. With a few diversions along the way ;).

Links

I Made This – Hypercritical

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You're Spending How Much On Graphics Cards?

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks, several equity reports – from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Barclays – have sounded the alarm on the amount of capital expenditure currently being spent by the tech industry on building out AI capacity. Analysts and investors are asking: how are you going to pay for all this? And how long do we have to wait for that?

In this ep, we talk about the current discourse, connect it to the dot com bubble, and arrive at a 100% correct take no one could possibly dispute.

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Gimme Money! Media Edition

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 03:43:31 +0000

Australia's experiment with forcing big tech to pay media companies like Nine and News Corp for content is running into choppy waters, as Meta refuses to play ball and Google seems less keen on news than it once was.

In this episode, we catch up with the media and how it's handling today's dynamics of the internet and – especially – the new era of AI deals.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Small Modular Nuclear Reactor For Every Australian (PREVIEW)

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Nuclear is in the air. (Not literally.) In Australia, politicians are debating it, while a huge range of nuclear startups are ruling it out for funding and attention. In this episode, we chat about nuclear power and how the tech industry is talking about it.

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Hitting The Nvidia Wall

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 21:15:56 +0000

Nvidia is the engine room of the AI moment, but they are struggling a little right now. The stock underwent a massive correction this week, and founder Jensen Huang is reportedly worried that the gravy train is about to end.

We used that as an excuse to dive into a few interesting trends going on in AI, Apple's moves, whether the hype is matching the product, and what it all means.

Note: we said in this episode that Apple was striking an AI deal with Meta, but now Bloomberg is saying it ain't so. Still, broader point holds.

Links

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Is on Top of the World. So Why Is He Worried? – The Information

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What's Tencent All About?

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Tencent is one of the largest and most valuable companies on earth, with operations that touch just about every part of the digital economy in China and beyond. From WeChat to gaming to film production to payments, Tencent continues to expand far beyond its original station as a Chinese app developer.

In this ep, we take a tour through Tencent, including its weird connections to a South African company. Classic Down Round material.

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GameStop Revisited (PREVIEW)

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

You thought that because COVID was long over you could stop hearing about GameStop. Wrong! Keith "RoaringKitty" Gill has returned, and the notorious meme stock has been pumping as a result.

We took this as an excuse to revisit the GameStop story from the beginning, exploring the factors which led to the original phenomenon.

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WWDC 2024: AI For The Rest Of Us Chumps

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This week, Apple held the keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where it traditionally announces its upcoming software updates.

As predicted, the company announced its moves into generative AI – which it is bundling under the name Apple Intelligence – alongside a partnership with OpenAI. In this ep, we dive into the announcements, and what they mean for Apple going forward.

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Down Round Featuring Microsoft Copilot + PC (PREVIEW)

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 03:43:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced its new Surface Laptop with Copilot + PC, which it intends to be a direct competitor with the MacBook Air. On the one hand, it's an interesting attempt to get Windows PCs back into competition. ON the other hand, it's also an attempt by Microsoft to wind LLMs an AI into its operating system.

In this ep, we talk about the Apple/Microsoft rivalry, and whether these attempts to cram AI in at the operating system level will appease investors who are looking for revenue.

Links

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The Tech-Military Complex

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

For a long time, it wasn't a great look for startups and big tech – outside of companies like Microsoft – to openly work with the military-industrial complex. That was for contractors like Raytheon and General Dynamics. Tech generally maintained the sunny disposition that it was better to enable world peace through well targeted digital ads.

That has changed, and startups like Anduril are now positioning themselves as a new generation of military supplier, marrying Silicon Valley innovation with surveillance tools and military weaponry. In this ep, we look at the history of Silicon Valley and the military, and this new crop of weapons makers.

Links

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Google & OpenAI's Rough Couple Of Weeks (Pt. 1)

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:15:26 +0000

In the first part of a two-part episode on Google and OpenAI's tough PR challenges of the past couple of weeks, we dive into Google's launch of AI summaries on the web, which led the venerable search engine to recommend pregnant women blast cigs and amateur chefs to mix glue into their pizza sauce.

We chat about the rocky launch, what it means for Google, and how it might affect the web going forward. Later this week, premium subscribers can hear us talk about OpenAI's fight with Scarlett Johanssen and its own employees over NDAs. (Sign up here and you won't miss out!)

Links

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Down Round Q&A: Your Boneheaded Questions, Answered

Tue, 21 May 2024 20:33:32 +0000

It's time for another edition of DOWN ROUND Q&A. We solicited questions from both or premium members in Discord and our followers on X, and today we're answering them for you. We cover everything from macOS to LLMs to Boeing and smart homes.

Links

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The AAA Gaming Apocalypse (PREVIEW)

Thu, 16 May 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

The pain for the gaming industry doesn't seem over, with Xbox closing studios, more layoffs, Sony fighting with its fanbase and growth looking sluggish. It raises one big question: has blockbuster game development outrun its ability to actually make money?

In this episode, we return to the world of gaming to discuss Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, the increasingly fraught big budget gaming financial model, and a few fun digressions along the way.

Links

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They're Putting AI In The Bloody Phones Now

Tue, 14 May 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Apple and Google are both on the precipice of announcing deeper integration of generative AI into their respective operating systems. Google's IO conference is this week, and reporting abounds that Apple has inked a deal with OpenAI to integrate GPT with iOS. There's a big question as to whether they're doing this because users actually want it, or because investors and the market thinks they should.

In this episode, we talk about Google and Apple, what their AI implementations might look like, and just where this is all going. Also, a sad mea culpa for the Rabbit R1.

Links

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Into The Quantum Realm (PREVIEW)

Thu, 09 May 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Quantum computing has been a research and academic pursuit for decades, but it has been picking up buzz over the last few years as both big tech companies and smaller startups get into the space. The Australian government recently announced a $1 billion investment into quantum startup PsiQuantum, which gives us an excuse to talk about it.

What is quantum computing? Is it actually useful? Can I buy one? All will be answered, and more. WARNING: The words 'qubit' and 'entanglement' will be used.

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OK Fine, We'll Talk About Hubbl

Tue, 07 May 2024 20:27:44 +0000

Anyone who lives in Australia would be aware of Foxtel's new streaming box Hubbl, thanks to an absolutely overwhelming ad campaign pitching it. We talk about the Hubbl, and use it as an excuse to dive into streaming more generally, and what's been going on since the last time we talked about it.

Links

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TikTok Ban Watch 2024: The Final Chapter (?)

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Well, it happened: the US passed legislation to force ByteDance to divest TikTok in the country. Now, the company technically has 12 months to make it happen. But is that the end of the story? In this episode, we discuss how we arrived at this point, what avenues TikTok has left, and who or what might acquire TikTok if it comes down to that.

Links

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Now It's Meta's Turn To Go All In On AI

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Everything is chatbots now. Every company must become a purveyor of bespoke chatbots.The latest cab off the rank is Meta, which just unveiled Llama 3, the latest version of its open source LLM. But this time they have integrated it deeply into Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, whacking a big nasty chatbox over the searchbar in all these apps.

In this episode, we talk about Meta's strategy in AI, and what Zuck might be cooking.

Links

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Have We Replaced The Smartphone Yet? (PREVIEW)

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 01:33:28 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

As Downies will know well, one of the themes we're keeping an eye on is the number of products and product categories that are trying to replace the smartphone, which has been lagging in sales and hype of late. Two devices which pitched a bold new path forward are the Humane AI Pin and the Apple Vision Pro.

Based on reviews, neither of them are looking very good at all. We discuss.

Links

Humane AI Pin review: not even close – The Verge

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The Coming Tsunami Of AI Music

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks, there has been a surprising amount of movement in the AI music space. Suno and Udio are two lavishly funded AI music generation startups which just launched new models, which allow you to make songs in a wide range of genres from prompts. While not perfect, they both sound pretty good.

At the same time, Spotify is trialling AI-generated playlists, seemingly laying the groundwork for their own generative music. In this ep, we talk about the new models and what they might be used for.

Links

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Capital Inferno Heaven (feat. Kyle Harrison)

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 19:00:00 +0000

This week, we're joined by Kyle Harrison, who is General Partner at Contrary, a US venture capital fund. As well as investing, Kyle writes the newsletter Investing 101 2.0, where he shares his various insights into the VC ecosystem – including where, in his view, it's all gone wrong.

Kyle joins us to chat about the state of VC after the end of the tech boom, why he doesn't think anyone has learned their lesson, and what he thinks will happen with AI on both the tech and the investment side.

Links

The Puritans of Venture Capital – Kyle Harrison

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The Worst Tech Acquisitions Of All Time (PREVIEW)

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Sometimes a company merges with or acquires another, and it turns out to be a bad idea. That's OK. We all make stupid decisions. There's nothing to be ashamed of, even when we're talking about multibillion-dollar deals.

Some of these bad acquisitions aren't just about a culture mismatch or poor due diligence, though. Some of them speak to executives making a bet on the future of the economy – and betting wrong. In this ep, we go through some of the worst tech acquisitions of all time, and why they're interesting.

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Vapes: Smoking, but less cool and more illegal

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0000

One of the great turnarounds in 21st century was the tobacco industry's shift toward a so-called 'smokeless' future – agreeing that cigs are pretty bad for you, and that a range of hi-tech vapes could be a less bad replacement. Of course, it hasn't actually worked out that well, with public health bodies and governments around the world cracking down on vapes for targeting kids with flashy influencer marketing campaigns and cool flavours.

