Artifacts

SpaceX is an amazing company but this valuation is insane. The idea that it’s even close to as valuable as Microsoft or Amazon is bananas. SpaceX still isn’t even profitable, so its price-to-earnings ratio is literally infinity. It’s halfway through Thursday as I post this and SpaceX is down ~10 percent on the day, so a touch of sanity is being restored, at least at the moment.

Cursor, with $1 billion in sales, certainly isn’t worth 60x revenue — especially in a business where it too isn’t profitable. But who cares when you’re paying with funny-money stock?

New AR glasses from Snap, on pre-order for $2,195. Pricey, but if they deliver they could be worth it. I’m skeptical, but curious.

What I’m really watching for is whether Apple does a glasses version of the Vision Pro. Glasses like these only work well when one company controls the whole stack, down to the phone in your pocket, and that kind of vertical integration is exactly Apple’s strength.

Ben Thompson, on how Anthropic’s safety rationale keeps lining up with its commercial interest:

I expect Anthropic to increasingly expose their model’s capabilities to end users through endpoints increasingly tailored to different workflows, even as they start to restrict the API. This replacement of software and restriction of access will be done in the name of safety.

The company really believes that they are the only ones who believe in super intelligence, and thus are the only ones who are sufficiently concerned about the dangers. That excuses decision after decision, policy after policy.

The history of brilliant people convinced they know what humanity needs is a sordid one, precisely because they have convinced themselves that their intentions are good, justifying actions that very much are not.

John Gruber, linking to the piece, adds the part I keep coming back to:

I tend to think the Anthropic true believers are all wet — that LLMs, amazing though they are, are not a path toward “super intelligence”. But, they used to be clearly behind OpenAI in technical capability, then caught up, and now with Mythos/Fable, they are clearly ahead. I still think they’re wrong about where this is heading, but I don’t think we can say we know they’re wrong.

I agree. I think LLMs are a dead-end when it comes to “super intelligence.” But will they become capable enough to help us find a new approach that can get there, and help build it? That feels more likely to me.

The New York Times, on Fox Corp.’s $22 billion deal to acquire Roku:

Since the Disney deal, which slimmed down the family’s media holding significantly, Fox Corp. has focused more narrowly on sports, news and entertainment, along with building up its streaming abilities. The deal with Roku will immediately put Fox Corp. into greater competition with other major providers of connected-TV devices, such as Comcast, which reaches internet and TV customers with proprietary software that binds Comcast to subscribers and provides it with valuable data. As the traditional cable business continues to erode, those devices make TV distributors a key link between customers and streaming services like Netflix and Disney+.

Buying Roku will allow Fox to own a piece of the infrastructure that powers a major chunk of the streaming business. Roku sells TVs that are powered by its proprietary operating system and owns the Roku Channel, a free, ad-supported channel for shows and movies. The company also makes audio devices and sells subscriptions to other streaming services, such as Peacock and Paramount.

The deal with Fox may test Roku’s relationships with rival content companies like Netflix and Amazon, because Roku has thrived by establishing itself as neutral third-party in the entertainment industry. During the question-and-answer session, Mr. Wood said that Roku had experience in that arena, featuring the Roku Channel alongside streaming apps from other media companies.

Interesting move — and one that sits awkwardly with what made Roku valuable in the first place. A platform’s strength is horizontal: it integrates with as many providers as it can and stays neutral among them, so every streaming service wants to be on the box. That neutrality is the product.

And the smart case for the deal depends on it. What Fox is really buying is scale: an audience large enough that advertisers have to buy in, built from hosting every service viewers want. That scale holds only as long as the rivals stay. So the bull case asks Fox to keep the platform neutral, which is the one thing its ownership gives it every reason to undo.

Horace Dediu, on why each new computing interface tends to add to the others rather than replace them:

The touch UI did not immediately obviate the need for traditional personal computing interfaces. The smartphone brought computing to more people and more contexts but keyboard and pointer computing cannot be fully replaced by touch. We have a situation where there is co-existence between touch and non-touch computing. Indeed we also have sensor computing in the form of Apple Watch and AirPods. Perhaps there were will also be Apple spectacles to expand the compute real estate on the body.

Intent computing will probably reside primarily with our phones and wearables but Spatial Computing will strengthen their position alongside keyboard computing. Spatial was always a “high commitment” interface. To use it you strapped in, settled down and became acclimated. Then you became productive. A session was going to last at least 20 minutes, perhaps even a few hours.

Intent computing is a few seconds of use. Perhaps a few seconds strung out in multiple sessions but it was far more “glance” computing than “sit down” computing.

So why not have all forms of computing?

As the diagram on the coral of life shows, evolution results in a multitude of “form factors”. Some do become extinct (see the scroll wheel iPod or the stylus PDA.) But most survive and coexist.

I agree with Horace. Intent computing will build on top of the platforms we already have, not replace them. An AI pin isn’t going to displace the smartphone. Even when you can just ask your phone to do something, you’ll still pick it up to read, watch, and look things up.

Satya Nadella, making the case that the model itself becomes a commodity — and that the value moves to the learning loop a company builds on top of it:

Every company is going to have to build what I think of as human capital and token capital. Human capital comprises the knowledge, judgment, relationships, ingenuity, and pattern recognition of its people, while token capital is the firm’s AI capability it builds and owns.

Importantly, human capital does not become less valuable as token capital grows. It only becomes more valuable! I believe human agency will be the driver of token capital growth. Humans will set ambitious goals, connect dots across domains, build relationships, and recognize patterns that matter most. Without human direction, you have compute running in circles.

This means the real opportunity is not in picking the best model but instead in building a learning loop on top of models where human capital and token capital compound. You can offload a task, or even a job, but you can never offload your learning. The future of the firm is the ability to compound that learning across people and AI.

This requires a new architectural approach where every business is able to build agentic systems that improve over time, while still retaining control over their IP. A company should be able to switch out a “generalist” model without losing the “company veteran” expertise built into their learning system. This is the key “test” of your control and sovereignty in the era ahead.

He’s right about the headline: without human direction, you’re leaving compute to wander. The creativity, the instinct, the judgment about what’s worth doing — call it taste — still has to come from people. No model supplies that for you.

But his bias shows in the vision he paints. Microsoft is vulnerable in exactly the future he describes, one where the model-makers absorb the very expertise he’s urging firms to protect. And the economics push them to do it: pulling that expertise into the model is the business those companies are in.

The idea of building a company to flip it has always annoyed me. There is a fundamental flaw in that plan. When you are faced with the tough decisions, you tend to take the quick and easy road. That is not going to be the best choice for the long term health of the company or product. It takes time to develop a good company or product.

It’s not only good software that takes a decade to develop, good companies do too. If you agree that’s true, it follows that you wouldn’t want promising entrepreneurs to go chasing waterfalls before they know how to paddle in the pond. Or something like that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to see evolution get a chance to work its magic, but if great products and companies keep getting abandoned or bought after 3-5 years, there’ll be less of that. And that’s a damn shame.

I’ve always thought you should build a company to own it. This leaves you with good options for the long term. If you decide to keep it, you have done things the right way without cutting corners. And if you decide to sell it, you have made it much more valuable. After all, if you built something that you want to own, someone else is likely to feel the same way and even pay more for it.