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AI crypto technology

My Christmas request is: help invest in a sustainable solution

We are just before Christmas 2023 and this might be the time for a flashy annual review or an exciting look ahead to 2024. But there is something we can't ignore that urgently needs our attention. Last week, the UN climate conference COP28 concluded with a hollow declaration of compromise. The Guardian wrote this balanced summary about it.

The US position as the world's largest oil and gas producer remains unaffected. China will continue to expand coal production and India's industry need not fear either. Saudi Arabia tried to remove any reference to fossil fuels, Russia worked behind the scenes to thwart progress and will try again next year when the climate summit is held in Azerbaijan.

Even as an optimist, the lack of specific CO2 reduction targets stops me from cheering over the agreement reached to move away from fossil fuels. Many countries, especially large CO2 emitters, have not agreed to concrete emission reduction targets. That makes the agreement as empty as children's promises in the weeks before Christmas to be less naughty next year.

It is now up to all of us

In December 2015, my colleague Hans Tobé and I attended COP21 in Paris, where the expectation was that for the first time ever serious plans would be forged to combat climate change and, in short, save the world as we know it.

With colleague Hans Tobé on the doorstep of COP21 in Paris, December 2015

At the time, Hans and I had just started Blue City Solutions with a group of like-minded people in the US and France, which aims to support projects that promote CO2 reduction. For various reasons, one of which was the Covid pandemic, this has been more difficult than we had hoped.

Our thinking at the time was that it was important for government and business to act together. In practice, through unwillingness or incompetence, or an unfortunate combination thereof, politicians around the world are proving unable to come up with a coherent policy to combat global warming.

Meanwhile, promising technological innovations have been developed, such as CSS technology that removes CO2 from the atmosphere and dissolves it in water but there have also been breakthroughs in ocean fertilization. Major breakthroughs are being made in the field of energy efficiency, which has convinced me that the fastest way to save this planet is through innovations from within society, with governments only facilitating and not guiding.

iXora, from The Netherlands

Everyone reading this newsletter, including through LinkedIn, Medium or Marketing Report, uses modern technology in their daily lives. Whether it is cloud services like Dropbox, Google Cloud or Microsoft OneDrive, AI applications like ChatGPT or streaming services like Netflix; modern life is made possible by services delivered from data centers, a market that is currently growing nearly 20% per year!

Those very fast-growing data centers are eating up power, especially to cool the modern, latest generation servers. Thus, together we are part of the problem. In my opinion, the solution is not to trade in our smartphones for old Nokias, but rather to take a leap forward and cool data centers in a better way.

That is what iXora does based on 'immersion cooling', cooling by means of liquid instead of air cooling, a patented technology that allows data centers to save over 30% on their energy consumption and also generates residual heat that can be used by houses and offices, for example. In short, iXora's technology leads to significant cost savings and structural reduction of CO2 emissions.

Netherlands most interesting startup

I have previously explained in detail why I am not neutral when it comes to iXora and why I think iXora is Holland's most interesting startup.

Watch the short introductory video of iXora here

In a nutshell: first of all, the data center industry is a global billion-dollar market that is forced to reduce energy consumption, and thus CO2 emissions, as soon as possible. If only because of energy costs!

Second, the unique technology that iXora employs to cool servers in the worldwide standard 19-inch enclosure is well patented, providing a competitive advantage. And third, I have come to know the founders as knowledgeable, energetic and reliable.

Those three factors together are rare to see in a Dutch startup. iXora offers an investment in accordance with the planet-people-profit principle, where technological advances enable a sustainable world in a profitable way. That approach appeals to me.

I also expect a lot from the R&D project announced this week by iXora to apply iXora's cooling technology to the equipment of NVIDIA, the undisputed leader in servers for AI applications. As a participant in the NVIDIA Inception Program, iXora will have access to NVIDIA engineers in making iXora technology suitable for NVIDIA's CPUs and GPUs.

And admittedly, in the context of full transparency: I also think, as a thrifty Dutchman, that the valuation of iXora, the price per share, for a company in such a global market that already delivers its products to paying customers, is modest. If iXora were based not in the Netherlands but in Palo Alto, the company would be worth at least fivefold. It's as simple as that.

The Christmas spirit in 2023: invest in sustainability

With any innovation, what matters most is what the customer thinks of it. This is precisely why the opinion of Ludo Baauw, CEO of Intermax, is so important. As a Rotterdam native, he makes no bones about it. Watch here his clear presentation on the first installation of iXora at Intermax, in the data center of NorthC. (I hope your version of YouTube has subtitles in your preferred language.)