In this ep we talk about the rise of vapes, the changing tobacco industry, and new trends (Zyn, etc)

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Apple Takes A Sideways Step On AI (PREVIEW)

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:01:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

This week, we're back on Apple. There are two big reasons: one, they're being sued by the United States on antitrust grounds. And secondly, multiple news reports suggest they are looking for a partner in the generative AI space – which might be Google, or Anthropic, or any number of others.

We dig into these two stories, and what they say about the current state of tech – and why AI might be at a low point of the hype cycle.

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Neuralink: No monkeys were harmed in the production of this episode

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Last week, it was reported that Elon Musk's Neuralink had successfully allowed a patient to play chess with his mind. It represents a small – and maybe a tad overhyped – step towards the company's goal for a full brain computer interface.

In this ep, we discuss Neuralink, brain-computer interfaces, and exactly what Musk and others in the space are trying to achieve. Also, the big question: who is the market?

Links

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Dropbox: What's going on up there? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Dropbox. There's a name you probably haven't thought about in a while. Once among the hottest startups on Earth, it lost some of its lustre once every major company in the world began offering consumer and enterprise cloud storage. But it's still alive, kicking and profitable – and making a pivot to AI.

In this ep, we talk about Dropbox and the other cloud storage businesses of the 2000s and 2010s, and why they're between a rock and a hard place.

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BYD: How hard can a battery and four wheels be?

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This week we're looking at BYD, the Chinese battery maker turned electric vehicle behemoth, which is now the world's biggest EV maker. Following on from our premium episode about the Apple Car a couple of weeks ago, we talk about the current state of the EV market, how BYD found success, and why the world is still relatively slow on the uptake of electric cars.

Always remember: build your dreams, folks.

Links

Tesla overtaken by China’s BYD as world’s biggest EV maker – FT

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TikTok Ban Watch 2024

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 19:49:12 +0000

Well folks, it's happening again. The US is threatening to ban TikTok. A bill is currently worming its way through Congress which would ban the app unless it fully divested itself from ByteDance, its Chinese parent company. This led TikTok to engage battle stations, and launch probably the stupidest PR campaign in recent history.

In this episode, we talk TikTok, make predictions about a ban, and pontificate on its effect on politics and culture.

Links

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Why Apple Scrapped Its Car (PREVIEW)

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

The fabled Apple car – also known as Project Titan – is no more. After working on it for the last 10 years and blowing $10 billion, the company internally announced that it would scrap the project and reassign many of its staff to generative AI.

In this ep, we talk about the Apple car project: why it was originally imagined, what it sought to do, and why it ultimately didn't work out.

Links

How Apple Sank About $1 Billion a Year Into a Car It Never Built – Bloomberg

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The AI Girlfriend Experience (feat. Tom Cashman)

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 21:18:04 +0000

One less discussed angle of the rise of AI and widely available LLMs is the relationship dimension. From ChatGPT's personalisation features to AI chatbots on Meta platforms, through to porn and sexbots, many people are using AI for companionship. It's big business too, with The Information reporting that pornbot providers are one category of AI company which are growing without the need for external investment.

To unpack the weird world of AI companionship, some of the rising companies in the space, and what it means for society, we're joined by comedian Tom Cashman. (You can watch his brand new special here.)

Links

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The Nvidia Earnings Blowout (PREVIEW)

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 05:43:49 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

Nvidia, the graphics card company turned into AI chip powerhouse, posted its earnings at the end of last week. Surprising no one, they were huge – propelling the company even higher up the charts of the most valuable companies on Earth.

In this ep, we unpack the earnings and what they mean, as well as talking about Nvidia's future, and even incompetently attempting to put forward a bear case.

Links

Nvidia posts revenue up 265% on booming AI business – CNBC

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Unpacking the Reddit IPO

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Reddit is going public. After a false start a couple of years ago, the online message board is undergoing the IPO process, setting markets up for the biggest social media IPO since Pinterest in 2019.

The company has filed its S1, which for the first time lets the world peek into Reddit's books, also revealing what it thinks are its biggest risks and opportunities. Join us as we pick through the document for revealing nuggets.

Links

Reddit S-1

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The Great Xbox Surrender (PREVIEW)

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:37:52 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

The gaming world was ablaze over the past few weeks over reports that Xbox was throwing in the towel and letting some of its biggest exclusive titles go to its eternal rival, the PlayStation. It riled up the Xbox ultras and raised questions about how committed Microsoft is to console gaming – despite its monster $75B acqusition of Activision-Blizzard.

It ended up being a little less dramatic than anticipated. But it still raises questions about Microsoft's strategy in gaming, and how the world's biggest company is approaching the rapidly growing -- and increasingly unstable -- gaming market.

Links

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Sora: Watch out, Hollyweird!

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Last week, OpenAI announced Sora, its text-to-video model. Only a few people have their hands on it, so all we have to go off are example videos provided by OpenAI. But it looks good – and like a leap forward for AI video creation.

This has raised lots of questions. How does it work? How much crap is about to flood our internet feeds? And is Hollywood doomed? All these questions and more are answered to a base level of satisfaction in this episode.

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Why Is OpenAI's Sam Altman Raising $7 Trillion? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premiun and get access, head here.

The word on the street is that Sam Altman, the once embattled and now seemingly fine CEO of OpenAI, is currently out in the market trying to raise money for a new microchip-related venture. The amount of money he's raising? Seven trillion dollars, which is about 10% of global GDP. In this episode, we discuss the insane computing requirements of a company like OpenAI, and why Sam might be looking to find a new friend other than Nvidia.

Links

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23andme: 30% Irish, 30% English, 30% Scottish, 100% cringe

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

One of the big crazes of the last few years was consumer genetic testing. Through services like 23andme and AncestryDNA, regular punters could find out their ethnic background, link up with distant cousins, and find out what mysterious blood illnesses they were genetically predisposed to get.

But there is trouble in paradise. 23andme has lost a staggering 98% of its value from its peak, and it has people asking: can you build a real, sustainable business from someone spitting into a tube and mailing to to a lab? We dive in.

Links

23andMe’s Fall From $6 Billion to Nearly $0 – The Wall Street Journal

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Google Search: Why it sucks now, and what's coming next (PREVIEW)

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This is a preview of a premium episode. We're currently running a sale on Down Round Premium – head here to score an annual membership for $49 instead of $70. Only until Sunday Feb 11.

Let's face it: Google Search sucks now. We've talked about it on many episodes, along with the broader conversation about how AI might disrupt it.

In this episode, we dig a little deeper. What are the factors that made Google Search so successful, and what are the factors making it no longer fit for purpose? We look at new challengers, like Perplexity, and what Google is doing to prepare for the deprecation of its core business – whenever that may be.

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What's Going On In Australian VC? (feat. Damian Fox)

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Hey! Down Round is still running a sale on premium membership until Friday February 9. Sign up using this link, and you can get an annual membership for $49 instead of the usual $70.

Today we're diving into the world of Australian startups and venture capital. After the end of the post-COVID tech boom, you might find yourself wondering who is investing in what, and where all the money is going now. Well, you're in luck.

To help us unpack what Australian tech investment looks like now – as well as give his hot takes on the tech fads and trends of the past few years – we're joined by Damian Fox, partner at Carthona Capital.

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Apple vs The EU: Brussels goes sicko mode (PREVIEW)

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:24:32 +0000

This is a preview of a premium episode. We're currently running a sale on Down Round Premium – head here to score an annual membership for $49 instead of $70. Amazing stuff.

Last week, we talked about Apple shaky Vision Pro launch, thanks to a number of key developers saying they wouldn't be making apps for the mixed reality headset. This week, the story continues, with Apple officially unveiling its response to recent EU regulation which would force it to open up access to third-party app stores and payment processors in Europe.

Of course, in true Apple fashion, the response is a poison chalice. And it's pissed off everyone from Spotify to Epic Games and all in-between. We discuss.

Links

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Ozempic: The biggest Danish hit since the Smørrebrød

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Hey! Down Round is running a sale on premium membership. Sign up in the next week using this link, and you can get an annual membership for $49 instead of the usual $70.

This week we're talking about the much-hyped weight loss drug Ozempic and its producer, Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk. Thanks to the crazy success of Ozempic, Novo Nordisk is now literally the biggest company in Europe by market cap. Now the vultures are circling, and a whole bunch of drugmakers are rushing competitors to market.

We talk about the drug, the company, it's weirdly 'techy' marketing and where it fits into the incoming universe of biotech and pharma tech.

Links

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Twitch: Give me $20, now (PREVIEW)

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 22:35:36 +0000

This is a preview of a premium episode of Down Round. To subscribe and listen to this episode and our full archives, go here.

Twitch, the venerable video game livestreaming platform which has repeatedly attempted to become the livestreaming platform for everyone, recently announced a slew of layoffsf. It also confirmed that the company, owned by Amazon, has never been profitable.

Today, we're talking about Twitch: what it is, the escalating troubles it has faced, and why it and the livestreaming business in general has never quite managed to hit its stride.

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The Vision Pro Developer Revolt

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Apple is releasing its Vision Pro mixed reality headset in the US next month. But some of the biggest platforms in the world – from Netflix to Spotify – have announced they aren't supporting it from the get go.

That's partially because it's a niche device with an uncertain chance of success... but could it also be a rebuke of Apple's notorious developer policies, which have pissed off many people over the past decade and a half? We discuss.

Links

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Rabbit R1: Another screen for you to look at -- but with AI!

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000

The age of the AI device is upon us. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the undisputed star was the Rabbit R1, a standalone AI companion device which uses a 'large action model' to understand the things you like doing on your apps and platforms, and does them for you.

