Down Round

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 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium. 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 …See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium. 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…See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium. 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 …See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.