Because you, as reader of this newsletter, are also strongly interested in innovations that can improve our lives, I am therefore asking you to support iXora. That's my request to you this Christmas.

Participating is possible from as little as €5,000 and all information is available here. There are people who invest in their children's names so that any profits will go to the next generation. A nice thought, but I would carefully consider how savvy your offspring is because it potentially involves serious pocket money.

Be careful anyway, of course: despite my enthusiasm, I want to emphasize that investing in startups is high-risk. Do this only with money you can spare and also assume you will lose it; but if you do start to see a return, it will probably be much more than you put in.

Spotlight 9: technology had a banner year in 2023

Speaking of investing and risk, it remains striking to see that despite the war in Ukraine, the misery in Israel and Gaza, and the uncertainty surrounding China's economy, with the U.S. presidential election looming, tech stocks achieved phenomenal returns in 2023.

NVIDIA, Meta and Bitcoin were the winners of 2023. Looking over the last five years, it was different.

In addition to looking at 2023, I also looked back at the best-performing stocks in the last five years. That leads to a different picture and different conclusions. What stands out the most in 2023 is not that NVIDIA, up 242%, was by far the best investment of the Spotlight 9, because with the explosion of the AI market, that was no surprise.

But I don't know anyone who expected Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp) shares to rise 168% this year after the disastrous 2022. The comeback of Bitcoin and Tesla was also remarkable. Investing, especially in technology, remains a strange combination of analytical thinking and belief in magic.

Therefore, it also makes sense not to lose sight of the S&P 500: in this chart it is the slowest kid in class, but in 2023 this index rose 23% and over the last five years the increase was as much as 93%. For the prudent investor, still a return many times better than a savings account.

Looking at the last five years, Ethereum, NVIDIA and Tesla have been the top three investments with staggering increases:

  • Ethereum: 1,841%
  • NVIDIA: 1,409%
  • Tesla: 1,089%

I certainly expected Bitcoin to be on the podium, but this shows once again that when it comes to investing, I'm better off focusing on analysis than predictions. Because I still can't give a single meaningful answer to the most frequently asked question, "what will be the next Ethereum, NVIDIA and Tesla in the next five years?

I want to thank everyone for their interest, tips and feedback and wish all readers and their loved ones a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and all the happiness, love and health in 2024. Until next year!

Categories
AI crypto technology

Google in total panic by OpenAI, fakes AI demo

At last, Google's response to ChatGPT's OpenAI appeared this week, highlighted by a video of Gemini, the intended OpenAI killer. The response was moderately positive; until Friday, when it was revealed that Google had manipulated some crucial segments of the introductory video. The subsequent reactions were scathing.

Google makes a video, fake 1. Er, take 1. (Image created with Dall-E)

Google was showered with scorn and the first lawsuits should be imminent. A publicly traded company cannot randomly provide misinformation that could affect its stock price. Google is clearly in panic and feels attacked by OpenAI at the heart of the company: making information accessible.

Google under great pressure

It was bound to happen. CEO Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, went viral earlier this year with this brilliant montage of his speech at the Google I/O event in which he uttered the word AI no less than twenty-three times in fifteen minutes. The entire event lasted two hours, during which the term AI fell over one hundred and forty times. The message was clear: Google sees AI as an elementary technology.

Meanwhile, Google's AI service Bard continued to fall short of market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT in every way. Then when Microsoft continued to invest in OpenAI, running up the investment tab to a whopping $13 billion while OpenAI casually reported that it was on its way to annual sales of more than a billion dollars, all alarm bells went off at Google.

The two departments working on AI at Google, called DeepMind and Google Brain - there was clearly no shortage of self-confidence among the chief nerds - were forced to merge and this combined brain power should have culminated in the ultimate answer to ChatGPT, codenamed Gemini. With no less than seventeen(!) videos, Google introduced this intended ChatGPT killer.

Fake Google video

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick soon expressed doubts about the quality of Gemini. Bloomberg journalist Parmy Olson also smelled something fishy and published a thorough analysis.

The challenged Gemini video

Watch this clip from Gemini's now infamous introduction video, in which Gemini seems to know which cup to lift. Moments later, Gemini seems even more intelligent, as it immediately recognizes "rock, paper, scissors" when someone makes hand gestures. Unfortunately, this turns out to be total nonsense.

This is how Gemini was trained in reality. Totally different than the video makes it appear.

