Notices by Dare Obasanjo (carnage4life@mas.to), page 7

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.

Larry Summers and others published a paper with an interesting theory on why consumers believe inflation is higher than the government’s CPI numbers. Since 1983, it has ignored interest rates even though they affect car and mortgage payments.

Using a pre-1983 CPI formula would have inflation around 18% versus the official 7.1% in November 2022. It’s a plausible theory that explains why people’s sentiment doesn’t match inflation stats.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2024/03/23/summers-inflation-reached-18-in-2022-using-the-governments-previous-formula/?sh=1edc93e62092

Apple has failed in its attempt to dismiss a lawsuit on behalf of 1500+ developers in the UK that argues its 30% cut is unfair.

As smartphones have become a modern necessity, the idea of paying a tax to the OS vendor will be more universally resisted.

Developers don’t pay 30% to your ISP or browser vendor which are also critical to being online. Courts and governments now seem sympathetic to that argument.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-loses-bid-throw-out-uk-lawsuit-over-app-store-fees-2024-04-12/

Seattle Times has a new report on how Boeing's current challenges can be traced to prioritizing shareholders over everything for 25 years, slashing costs and outsourcing key work, weakening unions, and pressuring suppliers, leading to loss of its core competency.

This is a great example of how the stock market rewards short term thinking leading to companies sabotaging themselves. Intel is in the same boat.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/

As streaming services recover from their unprofitable competition with Netflix and raise prices, users will naturally start resorting to piracy more.

So the movie industry is getting ahead of this to lobby for a law to force ISPs to block piracy websites. A similar push failed in 2012 with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which was opposed by the tech industry.

However the tech industry are now villains in DC and its influence has waned.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/movie-industry-demands-us-law-requiring-isps-to-block-piracy-websites/

A fool and his money are soon parted. Pour one out for the meme stock bros.

It’s kind of ironic that one of the arguments for return to office is so junior employees can be better onboarded and mentored when those same companies are also planning to replace those juniors with AI as soon as they can.