Google's Gemini Hinges on Edge, Android Lags Behind
The most significant part of Google’s ‘Gemini Intelligence’ for Android is how much it relies on edge. You don‘t have marginal cost if your users bring their own compute. But… Apple has a far stronger position in high-performance edge compute than Google. Hence the line ‘our most advanced devices’ - most Androids can’t run this yet. https://www.android.com/gemini-intelligence/
Questioning Microsoft’s Progress on Foundation Models
He’s not wrong, but what can they do? How are those Microsoft foundation models going?
From Stats to First‑Principles: Understanding User Intent
"Instead of just looking at statistical patterns of what types of people engage with what content, for the first time we're going to be able to develop a first-principles understanding of what you care about and what each piece of...
Apple Music Bug Persists; Spotify Lacks Classical Support
Serious question - is anyone still working on Apple Music? Anyone at all? This bug has been around for half a decade now. Meanwhile Spotify has no classical product at all and Apple’s ‘Classical’ app is worthless)
Agentic Commerce Strips Control From Brands and Users
The funny thing about agentic commerce is that not only does the retailer or brand no longer have control - the user doesn't either
China’s Manus Cancellation Exposes Singapore Regulatory Loophole Myth
China cancelling the Manus deal has been so heavily flagged in the last month that it shouldn’t surprise anybody now.  The notable thing is that the convenient fiction where you could get around both American and Chinese regulations by...
Token Pricing Mirrors Early Mobile Data’s Flawed Cost Model
The parallel between token pricing now and mobile mobile data pricing 15 and 20 years ago is almost perfect. You have marginal cost for a unit of measure that doesn’t mean anything to most people and doesn’t map well to...
WordPress: From Publishing Democracy to Tech‑Team Necessity
The fundamental irony of WordPress is that the dream was about democratising publishing and it ended up as something you would be insane to use if you don’t have your own tech team
Uber Poised to Achieve Cumulative Positive Free Cash Flow This Year
A very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that Uber will reach positive cumulative free cashflow since inception at some point this year.
AI Spending Rivals Global Infrastructure, Outpacing Historic Megaprojects
Comparing AI capex spend of ~$650bn this year to charismatic megafauna like the Manhattan Project ($30bn) or the Apollo Program (~$250-300bn) is cute but dumb. Telcos spend $300bn a year on capex. Oil & gas is double that. No-one knows...
Claude Lalanne Mirrors for Y
If you're in New York or can be, run to see the mirrors that Claude Lalanne made for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berger, on display now at Sotheby's Breuer for $15m as part of the Gunzberg sale.
AI Will Erase Complex Reward Calculations Across Industries
I wonder what happens to the profitability of airline and credit card point systems when an agent can do the hard work of calculating how and where to apply your rewards and make the bookings for you, instead of you...
Generative AI's Biggest Flaw: You Can't Verify Results
For every new technology there’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work yet, and some of that will be fixed next week, some next month and some not for five or 10 years. The difference for generative AI is that...
Northern Europe Matches US AI Adoption, Others Lag
The spread of AI use across the EU is entirely unsurprising, and look like any other digital adoption stat. Scandi, Benelux and other small northern countries (plus the UK) are at par with the USA and sometimes ahead - others...
AI's Real Impact Hides In
One interesting aspect of AI deployment is that for any given industry, the use case that seems really obvious and immediate to outsiders is quite different from one that insiders immediately think of, and often that’s a use case that...