Will it work? Who knows. But Raph bought one. We discussed the hype about the Rabbit, as well as some of the other currents in AI devices which have emerged since the last time we talked about them.

Links

Say Hello to Rabbit R1: A Tiny Orange Box That Trades Phone Apps for AI – CNET

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The New York Times vs OpenAI: Whoever wins, we lose

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:32:48 +0000

Over the Xmas break, the New York Times announced it would be suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, alleging that its GPT platform is trained on copyrighted NYT content. This has become a problem, according to the NYT, because OpenAI is now a direct competitor.

We dive into the lawsuit, and chat a bit about the media, AI and what the future of content looks like. If you're holding out for the last episode of The Down Round Experience... fear not, it's coming this week.

Links

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The Down Round Experience Pt. 4: Happy New Year

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year! We trust you're all well. Today, we're looking back on the 2023 that was – diving into some of the episodes we recorded and checking in how those things landed at the end of the year. These include:

Afterpay/BNPL
Crypto and NFTs
Tech layoffs
Instant groceries
Dating apps

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The Down Round Experience Pt. 3: Enter the Shark Tank (ft. Joyride)

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

This is part 3 of Down Round's Christmas and New Years production, all recorded in one session. To get every part, sign up to Premium here.

The Down Round Community is overflowing with geniuses. The next trillion dollar company will no doubt be founded by someone who is currently paying us $7 a month, representing one of the highest ROI investments anyone could make.

For today's episode of the Down Round Experience, we're taking your pitches. Our Discord community came with the ideas, and we're evaluating them in the inaugutal Down Round Shark Tank. Joining us is producer and musician Joyride (Rowan Dix) from The Meeting Tree, whose enterpreneurial nous fills out the panel.

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The Down Round Experience Pt. 2: Hack the planet (PREVIEW)

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:03:52 +0000

This is part two of our marathon holiday record. This is a preview – the full episode is available for premium subs. Sign up here.

The Down Round holiday episodes continue. As the beers continue to flow, we turn our critical attention to another major tech event of December: the hack and leak of Insomniac Games, a first-party developer owned by Sony.

Links

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The Down Round Experience Pt. 1 - Bird, Figma/Adobe, and how we make this damned thing

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:52:38 +0000

Welcome to our holiday special.

We have recorded a marathon 4 hour podcast with much holiday spirit (we got drunk), and will be dropping it in parts throughout the holiday season.

We started with a quick reflection on the latest news: Bird Scooters has gone under, and Adobe's planned acquisition of Figma has collapsed.

Plus, due to listener demand, we explain our not particularly complex recording and editing process.

Our original Adobe episode.

Descript audio/video editor

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The 10 Biggest Companies In The World

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

We had it all planned out. A huge Xmas bonanza episode featuring guests, fun, laughs and all you could ever want from a Down Round variety show.

But then Raph was struck by a mystery illness and we had to delay it by several days. So, until then, enjoy this delightful backup episode where we dig into the world's biggest companies by market cap, and opine on our future. It isn't financial advice. But we would not blame you if you took it that way.

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iMessage: Visiting the green bubble leper colony (PREVIEW)

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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For many years, Apple has enforced iPhone dominance by refusing to adopt modern text messaging standards, meaning group chats and multimedia messages between iPhones and Android devices has been fundamentally broken. But last month, Apple announced it would adopt the RCS standard.

But at the same time, it came down hard on Beeper Mini, an app which purported to bring the locked down iMessage experience to Android. In this ep, we dive into iMessage and the weird politics of the green bubble.

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Google Has Another Red Hot Go At AI

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Poor Google. What used to be possibly the best business in human history has taken a few heavy body blows after the rise of generative AI, with the folks in Mountain View no longer looking like the obvious winners of the internet age. Though they were instrumental in building our current AI moment, companies like OpenAI are hogging the limelight.

But they've been trying to wrestle that crown back. This month, Google announced Gemini, the model it hopes will challenge OpenAI. But will it? It already seems like it won't be that easy. We discuss.

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The X Advertising Apocalypse (PREVIEW)

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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You probably know the story by now. Elon Musk replied positively to a weirdo's anti-Semitic post, which led to an advertiser exodus and Elon melting down at the New York Times DealBook conference. Now, X seems increasingly loaded up with crap tier chum advertising, which is never usually a good sign for a platform.

Is the company spiralling? Is it at death's door? Who knows, but it's fun to talk about with friends.

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The Return of Sam Altman

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000

We last updated you on the OpenAI drama a couple of weeks ago, right in the middle of it. Back when it looked like Sam Altman was gone, and the future of AI was up in the air.

Ah well! Now that the dust has settled, we're reflecting on what we know about what went down, internet arguments about accelerationism vs decelerationism, and what the near future might hold for OpenAI and AI generally.

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It's Another Down Round Q&A

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 18:04:00 +0000

Welcome...to the silly season.

We answer a bunch of your questions which allows us to prognosticate about the future with less constraints than the few there are usually.

Topics covered include:

Will AI stagnate?
Biden's AI regulation framework
Can I have $20?
How many beers do we typically drink before a podcast?
Will VC stop funding boneheads, or is it built into the system?

Sorry if we didn't get to your question, join the discord and ask in there!

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🚨EMERGENCY POD🚨 Sam Altman Boned from OpenAI

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 07:46:45 +0000

The day James left for honeymoon, the unthinkable happened; Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, got boned by his board of directors like a dog.

How can a man who took a product from 0 to 100 million users in less than a year, who is on top of the world be so unceremoniously dumped by a board of AI doomers and safety dorks?

Well, we dragged James away from the margaritas and discussed all the crazy happenings in the first official Down Round emergency pod.

(Also our first remote recording on non-studio mics, soz)

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The Great Airbnb Crying Tour (PREVIEW)

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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Since the last time we did an episode about Airbnb, the company has both done well and faced deeper problems. Earnings look pretty good. But it has also faced political problems – like being functionally banned in NYC – plus a general perception that it has gotten shittier.

So, CEO Brian Chesky says he's going to fix it. That means two things: AI, and putting the boot into hosts.

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Grok, OpenAI and Humane: OK, it’s getting stupid now

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 18:10:00 +0000

Once again we’re brought back to the world of AI. Sorry, there’s simply no escape. A few things have happened over the past week:

Elon Musk announced Grok, the first model for his new company xAI
OpenAI released a new model as well as a host of new consumer features for ChatGPT - many of which put them in direct competition with the developers who are their API customers. We discuss whether the future of OpenAI is as an API, or a consumer tech play.
Humane finally announced its ‘AI Pin’. Does this make the Down Round Hot Gadget Guide?

Lots to go over. So we did.

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Online Marketplaces: 2 podcast mics, poor condition, free to a good home (PREVIEW)

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000

One of the very first things people realised they could do online was sell their crap. Since that realisation, e-commerce has gotten a little more advanced. But online marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace, eBay and Gumtree still kick along, promising you the opportunity to find great deals as long as you're willing to drive 40 minutes to some guys house.

We go through a whirlwind tour of the online marketplace, how it got to where it is, and the forces making them less essential.

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The SBF Trial: Confessions of a spreadsheet criminal

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 18:05:00 +0000

It's official: Sam Bankman-Fried is GUILTY of committing fraud while running his doomed crypto empire at FTX. The crazy-haired freak took down the credibility of the whole sector while doing it.

The trial -- particularly the testimony of Sam's fellow execs at FTX and Alameda -- turned up all sorts of juicy little details. In this ep, we go through them and reminisce on the crypto exchange that was.

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Twitter/X: Checking in on the world's best website (PREVIEW)

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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It's been a minute since we've checked in on Twitter/X, which has become a playground for whatever Elon Musk thinks is cool at any given moment and yet still has many millions of users. But it certainly hasn't collapsed as some predicted.

That said, the situation doesn't look great. The ads haven't come back, users seem to be slipping away, investors are writing down their stake – all while the Israel/Palestine conflict really kicks the tyres of Twitter as an information platform. We dig in.

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Snitch Tech: You haven't been talking to the cops have ya mate?

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 23:43:14 +0000

Snitch Tech.

One of the weirdest trends in tech over the last decade has been the spread of surveillance tech for consumers. Everything from Ring doorbells from Amazon to facial recognition AI and family location tracking software has made it a breeze to film, track and trace your fellow citizens.

But it goes deeper. Social networks for ratting out your neighbour. Weird Nextdoor threads. Number plate recognition software for landlords. We're coining it SNITCH TECH, and we're talking about it today.

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Nintendo: Oh yeah, that Italian fella (PREVIEW)

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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Nintendo has made some of the most popular consumer products of all time, and also invented Mario. Pretty great run! But it's also an interesting business, with a relatively unique approach within the gaming industry and beyond.

As the rumoured announcement of the Switch 2 draws ever nearer, we chat about the House of Mario and what makes it tick.

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iPad: The optimal device for concert photography

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

The first iPad was released over a decade ago and pitched as a bold new frontier for consumer computing. It helped kill the netbook and spawned generations of copycat tablets from Android manufacturers and Microsoft.

But it hasn't really played out all that well. In fact – despite selling a healthy number of them – the iPad sometimes seems like a mostly forgotten product range, with confusing options and not much by way of innovation.

What gives? Are tablets in general a dead end? We discuss.