Although a blog post explained how the fascinating video was put together, hardly anyone who watched the YouTube video will click through to that apparently accompanying explanation. It appears from the blog post that Gemini was informed via a text prompt that it is a game, with the clue: "Hint: it's a game."

This undermines the whole "wow effect" of the video. The fascination we initially have as viewers has its roots in our hope that a computer will one day truly understand us; as humans, with our own form of communication, without a mouse or keyboard. What Gemini does may still be mind-blowing, but it does not conform to the expectation that was raised in the video.

It's like having a date arranged for you with that very famous Cindy, that American icon of the 1990s, and as you're all dressed up in your lucky sweater waiting for Cindy Crawford, it's Cindy Lauper who slides in across from you. It's awesome and cozy and sure you take that selfie together, but it's still different.

The line between exaggeration and fraud

The BBC analyzed another moment in the video that seriously violates the truth:

"At one point, the user (the Google employee) places down a world map and asks the AI,"Based on what you see, come up with a game idea ... and use emojis." The AI responds by seemingly inventing a game called "guess the country," in which it gives clues, such as a kangaroo and koala, and responds to a correct guess by the user pointing to a country, in this case Australia.

But in reality, according to Google's blog post, Gemini did not invent this game at all. Instead, the following instructions were given to the AI: "Let's play a game. Think of a country and give me a clue. The clue must be specific enough that there is only one correct country. I will try to point to the country on a map," the instructions read.

That is not the same as claiming that the AI invented the game. Google's AI model is impressive regardless of its use of still images and text-based prompts - but those facts mean that its capabilities are very similar to those of OpenAI's GPT-4.'

With that typical British understatement, the BBC disqualifies the PR circus that Google tried to set up. Google's intention was to give OpenAI a huge blow, but in reality Google shot itself in the foot. Several Google employees expressed their displeasure on internal forums. That's not helpful for Google in the job market competition for AI talent.

Because in these very weeks when OpenAI appeared to be even worse run than an amateur soccer club, Google could have made the difference by offering calm, considerate and, above all, factual information through Gemini.

Trust in Google damaged

Instead, it launched a desperate attack. I'm frankly disappointed that Google faked such an intricate video, when to the simple question "give me a six-letter French word," Gemini still answers with "amour, the French word for love. That's five letters, Gemini.

The brains at Google who fed Gemini with data have apparently rarely been to France, or they could have given the correct answer: 'putain, the French word for any situation.'

Google's brand equity and market leadership are based on the trust and credibility it has built by trying to honestly provide answers to our search questions. The company whose mission is to make the world's information organized and accessible needs to be much more careful about how it tries to unlock that information.

Techcrunch sums it up succinctly, "Google's new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company's technology or integrity after finding out that Gemini's most impressive demo was largely staged."

Right now, Google is still playing cute with rock-paper-scissors, but once Gemini is fully available it is expected to provide relevant answers to questions such as, I'll name a few, who can legitimately claim Gaza, Crimea or the South China Sea. After this week, who has confidence that Gemini can provide meaningful answers to these questions?

Hey Google, you're on the front page of the newspaper. True story (Image created with Dall-E).

How many billion ican OpenAI snatch rom Google?

The reason Google is reacting so desperately to the success of OpenAI is obviously because it feels it is being threatened there were it hurts: the crown jewels. In the third quarter of 2023, Alphabet Inc. the parent company of Google reported total revenue of seventy-seven billion dollars.

A whopping 78% of that was generated from Google's advertising business, which amounts to nearly sixty billion dollars. Note: in one quarter. Google sells close to seven hundred million dollars in advertising per day and is on track to rake in thirty million dollars - per hour.

ChatGPT reached over a hundred million users within two months of its launch, and it is not inconceivable that OpenAI will halve Google's reach with ChatGPT within a few years. Everyone I know who uses ChatGPT, especially those with paid subscriptions, of which there are already millions of users, says they already rarely use Google.

Google has far more reach than it can sell so decrease in reach does not equate to a proportional decrease in revenue; but it is only a matter of time before ChatGPT manages to link a good form of advertising to the specific search queries. I mean: there's a company that makes millions per hour selling blue links above answers...

Falling stock market value means exodus of talent

Google will then quickly be able to drop from one of the world's most valuable companies with a market capitalization of $1.7 trillion (1,700 billion) to, say, half - and then be worth about as much as Google's hated, loathed competitor in the advertising market: Meta, the creator of in Google's brains simple, low-down social media like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Oh, the horror.

