Notices by Dare Obasanjo (carnage4life@mas.to), page 10

Mercedes is the first automaker in the US to sell cars that are L3 self driving which means the driver doesn’t have to pay attention to the road.

It should be noted that Tesla’s products are at L2 despite brand names like Autopilot & Full Self Driving that imply it’s at L5.

https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/mercedes-self-driving-autonomous-cars-california-nevada-level-3-drive-pilot/

Deepfake audio isn’t just for rap beefs.

A high school principal temporarily lost his job after audio circulated on social media of him making racist comments. It turned out to have been AI generated audio created by a disgruntled staff member.

We now live in the future. 😕

https://abcnews.go.com/US/baltimore-high-school-athletic-director-ai-create-fake/story?id=109638535&cid=social_twitter_abcn

A Tesla owner has been charged with vehicular homicide for killing a motorcyclist while browsing the web on their phone while the car was on Autopilot. According to the driver he was “putting the trust in the machine to drive for him,”

The naming of this feature kills people.

When an irresistible force meets an immovable object.

If the TikTok divest or ban law goes to court and the US government loses, does this open the door for other forced sales such as Grindr’s to be reversed?

I still can’t believe this is really happening and Biden signed it into law.

The saving grace for the Biden administration is the deadline is after the elections so if TikTok actually ends up being banned or shutdown, it won’t have election consequences.

Now that the ads in the Windows 11 start menu are now available I actually think the coverage missed the mark.

This is less a cash grab by Microsoft and more of a way to help the few developers still making Windows apps to get distribution.

Getting developers to still care about building Windows apps has been an ongoing challenge since the advent of the web and then smartphone apps. This seems mainly a way to both incentivize developers and connect users to apps.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/24/24138949/microsoft-windows-11-start-menu-ads-recommendations-setting-disable

Ford only sold 10,000 EVs in Q1 which is down -20% from last year and lost $1.3B doing so. In contrast Tesla delivered 386,810 EVs and made $1.2B in profit.

We’re a long way from traditional automakers catching up with Tesla (or BYD) in EVs.

https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-just-reported-massive-loss-214534613.html

China isn’t the only market iPhones are facing sales challenges in. According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, 2 out of every 3 new phones activated in the US is an Android device.

This is Apple’s lowest activation share since 2017.

When it rains, it pours.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/24/iphone-market-share-new-low-android-dominates/

Meta employees in the news today.

How it started vs. How it’s going

Tesla made $21.3B in Q1 which is down from $23.3B last year and missed expectations of $22.15B.

However stock price is up because the company has acknowledged it’s running out of people who will pay a lot for Teslas and will make them a cheaper car.

https://stocks.apple.com/ADjO-0-blQiuW-AOivHtnrQ

This is incredible news. The tech ecosystem has benefited greatly from the fact that non-competes were banned in Silicon Valley and now these same benefits will pour out into every industry in America.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

Whenever you’re tempted to argue with a Reply Guy remember that

1. A lot of people on the internet are miserable and want you to feel the same way. Don’t let them.

2. The average person reads at the level of a 12 year old. They likely misunderstood your post and will your reply

Few things bring home how much big tech caring about diversity was a zero interest rate phenomenon like Women Who Code shutting down due to lack of funding.

https://womenwhocode.com/blog/the-end-of-an-era-women-who-code-closing

Kinda wild that Meta is doing more open source AI than the company literally named “Open AI”

Every new AI product launch and discussion summarized.

How it started vs. How it’s going

These people would bring back slavery if you gave them an opening

Enshitification is now the primary innovation happening at YouTube.

I wonder how social media will survive the distrust that will come from the flood of generative AI.

People question whether a song from Drake is actually by AI. VCs question if you wrote the email because of word choice. I got accused of using AI to write a description of a talk.

People are growing increasingly distrustful of any content they consume and spend energy worrying about its provenance versus actually reading, watching or listening to the media.

According to IDC while global smartphone sales are up 7.8% year over year in Q1, Apple’s sales are down -9.6% primarily due to competition in China.

This is already priced into $AAPL stock which is -5% year to date while tech stocks (NASDAQ) are up 10% over the same timeframe.