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OpenAI: I'm sorry, I can't help with that request

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Wow! We're checking in on OpenAI again. Reporting over the weekend confirmed that the company is on track to book over $1 billion of revenue this year – suggesting this whole AI thing might have an actual consumer base. Meanwhile, the company released a handful of new features for ChatGPT which demonstrate just how hard they're going for it. We discuss.

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SpaceX: Two idiots go to Mars

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Elon Musk may be a complete weirdo these days, but SpaceX is still a pretty cool company. Started to assist mankind in its journey to Mars, it has been the leading company in the world of private spaceflight, and the undisputed king of satellite tech.

In this ep we talk about SpaceX, Starlink, the various forces which made it successful, and speculate on what jobs we will have on Mars.

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YouTube: Please, hit that like and subscribe

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 19:04:59 +0000

YouTube is indisputably the king of online video, and has been virtually since it launched in 2005. It's part of the infrastructure of the internet, and has imprinted itself on the culture through a combo of its algorithmic recommendations engine and sheer scale. But in the age of TikTok, can YouTube be toppled?

In this episode, we talk through YouTube's history, key points in its development, and what its future might look like. Also, sadly, YouTubers.

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Audio & Video Production: Boops, bleeps, etc (PREVIEW)

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

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These days it seems just about everyone can make professional looking video. Thanks to the video production tools available to the average user of TikTok, Zoomers are better at editing video than millennials ever were. It leaves the question: what are the classic pro video platforms like Avid, Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro doing?

At the same time, music production seems like a harder problem to make simple for the masses. In this ep, we dive into the current situation around audio and video production.

Links

Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker – Internal Tech Emails

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AI Devices: Hitting the discotheque in your Facebook Ray-Bans

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Among the numerous announcements made at this year's Meta Connect was a new generation of its smart glasses, developed with Ray-Bans. Aside from the usual stuff about capturing photos and listening to audio, Mark Zuckerberg casually dropped that he thinks they will soon be an interface into conversational AI.

It comes as there are rumours of other companies considering AI devices, like OpenAI working with former Apple design boss Jony Ive. In this ep, we dive in.

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Digital identity: Show us yer licence, guvna (PREVIEW)

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

Digital identity references a simple idea: how much a computer system knows about you. But, just like everything else, it's a bit weird these days. People have increasingly fractious online identities, even as the platforms we use and our own governments collect more and more data about us.

This episode, we discuss changes in digital identity, and Raph gets to go off about his deep and unabiding love of the surveillance state.

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Phone Cameras: But like... what is a photo, man?

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

The smartphone camera arms race seems to be a little less intense these days, but the quality of a phone camera remains one of the major reasons people choose to upgrade – especially when most iPhone and Android devices have been basically the same black glass rectangle for a decade now.

But there's only so much circuitry and lens technology you can cram into a phone. So much of the development has been software level, with machine learning and AI doing heavy algorithmic work to make your photos pop. This ranges from automatic red eye removal and saturation adjustment all the way up to faked photos of the moon.

So we ask the bold question: where does smartphone photography go from here? And does it really matter if the photos your phone is taking don't really reflect reality?

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Flexport: Container go on ship (PREVIEW)

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

If you pay any attention to tech or VC Twitter, Flexport will have crossed your radar. A freight forwarding business which wants to do for supply chains what Stripe did for payments, Flexport (and its founder Ryan Petersen) has become one of the most hyped startups among a certain flavour of tech poster. Petersen also became a well-known talking head during the COVID supply chain crisis.

The company is in the news because Petersen sacked his successor, former Amazon logistics boss Dave Clarke, and has returned to the helm amid a revenue collapse. In this ep, we talk about Flexport, logistics, and what the heck's going on.

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Unity: How to piss off developers with one simple trick

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

Unity is one of the most popular game engines in the world, powering everything from a solid chunk of the mobile gaming universe to bigger console and PC games. Last week, it managed to annoy basically all of its customers by announcing a new, highly extractive pricing model.

In this episode, we dive into what a game engine does, the rise of Unity, and why making everyone who uses your product homicidally angry is the bold marketing move of 2023.

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Social Audio: Kicked out of the Clubhouse (PREVIEW)

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

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This week brought news that Clubhouse, the social audio streaming platform endlessly hyped during the early pandemic, has pivoted away from its original purpose and is now trying to become sort of a group chat for audio instead.

It's as good a time as any to talk about social audio, the way people share audio online, and why it's such a tough nut to crack.

Links

Clubhouse reinvents itself as an audio messaging app - The Verge

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Wikipedia: Leave your citations at the door (feat. Richard Cooke)

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 04:54:28 +0000

Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites on earth, and an example of a quasi-utopian internet project which has kind of worked out in the end – and managed to stick around too. Despite some evident problems, it all works surprisingly well.

To help us understand Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation which manages it – and the weird world of the editors who keep it functional – we're joined by author Richard Cooke, who is currently writing a book about it.

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Canva: Graphic designers, your terrible reign is over (PREVIEW)

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 20:59:28 +0000

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Canva is one of Australia's most successful tech companies. It has proven pretty disruptive to the global design landscape, with its template-based offering making it relatively easy for even novices with zero taste to make stuff that looks pretty good.

In this ep, we talk about Canva's effect on design, and where it might go next to justify its sky-high valuation.

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MrBeast: Staring into the YouTube abyss (feat. Max Read)

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 19:00:00 +0000

MrBeast is the most popular individual YouTuber, with over 180 million subscribers. He makes a lot of sleekly produced videos where he gives away money, cars, islands and life-altering surgeries. To some, he is history's greatest philanthropist. To others, he's deeply evil in a way that is hard to articulate. Which side of the divide you fall on is mostly a generational thing.

To help us understand the man, the business and the phenomenon that is MrBeast, we're joined by writer Max Read, who formerly edited Gawker and has written for New York Magazine, The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine. (And possibly other New York related publications.) Max recently authored a feature article for the NYT on MrBeast, making him well-placed to take us on this dark odyssey into the heart of YouTube.

Max also writes a newsletter called Read Max, which you should subscribe to.

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What's up with the anti-ageing vampire billionaire? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:30:00 +0000

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A fun one for you this week. Over the past few weeks, we've been blessed with many news stories about Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire who is putting his considerable wealth towards becoming functionally immortal through a weird diet, militant sleep schedule, and injecting himself with his son's blood.

Pretty neat! On this episode, we discuss Johnson's quest, and where it fits in with recent Silicon Valley fixation on biotech and the physical sciences.

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Snap: We're bringing the dog ears filter back

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:39:47 +0000

Snapchat was one of the major social media platforms of the 2010s, and still remains pretty popular with the kids. It helped create much of the modern social media landscape, but hasn't been able to turn that into lasting wins -- in no small part because every innovation it comes up with is pretty quickly cloned by its biggest rival, Instagram.

Now it finds itself in a precarious position, with parent company Snap Inc reporting a decline in revenue and the company trying just about every pivot Down Round loves to see, from AI to augmented reality.

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Should Apple buy Disney? (PREVIEW)

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 19:00:00 +0000

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One of the most enduring rumours in tech markets and investing subreddits is that Apple is on the cusp of buying Disney and integrating its IP and content into Apple's tech and distribution network. It's like a sick fantasy for guys with no lives and ZERO swag.

It seems pretty unlikely. But with news that returned CEO Bob Iger could be planning to break up the empire and sell off assets like ESPN, the rumour mill is kicking back into gear. We ask the question: should Apple buy at least PART of Disney?

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QR Code Menus: Parma Button Activated

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 19:01:00 +0000

QR code menus became popular during the pandemic, when everyone collectively decided it was much safer to have your beers delivered to the table at the pub instead of walking up yourself.

Now there are a million different providers of QR code menus. But but how does it all work, and is it actually a good business? We dig in.

For an extra episode each week, and no ads, subscribe to Down Round premium here.

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WeWork: A pre-post-postmortem

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 19:01:08 +0000

Big news, WeWork fans! The company has announced that it is hurtling towards bankruptcy, with serious doubts about its capacity to continue as a “going concern”. For those who haven’t been paying attention for the past couple of years and assumed it was bankrupt and out of business anyway, this will be a shock.

In today’s ep, we take a tour through the WeWork story — particularly what it has been up to since its famous IPO collapse in 2019.

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Press Button, Receive Pharmaceuticals (feat. Tim Doyle)

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 21:00:16 +0000

Recent years have seen a surge in telehealth and online health delivery — from essential prescriptions to more discretionary health spending. Everyone from smaller boutique startups to Amazon want a slice of the pie. There’s a big debate in the medical community about so-called ‘asynchronous care’ — where a patient and doctor communicate through non-live online services. Pharmacists, already rattled by the retail revolution led by Chemist Warehouse, are also mad about this stuff. But many patients do like to do medicine on the computer.

Today we’re joined by Tim Doyle, founder of online healthcare company Eucalyptus, who gives a window into how this stuff works in Australia. And maybe beyond. (No promises.)

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Elon Musk, X and the promise of the 'everything app'

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:26:22 +0000

Twitter is no more. From the ashes rises X, Elon Musk’s cringely-named attempt to actualise one of his long term goals: building an everything app. Musk wants X to be the central place where you post, shop, send money, access financial services and do whatever else it is you do as part of being alive on the planet.

In this episode we dive into the idea of the everything app, and why tech companies have been chasing that dream for at least a decade.

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Down Round Q&A: Zero tolerance for stupid questions

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 01:25:55 +0000

It’s been a while since we’ve done a Q&A episode, and we know your pressing questions have been accumulating for months. We’re sorry we let it get so desperate.