This is especially important because in this scenario, the workforce, which in the tech sector never perks up from declines in the value of their options, is much more likely to move to companies that do rapidly increase in value. Such as OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Spotlight 9: the most hated stock market rally

'The most hated rally,' says Meltem Demirors: the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum continues.

'The most hated rally,' is how crypto oracle Meltem Demirors aptly describes the situation in the crypto sector. ' Everyone is tired of hearing about crypto, but baby, we're back!'

After all the scandals in the crypto sector, the resignation of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, CZ for people who want to pretend they used to play in the sandbox with him, seems to have been the signal to push the market upward. I wrote last March about the problems at Binance in meeting the most basic forms of compliance.

According to Demirors, macroeconomic factors play a bigger role, such as expected interest rate declines and the rising U.S. budget deficit. The possible adoption of Bitcoin ETFs is already priced in and the wait is on for institutional investors to get into crypto. Consumers already seem to be slowly returning. Crypto investors, meanwhile, seem more likely to hold Ethereum alongside Bitcoin.

Investing and giving birth

I continue to be confirmed in my conviction that professional investors understand as much about technology as men understand about childbirth: of course there are difficult studies and wonderful theoretical reflections on it, but from what I hear from experts in the field of childbirth (mothers) it turns out to be a crucial difference whether you are standing next to a delivery, puffing along, or bringing new life into this world yourself. There is a similar difference in investing in technology or developing it.

I don't think there is a person working in the tech sector who, after reading through the reactions to Google's Gemini announcement, thought, "that looks great, I need to buy some Alphabet shares soon.

But what did Reuters report, almost cheerfully: "Alphabet shares ended 5.3% higher Thursday, as Wall Street cheers the arrival of Gemini, saying the new artificial intelligence model could help close the gap in the race with Microsoft-backed OpenAI."

Ken Mahoney, CEO of Mahoney Asset Management (I detect a family relationship) said "There are different ways to grow your business, but one of the best ways is with the same customer base by giving them more solutions or more offers and that's what I believe this (Gemini) is doing for Google."

The problem with people who believe something is that they often do so without any factual basis. By the way, Bitcoin and Ethereum rose more than Alphabet (Google) last week.

Other short news

The Morin and Lessin couples are journalists, entrepreneurs and investors, making them a living reflection of the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem.

Together they make an interesting podcast that this week includes a discussion of Google's Gemini and the crypto rally.

It's great that Google founder Sergey Brin is back to programming at Google out of pure passion. The Wall Street Journal caught onto it this summer. Curious what Brin thinks of the marketing efforts of Gemini, which he himself is working on.

Elon Musk's AI company, x.AI, is looking for some start-up capital and with a billion, they can at least keep going for a few months. Which does immediately raise the question of why Musk accepts outside meddling and doesn't take the round himself. Perhaps he already expects to have to make a substantial contribution to x.com, the former Twitter.

Mistral, the French AI hope in difficult days for the European tech scene, didn't make a video, not even a whitepaper or blog post, but it linked in a tweet to a torrent file of their new model, attractively named MoE 8x7B. It made one humorous Twitter user sigh "wait you guys are doing it wrong, you should only publish a blog post, without a model." It will be a while before people stop taking aim like this at Google. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, only amour for Mistral.

Details should become clear in the coming days, but the fact that Amnesty International is already protesting because of the lack of a ban on facial recognition is worrying. EU Commissioner Breton believes this puts Europe at the forefront of AI and therefore he would likely thrive as a tech investor on Wall Street.

CFO Paul Vogel got kicked while he was already down: "Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the decision was made because Vogel did not have the experience needed to both expand the company and meet market expectations." Vogel was not available for comment but still sold over $9 million worth of options. It remains difficult to build a stable business as an intermediary of other people's media.

Apparently, MBS is an avid gamer. After soccer and golf, Saudi Arabia is now plunging into online gaming and e-sports.

I hold out hope that AI will be used in medical technology, to more quickly detect diseases, make diagnoses or develop treatments. But right now, the smartest kids in the class seem focused on developing AI videos that mimic the dances of real people on TikTok.

Where are the female automotive designers? 'Perhaps the way forward in the automotive industry lies neither with the feminine (the unwritten page) nor the masculine (full steam ahead), but somewhere in the middle that combines the practical and the poetic, with or without a ponytail,' according to Wired.

Categories
AI technology

OpenAI gives Google, Amazon and Apple a hard time and Elon Musk had a tough month

OpenAI's ChatGPT is an accelerating snowball: how long before people search ChatGPT first for answers to their questions and for the best deals on products? Image: ChatGPT4

With all the wrangling at OpenAI, you would almost forget, but ChatGPT just celebrated its first birthday this week. Over a hundred million people use an OpenAI service each month, and annualized revenue is over $1.3 billion, a first step toward possible market dominance. 