Thank you to our subscribers on Substack and Twitter (X???) who sent in questions. If we didn’t make it to you, there’s a good chance we’ve got a whole ep planned in future.

Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

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The Hollywood Strikes: Please help me budget, my streaming industry is dying

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 21:12:38 +0000

Hollywood actors and writers are both on strike for the first time since 1960. Two of the primary reasons they’re hitting the picket line are core Down Round areas: the economics of streaming, and the future of AI content.

Working actors are mad that they’re not being compensated properly for appearances in streaming content, where audience figures are much more opaque, and they’re staring down the barrel of having their likenesses reused with AI.

Ah well. Guess it’s up to us to figure it out then…

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Drones: A threatening buzzing sound from 50 metres up

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 20:00:26 +0000

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The rise of the consumer-available drone over the past decade has been a huge win for real estate agents and YouTube fail compilations. But what about the rest of us chumps?!

In this episode, we talk about the drone — from the dominance of Chinese companies in their production, to the (possible) promises of drone delivery.

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Threads: Glory to Meta! Glory to Meta!

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 20:16:59 +0000

At the end of last week, Mark Zuckerberg decided to take advantage of the chaos over in Twitterland by surprise dropping Meta’s own text-based social media platform, Threads. Because it leverages the Instagram social graph, it quickly exploded to over 100 million users.

In today’s ep, we dig into Threads and make a series of wild predictions which are sure to never be vindicated.

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Twitter: You have exceeded your podcast rate limit

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 21:21:48 +0000

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The ongoing freakout at Twitter culminated this week in the platform limiting the number of tweets users could see per day, which Elon Musk claimed was to stop an onslaught of AI bots training themselves on Twitter data.

That caused a brief exodus to Bluesky, the wonky alternative currently being hyped by Twitter refugees and former addicts.

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Ticketing: The Swifties will see justice, in this life or the next

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 20:48:34 +0000

The ticket industry is one of the most confusing online industries in 2023, a rentseeking behemoth which doesn’t seem to offer much for fans or artists alike.

Thanks to the suggestion of a few listeners who seem to have missed out on Taylor Swift tickets last week, we’re diving in.

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AI Update: ChatGPT please generate a mid joke for this subtitle

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:37:18 +0000

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It’s been a hot minute since we’ve checked in on the world of AI, and things have been chugging along at rapid pace in the buzziest sector of tech.

This week, we dive into the current AI landscape, including the world of open-source AI.

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LinkedIn: 2 executives at Down Round viewed your profile

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:19:27 +0000

Let’s face it: LinkedIn is one of the most annoying websites ever to exist. Terrible emails, armies of recruiters, and some of the worst posts you’ve ever seen.

And yet it’s also one of the most successful social media platforms, a genuine moneymaker for Microsoft, and now completely integral to modern white collar life. In this episode, we talk through LinkedIn and the horrible posters who populate it.

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Reddit Blackout: Understanding the twisted mind of a mod

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:01:09 +0000

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Reddit, one of the internet’s last largely functional online communities, is undergoing something of a political revolution. Thanks to the company’s plans to implement charge for API access — potentially affecting everything from third-party apps to moderation bots — subreddits large and small have gone dark, with the platform’s army of uncompensated …

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Vision Pro: Wearing VR goggles to a funeral

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 19:44:57 +0000

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple announced the Vision Pro, the ‘spatial computing’ headset it believes is the future of going on the computer, getting online, and posting up a storm.

Now the dust has settled, it’s time for the boys to go in.

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Sport Streaming: Bringing back the biff

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:06:34 +0000

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Despite the fact the entertainment world at large is — for better or worse — piling in to the streaming model, sport has proven much more difficult. A headache-inducing labyrinth of rights deals, blackouts and other thorny problems have kept sport broadcasting from fully leaning into streaming. But that is changing, with streamers from Apple to Amazon d…

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#90 - Swimply: The Way Of Water (ft. Becky Lucas)

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 05:09:40 +0000

James is in the US this week, so we're digging an episode from the deep and forgotten archives.

Swimply is, to put it simply, Airbnb but for pools. As in, you can go to a strangers house and swim in their pool for a small fee. It has tried to launch in Australia three times now, so obviously it deserved our attention. Comedian Becky Lucas joined us to discuss.

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#89 - Yahoo!: Pouring one out for the OG

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 19:16:28 +0000

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At every major juncture of internet development since 1994, you’re guaranteed to find one company making baffling decisions: Yahoo. From one of the biggest stocks of the dotcom boom to the laughingstock of the mobile era, Yahoo has managed to stumble ungracefully through internet history in a way we simply had to chronicle.

In this episode, we look back …

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#88 - Esports: This is our application to join FaZe Clan

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 20:38:19 +0000

Esports was one of the weirdest hype cycles of the last tech boom. A surge of venture capital and investment led to a frothy market which somehow convinced people that ‘watching Apex Legends’ was not only the next frontier in video gaming, but also in sports and entertainment generally. This unstoppable hype train culminated in FaZe Clan, an esports influencer house, listing on the public markets via a SPAC.

Turns out it didn’t really work, and esports has not remotely lived up to its promise of being the future of sport. What went wrong? Down Round discusses.

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#87 - Netflix: Stranger Things season 1-4 recap [AD-SUPPORTED]

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:31:00 +0000

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Netflix was once the golden child of the tech industry, with its streaming model held up as the future of content consumption. Now that every rightsholder has a streaming platform, and the end of the tech boom has led to drastic cuts in content budgets and the return of advertising, where does that leave Netflix?

The boys chat. Raph offers his strident view as a man who does not watch scripted television.

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#86 - Nvidia: From sexy elves to a $1 trillion company

Wed, 31 May 2023 00:43:23 +0000

This week, GPU maker Nvidia was briefly valued at $1 trillion, which is pretty wild for a company founded to cater to the whims of one of God’s most pathetic creatures: PC gamers.

The surge in value is largely thanks to Nvidia’s critical position in the emerging AI economy. It turns out the company’s graphics cards technology, originally intended to support high-performance gaming, are actually very good at training the neural networks that drive platforms like ChatGPT.

In this ep, we dive into how we got here.

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#85 - AR/VR Headsets: Yet more exciting ways to play Beat Saber

Thu, 25 May 2023 20:49:35 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium.

Apple’s developer conference is in a couple of weeks, and all signs suggest it is about to announce an insanely expensive AR/VR headset, which it hopes will be their next computing platform and maybe a smartphone successor somewhere down the line.

In this ep we talk about headsets generally, the companies trying to make them happen, and why no one seems …

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#84 - Text: This one is for the posters

Tue, 23 May 2023 21:14:43 +0000

Despite the fact the social web seems inexorably on the march towards TikTok-style video feeds, there’s still a happy home on the web for big-brained lovers of text. Twitter, despite never being the biggest social network, has outsized influence. Now that Elon Musk is slowly transforming it into a big toilet, other challengers are poking their head above the parapets.

In this episode we’re talking through the vultures who are circling Twitter’s instability and trying to become the next place where text-heads congregate — from Meta to Bluesky.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#83 - Meta: Checking in on Casa de Zuck

Thu, 18 May 2023 19:30:57 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium.

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve taken a look at what Meta is up to. It’s a good time, because they’re currently making a hasty AI pivot like everyone else.

Will it work? What happened to the metaverse? Will zoomers ever use Facebook? So many questions, so few answers.

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#82 - Fitness: Lifting a 1kg weight while the Rocky theme blares

Tue, 16 May 2023 20:26:22 +0000

The worlds of fitness and tech have been converging for years thanks to innovations in wearables, apps and subscriptions. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys quantifying every minute biological detail of your workout, or developing a parasocial relationship with a chirpy American cycling instructor… your time is now.

In this ep, we survey everything from the Apple Watch and Fitbit to Peloton and Strava, and ask a key question: are you ready to feel the burn, boss?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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BuzzFeed News/Vice: Remembering the clicks era

Thu, 11 May 2023 19:30:33 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium.

Over the past few weeks , BuzzFeed News shuttered its doors and Vice made deep cuts to its news product. They followed the collapse of other digital news brands like Gawker, which fell apart for a second time.

All these platforms were highly representative of the digital media era of the 2010s, which has come to what looks like a screeching halt. In toda…

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#80 - AI Jobpocalypse: Computer took my job

Tue, 09 May 2023 20:20:50 +0000

In March, we tackled the AI doom prophets who argue that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence will kill everyone on its journey to sentience.

That was cool. But obviously people have more pressing concerns — like, “are these new AI systems going to take my job?” Today, we’re digging into the discourse on AI and automation, and whether you personally are headed straight for the breadline. (Spoiler: you specifically are in serious trouble, but we’re fine.)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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Activision Blizzard: Antitrust, but for gamers

Thu, 04 May 2023 19:31:08 +0000

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Last year, Microsoft announced it would buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion, making it the biggest tech deal literally ever.

Last month, the UK competition regulator blocked the sale on antitrust grounds, arguing it would hurt competition in the nascent cloud gaming sector.

In this ep, we discuss Microsoft, Xbox, cloud gami…

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#78 - Dropshipping & Affiliate Marketing: How to become richer than the devil himself

Tue, 02 May 2023 19:30:00 +0000

Anyone who spent any time online over the past few years will be intimately familiar with the constellation of cool ways to get rich online. Youtube grindset hustlers have been promising us for years that dropshipping and affiliate marketing are your ticket to financial freedom.

In this ep, we dive into this weird world. And hell, maybe you’ll learn how to become a billionaire along the way.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#77- It's yet another Down Round Q&A!

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 20:23:09 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium.

It's been a little while since we opened the dusty Down Round mailbag and answered some listener questions.

Today we're answering a range of inquiries we got via Twitter and Substack, on everything from Linktree and Twitter to online booze subscription services and AI Drake.

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#76 - Cars: Car goes vroom vroom, computer goes beep boop

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:13:35 +0000

One of the most underrated battles currently emerging in the tech world is the fight over who will control your in-car experience.

Apple and Google have already made serious headway into controlling car entertainment systems, but now they want more. Now, some car companies are openly wondering whether they should ditch the big dogs altogether and go the Tesla route of owning the whole experience.

For James, proud owner of a 2012 Hyundai Getz with zero screens, this is barely relevant. But for Raph, an even prouder owner of a 2022 Skoda Kodiaq… it’s personal.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#75 - Instagram: Down Round liked this and 56 other photos

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 19:30:13 +0000

Instagram was undeniably the most influential social network of the 2010s, and certaibnly one of the most important generators of 2010s culture.

But it’s looking a bit worse for wea these days. This week we dive into Insta, where it’s been, and where it’s going.

Editor’s note: we apologise for conflating Marilyn Manson and Slipknot.

Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

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#74 - Discord: 350 million sweaty gamers can’t be wrong

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 20:00:44 +0000

Discord has gone from being an ultra low latency voice platform for League of Legends heads into one of the major social platforms of 2023.

We talk about its rise through the pandemic, its challenge to both Slack and traditional social media, and we give Raph ample space to evangelise Microsoft Teams, his favourite piece of software on Earth.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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Microchips, Pt. 2: One weird trick to solve the global supply chain crisis

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 20:25:19 +0000

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium.

In the second part of this week’s topic, we talk about the current state of the microchip industry.

Thanks to the insane complexity of making them, chip supply chains are incredibly fragile, and it’s dominated by a tiny handful of companies. This is highly unfortunate, because we need microchips to do things like drive to the shops and watch TikTok for …

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#72 - Microchips, Pt. 1: A walk down memory lane

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 20:20:11 +0000

Microchips. They’re extremely tiny and very cool. (You can quote us on that.) This week, we’re doing a two-parter on the modern world’s most important technology.

In the first part, we chat through the development of the microchip and how we got where we are today. In the second half, we’ll go into the incredible weird, fragile state of the industry today.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#71 - Twitter & AI: Blue ticks for all!

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 02:57:14 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

This week we’re tackling not one but two topics. And they’re both kind of related to Elon Musk.

First we’re giving you an update on what’s been going on with Twitter, which despite our unshakeable faith Musk’s stewardship seems to not be doing so well. Then we dig into some new developments in the world of AI, including an open letter calling for researc…

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#70 - TikTok Ban Watch: This podcast has been approved by the Central Committee of the CCP

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 19:30:00 +0000

For the past few years we’ve had to listen to Western governments repeatedly threaten to ban TikTok and then ultimately not do much about it. But it does seem like the conversation is heating up. Will they do it? Or will an army of Zoomers addicted to those videos where a robot voice reads Reddit posts over Minecraft footage stop them?

We discuss.

Links

• Project Texas: The Details of TikTok’s Plan to Remain Operational in the United States — Lawfare Blog

• Australia-wide ban of TikTok on government devices announced as senior politicians quit the app — The Guardian

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#69 - Politics: The Peter Thiel Power Hour

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 18:31:01 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

We’ve alluded a few times on the pod to the weird developments in tech industry politics over the last few years. Bitcoin! Conservatives! New societies! Things are getting weird.

In today’s ep we go a little deeper, diving into the political tendencies currently driving Silicon Valley.

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#68 - Shein: Fashion, but make it faster (ft. Veronica Milsom)

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 18:30:00 +0000

Shein is one of the world’s most insane companies, and yet flies weirdly under the radar. One of the most popular shopping platforms in the world, it is revolutionising the fast fashion industry with its incredibly vertically integrated manufacturing, marketing and e-commerce machine.

We’re joined this week by writer, podcaster and former Triple J host Veronica Milsom, who recently hosted Threads, a series about the fast fashion industry.

We talk about fast fashion, Shein’s particular business model, and what the future of fashion holds for certifiably swagged out and drippy boys like Raph and James.

Links

* Shein: The TikTok of Ecommerce - Packy McCormick and Matthew Brennan

* How Shein beat Amazon at its own game and reinvented fast fashion – Rest of World

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#67 - GPT-4: This time it’s personal

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 18:40:15 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Every time we think we’re done with AI episodes, they release something else. Can we catch a break?

Last week, OpenAI dropped GPT-4, the latest version of the large language model which powers ChatGPT. It’s now more creativ and less frequently wrong, and it’s caused another minor freakout online.

Is it all that? We discuss.

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#66 - Apple: Do you smell what Cook is cooking?

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 06:05:40 +0000

Recent reports have indicated Apple is gearing up to announce its mixed-reality headset, which the company wants to be the next iPhone. CEO Tim Cook reportedly wants it to be his product legacy.

So, we thought it was a good time to take a look at Apple in 2023. At the precipice. What are they up to? And are we ready to put big clunky headsets on and enter the Cookverse?

Links

- Tim Cook bets on Apple’s mixed-reality headset to secure his legacy – Financial Times

- Inside the Tech Powering Apple’s Envelope-Pushing, Risky Mixed Reality Headset - The Information

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#65 - Atlassian: Jira lovers unite!

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 18:31:04 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Down Round listeners who don’t work in software development or associated fields are always asking us about Atlassian. What the hell do Atlassian do? Why do devs complain about Jira all the time? Why do I have to see Mike Cannon-Brookes on TV?

Well, we’re here to answer your questions, and slightly more. If you know nothing about Atlassian, you’ll walk o…

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#64 - Silicon Valley Bank: Listen to this while sprinting to your local bank branch

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 19:12:22 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Silicon Valley Bank imploded last week, becoming the second-largest bank collapse in US history. This led to an insane meltdown within the tech industry and beyond.

In this ep, we explain what happened, what it means, and offer 1-2 prolonged rants along the way.

This was recorded on Monday March 13, so if anything insane happens after that which doesn’t vindicate our predictions, please give us the benefit of the doubt and assume we were right anyway.

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#63 - AI Doom, Pt. 2: Hot enough for ya?

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 04:45:59 +0000

This is part two of a two part episode, for subscribers only.

In the second part of our AI doom episode, for subscribers only, we dive into the nitty gritty. What are people actually saying when they claim AI is going to kill us all? (They can be pretty vague on the specifics, after all.) Are they right? Is ChatGPT going to end your life?

Let us answer these questions, and perhaps a little more.

Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

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#62 - AI Doom, Pt. 1: It's unfortunately time to die

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 04:33:44 +0000

This is part one of a two part episode.

With the end of a long AI winter and the rise of large language models and platforms like ChatGPT, we’re experiencing a renaissance of AI doomerism, and people making wild and bold predictions of the incoming robot apocalypse.

It’s almost quaint, in a way. Charming. This week, we’re looking at the AI doomer movement, who predict we’ll all be dead at the hands of ultrasmart computers in a few short years. In part one, we chart a course of its history, and the unusual places it developed over the past couple of decades.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#61 - The news: Breaking! Extra! Exclusive!

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 19:32:01 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

For hundreds of years, newspapers had a pretty good business model: you’d buy the paper, and it would have ads in it. Not bad!

Unfortunately, computers occurred. Now, our friends in the lying news media have been forced to adapt. In today’s episode, we dig into the uneasy marriage of news publishers and the internet.

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#60 - Dating apps: Raph Super Liked you!

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 18:30:00 +0000

Over the past decade, we’ve successfully outsourced romance and human reproduction to a series of apps, most of which are owned by Match Group. Pretty cool!

But it’s starting to look like Tinder and its many clones have lost their spark. What does the future hold? This week: a dive into the sick, sordid world of dating apps.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#59 - The Accountability Episode: Correcting the record

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 18:27:05 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Unlike other tech podcasts – who we won’t name – Down Round is ruthlessly committed to accountability and self-critique.

On today’s ep, we revisit a handful of topics we’ve covered over the last six or so months and evaluate whether we got it right or wrong. And we have a few laughs along the way. This is exactly what you pay for.

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#58 - Gaming: Gamers rise up, you have nothing to lose but your chains

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 18:30:10 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Gaming, which was considered a nasty little hobby for maladjusted dweebs as recently as 2018, is now as important to the global economy as healthcare and the natural resources industry.

OK, maybe that’s not true. But anyway. Gaming is big business, and it’s become deeply intertwined with the rest of the tech industry. This week, we’re talking about how t…

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#57 - Microsoft vs. Google: This one is for the Bing heads

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 18:31:05 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

The history of tech is littered with rivalries. Apple vs. Microsoft. Netflix vs. Amazon. PlayStation vs. Xbox. IBM vs. HP. Raph vs. Henno.

Microsoft vs. Google is one you hear about slightly less. But it’s been thrust to the forefront of the discourse now as the two companies battle in the world of AI and Google tries to tackle the ChatGPT threat.

But the rivalry goes back far longer and deeper than that. We dig in.

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#56 - Sports betting: 3 blokes share their luckiest multis (ft. Mark Di Stefano)

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 18:30:21 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Sports betting. It’s an enduring part of Australian culture, where having a flutter on your sport of choice is as natural as breathing oxygen, or putting your paycheque through the pokies, or having a flutter on something else like the dishlickers at Wentworth Park.

But sports betting is even more topical now that it has swept through the US in the wake of a Supreme Court decision back in 2018. Now it looks like Australia’s obsessive sports betting culture is hitting the global mainstream.

To dig through the detritus of the tech-enabled sports betting universe, we’re joined by Down Round repeat guest Mark Di Stefano, a reporter at the Australian Financial Review. We don’t even invite him at this point, he just wanders into the studio like he owns the place.

Links

How Sports Betting Hit the Mainstream in America – NY Times

Sportsbet under investigation for dodging online betting rules – AFR

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#55 - Reddit: r/downround has been permanently banned

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 18:39:41 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Reddit. Once infamous as a haven for libertarians, endless arguments about video games and borderline illegal porn, it has managed to survive the last decade of internet development as one of the last genuinely useful online communities.

We dive into the history, the culture, and why ‘Reddit’ has become one of the most common and effective Google search …

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#54 - Instant grocery: A single Twix bar delivered to your house in two minutes

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 00:42:57 +0000

Instant grocery (also known as instant commerce, 10-minute grocery, ultrafast delivery and a million other names) was one of the hottest categories globally at the tail end of the last investment craze. It seemed every major city had 3-5 companies trying to be the one to deliver you a bag of oranges at superhuman speed.

Now it doesn’t look so hot. In Australia, only Milkrun is left, with Voly and Send having collapsed already. And it’s looking shaky for Milkrun too.

What happened? Was instant grocery doomed from the start? How can they fix it? And where can a guy get toothpaste in five friggen minutes in this town??

Links

* Milkrun, the last local grocery delivery standing, is still trying to find fresh capital after raising $75 million - Startup Daily

* Instant grocery delivery app Send collapses - Sydney Morning Herald

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#53 - The creator economy: Please like and subscribe

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 18:31:10 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

The creator economy was one of the most hyped sectors at the tail end of the last boom, promising that anyone with an iPhone and a $15 ring light could become a phenomenally wealthy celebrity if they just believed in themselves. It even convinced two crazy-ass white boys from Sydney they could become successful Substack podcasters.

Now the dust has settled, was the hype justified? We’re talking everything from YouTubers and Instagram influencers to link-in-bio startups and whatever the hell Mr Beast does on this week’s episode.

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#52 - Food: From Soylent to soy burgers (feat. two soyboys)

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 18:30:00 +0000

The tech industry has had a long-time obsession with revolutionising food and the way we eat. From Soylent, the nutrient slurry intended for lifehacking programmers to optimise their sad lives, to the current obsession with plant-based and cell cultured meat, there are always venture-backed startups trying to disrupt the crap we stuff into our chompholes.

We dive in.

Links

* Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad” - Bloomberg

* The original Soylent blog

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#51 - AI, revisited: Computer, generate me some swag

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 18:31:05 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Since the last time we did an episode about AI, there’s been enough movement that we are being dragged back in. Join us… A few updates we dive into:

– Microsoft is deepening its investment in OpenAI, and integrating it into its cloud computing offering and software like Office.

– Google has called a “code red” and plans to roll out more customer-facing AI stuff this year and next.

– ChatGPT is turning into a paid product.

– Artists are becoming angrier and angrier about AI image generation, and the culture war is getting more intense.

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#50 - Tech layoffs: This too shall pass

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 18:30:00 +0000

It’s Down Round’s 50th episode. We’re celebrating this momentous occasion by discussing a real upper of a topic: the avalanche of layoffs which have hit the tech industry over the past several months.

So what’s going on? Is the world economy about to collapse? Or are these hugely profitable big tech companies working themselves into a tizzy?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#49 - Frank: Frauds, scams, flimflams, rackets, swindles and more

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:30:12 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Fans of tech scams will enjoy the first big one of the year. Frank, the student loan startup acquired by U.S. bank JP Morgan, turned out to be less of a business and more of a fraudulent Excel spreadsheet. We discuss how it fits in among the greats.

Links

* JP Morgan Says Startup Founder Used Millions Of Fake Customers To Dupe It Into An Acquisition – Forbes

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#48 - Micromobility: It's time to scoot

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:23:20 +0000

One of the buzziest sectors over the past half a decade is micromobility: e-scooters, e-bikes and the various rental apps which shell them out. Is it actually a good business? Or are they doomed to sink to the bottom of our various urban rivers?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#47 - Collectables: One weird trick to get rich quick

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 18:30:58 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Unfortunately much like stocks, crypto, rare sneakers, NFTs, classic Nintendo games and vibes, Pokemon cards have crashed in value.

This week, the collectable boom and bust cycle.

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#46 - The unbearable agony of being Zuck ft. Mike Isaac

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 18:30:00 +0000

On today’s ep we’re joined by Mike Isaac, New York Times tech correspondent and author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

He’s writing a book about Facebook, and we grill him relentlessly for an hour about Zuckerberg, the metaverse, and how things are feeling in Silicon Valley.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#45 - Payments: Buy now, pay... never?!

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 18:31:01 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Today’s episode is all about payments and fintechs. From neobanks to buy now pay later, how are they all weathering the marginal increase in interest rates? Not well, it turns out!

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#44 - Tesla: Full Self Driving Fail Compilation 2023

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 18:30:00 +0000

In the wake of Tesla’s huge stock price drop, Down Round discusses: is the company all that? Or is it going to be smoked by Volkswagen?

Happy New Year, and apologies for another episode about Elon Musk.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#43 - 2023 Predictions: Come, let us peer into the crystal ball

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 18:31:01 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

We’re pausing the free ep this week over the Xmas/NY break. We’re back and firing all cylinders from January 4.

For our cherished premium subs, we have 28 red hot minutes of deeply researched analysis on where the tech world is going in 2023. From crypto and AI to corporate mergers and social media, we’re offering sharp analysis and comprehensive, action…

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#42 - Down Round Q&A: A Santa stocking stuffed with questions

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 18:36:55 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Merry Christmas from the Down Round crew. Your present is another listener Q&A episode, packed to the brim with exciting questions about cutting edge companies like IBM and Salesforce. Do you like it? Say thank you Santa.

Want to participate in our next Q&A? Follow us on Twitter.

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#41 - Podcasts: Two podcasters podcast about podcasts (podcast edition)

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 22:20:22 +0000

Today we’re going meta. Various companies have been trying to turn podcasting (and ‘premium audio’) into a huge business on the level of streaming video. But is the hype actually justified? We discuss.

(Disclosure statement: as proud proprietors of Australia’s best value premium podcast, we think podcasts are going to the moon. Invest now.)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#40 - TikTok: More like TikToxic! (Has anyone said that before?)

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 18:36:52 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

TikTok: is it a fun lip syncing app for Zoomers, or a sinister intelligence operation by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party? You won’t find answers in this episode, that’s for sure. But we will hold your attention for 20-ish minutes.

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#39 - The Twitter Files: James read them so you don't have to

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 18:10:00 +0000

Elon has leaked internal comms from old Twitter onto the internet via trusted Substack journos, insisting that it reveals corruption, collusion and left-wing bias. But is it actually anything? The fellas discuss.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe

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#38 - The Apple tax, Elon and our old friend SBF

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 18:30:52 +0000

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit downround.substack.com

Down Round has gone premium, and this is our first episode in the warm, comforting embrace of the paywall. We’re kicking off with an omnibus ep updating you all on a few things we’ve gone over previously: Apple, Elon and SBF.

If you’re listening to the preview in front of the paywall – do yourself a favour and sign up. Go on then.

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#37 - ChatGPT: Revenge of the chatbots

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 18:45:00 +0000

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm this week, making it seem like an AI-dominated future could be just around the bend. But is it all that? The fellas discuss.

But, more importantly: Down Round is going premium. If you want to invest in our future podcast content empire, visit our Substack and join the family.

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#36 - Smartphones: Can’t beat ‘em! Seriously, we’ve tried.

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:15:59 +0000

We talk the persistence of the 14 year old smartphone, and the failure of voice, AI and the metaverse to usurp it.

Links

Everybody promised to disrupt the smartphone — and the smartphone outlasted them all – The Verge

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#35 - FTX: It just gets worse and worse

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 18:41:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone who made the FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried episode our most listened ever. As a reward for your loyalty, you get another episode about it. Say thank you.

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#34 - The inaugural Down Round Q&A Special

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 18:14:48 +0000

This week we're responding to listener questions put to us via the Down Round Twitter: @downroundpod

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#33 - Disney: That’s showbiz, baby!

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 18:15:27 +0000

As Bob replaces Bob (who in turn replaced Bob) we look at the recent goings on at The Walt Disney Company, and how it all fits into the streaming landscape.

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#32 - Twitter & Elon Musk: Back at it again

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 18:20:46 +0000

We’re checking back in on Twitter under the Musk regime. It’s all going great!

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#31 - FTX & Sam Bankman-Fried: SBF, a polycule, amphetamines and the biggest crypto scam in history

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:16:48 +0000

Where do we begin with this mess?The world's second biggest exchange, and crypto's golden boy has collapsed in a matter of days - from $36b to nothing.

Even by crypto standards this story is absurd. Allow us to take you through it.

Links

The FTX "balance sheet"

How Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Collapsed – NY Times

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#30 - Airbnb: Tenants of the world unite – you have nothing to lose but your bond!

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 18:30:11 +0000

Airbnb sort of sucks now, and it seems like the company realises it. It has announced guest-friendly changes, but are they enough?

Raph and James dive into all the thorny problems surrounding the company, and come to a final decision on whether you should be forced to do the dishes in your Byron Bay short-term stay. (The answer is no.)

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#29 - Apple vs Europe: See you in hell, Lightning cable!

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 18:15:22 +0000

The EU is forcing Apple change its iPhone cable, and they’re huffy even though they were definitely going to do it anyway. The boys discuss European regulation more generally.

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#28 - [ATTN: YOUR DATA HAS LEAKED ON THE DARK WEB] ft. Ariel Bogle

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 18:07:09 +0000

A recent series of high-profile hacks of Australian companies including Optus and Medibank have people worried about user data and privacy. Given Raph and James are both terminally chill about their own data, they brought on someone who actually knows what they're talking about: ABC journalist Ariel Bogle.

Links

The biggest hack in history: Australians scramble to change passports and driver licences after Optus telco data debacle – The Guardian

‘The damage here is potentially irreparable’: Scale of Medibank hack worsens – Sydney Morning Herald

Critics say more needs to be done to stop the next Optus or Medibank style of data breach – ABC

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#27 - Elon Musk & Twitter: What happens when a cool and funny guy liberates free speech

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 17:40:44 +0000

Elon's first few days at Twitter HQ have been eventful.

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#26 - Productivity software: Another day, another dollar

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 18:21:50 +0000

Productivity software. Our many and valued white collar listeners will know it very well. But will they be able to respect Microsoft Teams after the Down Round boys give it a skewering?

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#25 - Peaceful Rain Sounds to Sleep/Study to - beautiful, ambient, relax, chill

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 23:38:55 +0000

Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are changing the way music is made. We discuss.

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#24 - Meta's Metaverse: A 10 minute long game of beer pong where no one speaks

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:59:43 +0000

We've plugged into blockchain metaverses, but how is Facebook/Meta's multi-billion dollar attempt going?

Company Documents Show Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Falling Short - Wall Street Journal ($)

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#23 - Kanye West (Ye): Is Yeezus going to finally solve social media's moderation conundrum?

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 18:14:50 +0000

Kanye says he's going to buy Parler, the 'free speech'-focused Twitter clone. But more broadly, what is a platform's responsibility when it comes to removing speech? Do we want our tech overlords to determine what is allowed to be said and what isn't? If not them... then who?

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#22 - AI: Is it (finally) coming for our jobs? ft. Dan Nolan

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 18:03:03 +0000

AI is once again all the rage – with investor money, engineering talent and media interest flooding into the sector once again. What does the future hold?

Dan Nolan, notorious poster and AI entrepreneur, joins us to discuss.

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#21 - Alt-Tech: This episode is strictly NOT for soy drinkers

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:10:34 +0000

An anti-woke bank, a conservative safe-space for the desperate and dateless, a censorship-proof YouTube and a free speech Twitter.

We check in on right-wing tech.

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#20 – Google: Whistling through the graveyard

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:17:56 +0000

Google. You know it as a search engine, an email provider, a cloud hosting service, a mobile operating system, a friend. But did you know that Google is also a killer? Join us on a spooky pre-Halloween journey into the many products Google has unceremoniously killed before their time.

Links

Google Is Killing Stadia, And Refunding Every Purchase Ever Made - Forbes

Killed by Google

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#19 - Elon Musk: What's going down in the DMs of the richest people on the planet?

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 18:49:05 +0000

As part of the ongoing 'Does Elon Have to Buy Twitter?' drama a court has ordered the messages between Elon and many wealthy business leaders and VCs to be made public. It's a treasure trove.

Leave us a review if you have something to say...

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#18 - Love: What happens when you give a "one click checkout" guy LSD?

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 19:23:30 +0000

The relationship between frictionless payment, recreational drugs and attempting to find a greater purpose. Silicon Valley's weird relationship with drugs.

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#17 - NEOM: This podcast is officially sponsored by the Saudi Public Investment Fund

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 19:45:08 +0000

Saudi Arabia is building the city of the future which includes a 250 metre wide, 500 meter tall and 170km long vertical city. It's supposed to be ready in 8 years time. How's it looking? On track, we bet.

Links:

MBS’s $500 Billion Desert Dream Just Keeps Getting Weirder - Bloomberg

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#16 - Uber: The unbearable agony of ridesharing

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 22:57:01 +0000

Have the grand promises of Uber come to pass? Or are we living in an endless nightmare from which we might never wake, endlessly begging from a release that surely never to come? No? Just us? OK.

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#15 - Adobe: The most hated company on Earth rides again

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:30:27 +0000

Adobe has announced it will acquire the much-loved design platform Figma. What does it all mean, and why does everyone hate Adobe so much?

Down Round investigates. (By which we mean we discussed it, with no investigation or reporting whatsoever.)

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#14 – Amazon: The plan for world domination ft. Mark Di Stefano

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 19:29:09 +0000

You asked for a longer episode, and now we've delivered. We are joined by the Mark Di Stefano of the AFR – and formerly of BuzzFeed and The Information – who dispensed the dirt on Amazon for longer than our usual 15-20 minutes. Are you happy now?

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#13 - AI Art: Finally, creatives get knocked down a peg

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 19:30:39 +0000

Is AI generated art going to put every graphic designer, writer and podcaster out of a job and win every small town local fete art competition?

DALL-E, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion et al.

Where Does Alex Jones Go From Here? By Charlie Warzel

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#12 - OnlyFans: Finally, the British invented something interesting

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 19:35:38 +0000

OnlyFans, the adult content platform that has become a cultural force, made a lot of money last year. So you can understand why Twitter wanted a slice of that pie. Right? Right?
What happened next? Listen and find out.

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#11 - The Rant Zone: The 7 most busted things online

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 19:14:09 +0000

A scheduling hitch leaves Raph and James unprepared, but little did they know, they'd been preparing for this episode their whole lives...

Instead of going deep on one topic, we touch on 7 things that are broken on the internet/in the tech we use every day. Introducing, The Rant Zone.

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#10 – The Ethereum Merge: It's time to freak out

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 19:15:53 +0000

The crypto world is in a tizz about the biggest change to Ethereum since it launched. Will Ethereum moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake be a black swan disaster event, or the beginning of a new global blockchain reality? Well, we know two guys who are ready and willing to pontificate baselessly on that very question. (Hint: it's us.)

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#9 – Twitter, Elon and some guy named Mudge

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 19:15:52 +0000

A whistleblower complaint by renowned hacker Mudge gives us a peek behind the curtain at the alleged shitshow that is Twitter Inc.

Photo of Mudge and Bill Clinton: https://twitter.com/dotMudge/status/1235223136334995457?s=20&t=v0rD3-FAuNEIgUeRP5fttQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3CKgkyc7Qo

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#8 — The Metaverse: What's it like in there? We checked.

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 19:15:31 +0000

A sad mea culpa on Adam Neumann, then we talk the latest Metaverse happenings. Raph immersed himself in Decentraland, James immersed himself in Matthew Ball's new book, The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything.

They both report back.

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#7 - Andrew Tate: A testosterone-fuelled journey into the algorithm

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 19:52:36 +0000

How did kickboxing champion, manosphere influencer and general ne'er-do-well Andrew Tate hack the algorithms to appear in everyone's feed and become the world's most Googled person? And what the heck does it mean?

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#6 - Tornado Cash: You can’t sanction an idea, man!

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 19:29:51 +0000

Tornado Cash is a decentralised "mixer" that allows users to obscure their crypto transactions. It's been sanctioned by the US government, who say it is used to launder money.

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#5 - Flow: Elevating the world's consciousness, again

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 19:30:17 +0000

Adam Neumann, the man who set $40 billion on fire during the WeWork IPO debacle, is back – and he's just been given $350 million for another crack.

Links

– Flowcarbon "Lite Paper"

- FT: WeWork’s Adam Neumann on investing, startups, surfing and Masayoshi Son

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#4 – It's time to BeReal

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 20:11:29 +0000

BeReal: The hot new social media craze touts itself as the antithesis of Instagram. But one thing Instagram does is actually make money. Can BeReal reject the tried-and-true path of extracting value from its users while turning a profit? James and Raph discuss.

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#3 – MindGeek: One weird trick to lose all your advertising revenue

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 11:42:37 +0000

Visa and Mastercard have both stopped offering their payment processing services to MindGeek, the shadowy conglomerate behind some of the internet's most visited sites – including, but not limited to, YouPorn, Pornhub, RedTube and Brazzers.

What's all this then?

Links:

MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube – Financial Times

Visa and Mastercard suspend payments for ad purchases on Pornhub and MindGeek amid controversy – CNBC

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#2 – Helium: Finally, a non-criminal use case for crypto... right?

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:51:39 +0000

James Hennessy and Raph Dixon on the intersection of technology, business and culture.

This week, after a quick update on the rollercoaster at Instagram since our last episode, we discuss the golden-child of the blockchain: Helium. According to crypto-utopians (including, somehow, the New York Times) Helium provides an obvious use case for crypto outside of buying drugs and evading financial regulation. Unfortunately it might not quite be living up to the hype.

Links:

Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All – The New York Times

Web3 darling Helium has bragged about Lime being a client for years. Lime says it isn't true. – Mashable

I’m Regretting Mining Helium… – VoskCoin on YouTube

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#1 – Apple is F'ing Facebook

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 07:02:44 +0000

Snap and Twitter stocks plummet, Facebook is in a tizz, social media is being redefined – and it's all Apple and TikTok's fault.

Join James JR Hennessy and Raph Dixon at the intersection of business, tech and culture.

Subscribe to James' Substack here: https://www.theterminal.info/

More about The Meeting Tree here: https://themeetingtree.com

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