ChatGPT4 nicer than Google

As a subscriber to ChatGPT, these days I ask almost every question first to ChatGPT4, instead of searching on Google. 'The best day to fly between Europe and Asia, what shoe size is Shaquille O'Neal and under what three names was that movie starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt released?' Just three questions I asked ChatGPT today. But also, 'tell me about investors Vinod Khosla and Reid Hoffman,' but more about them in a moment.

Compared to Google, ChatGPT's answers seem better and I like that I don't have to click through to other websites. No doubt Google has tracked the change in search behavior through Google Chrome and the other gimmicks Google uses to capture people's behavior. This makes it all the more painful that Google, according to The Information, decided this weekend to delay the launch of OpenAI competitor Gemini until early next year.

Search and buy through ChatGPT?

One company that is also seriously threatened by OpenAI is Amazon, and it is rarely noticed. Especially in the US, Amazon has become "the Google of buying": as soon as Americans think about buying something, they search directly on Amazon. Other websites no longer play a role here.

It looks like it will be months rather than years before ChatGPT is fed sales information from the world's largest online stores. All parties that now sell through Amazon Marketplace can then directly serve their customers outside of Amazon. Of course, fulfillment then remains an issue, and in that Amazon is almost unbeatable, but the company is not worth $1.5 trillion because it is so good at shipping packages efficiently.

Amazon is so valuable because it is where buyers find their products and where transactions take place. OpenAI has a great tool with ChatGPT to take over that function, because with its Plus subscribers it already has a payment relationship that can be easily expanded. Amazon is no doubt already formulating a response to this threat.

iPhone users switch from Siri

Apple is surely following with suspicion how many people program the new "action" button on the iPhone 15 with ChatGPT. The idea was that it would allow people to launch their email or camera app faster but article after article appears urging people to get rid of Siri as if from herpes after a ski weekend with a frat house.

A headline like "Throw Siri off your phone and use ChatGPT for help" must hurt intensely at Apple. Siri never became what Apple had hoped it would, and if many people use ChatGPT as the first search function on the iPhone, heads will roll at Apple. The question has long since ceased to be whether ChatGPT has this potential, but whether the OpenAI board will become stable enough quickly to successfully introduce this kind of product.

Hoffman and Khosla, billionaires with an opinion

Viewed in this light, it was nice to see an excellent podcast on Thursday featuring legendary entrepreneurs and investors Reid Hoffman (PayPal, LinkedIn, Greylock) and Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems, Khosla Ventures), both investors in OpenAI.

By the way, note the almost mocking title with which Khosla describes himself on LinkedIn: "venture assistant. That's like Lionel Messi creating a LinkedIn profile with the feature "ball boy.

Hoffman was the first contributor to OpenAI from one of his private foundations, when it was still just a benevolent club of academics. After all, you don't do well as a billionaire until you have at least one foundation named after yourself, although I found this one-page website for Hoffman's other foundation, the Aphorism Foundation, amusing.

Khosla put into OpenAI double what he had previously invested in a startup: $50 million. In short, Messrs. Hoffman and Khosla are not entirely neutral (cough).

No restriction of competition, China a risk

Hoffman focused on market forces in the conversation. " Startups are not hindered right now," he explained, despite the apparent dominance of OpenAI and mega-cap tech companies such as Microsoft. Hoffman has been on Microsoft's board since he sold LinkedIn to Microsoft and doesn't think his "own companies" have too much power. "I don't think it limits competition on any level," he said, to nobody's surprise.

Khosla called the focus on existential risks of AI "nonsensical talk from academics who have nothing better to do". But he sees China as a major risk and thinks the U.S. is "in a techno-economic" war with China and should take a tougher stance. " I would ban TikTok in a nanosecond," said Khosla, in contrast to Hoffman, who had spoken with President Biden just before recording the podcast. After all, if anyone knows the value of a good network, it is LinkedIn's founder.

Khosla is firmly against open-source AI models as well due to the China risk. Bio-risk and cyber risk are real concerns too, he noted. But if China or rogue viruses don’t kill us, Khosla thinks the near-future is very bright: “I do think in 10 years we’ll have free doctors, free tutors, free lawyers” all powered by AI.

Elon Musk had a tough month

At the last minute, Tesla published this amusing video in which the new Tesla Cybertruck makes mincemeat of a Porsche 911 in a sprint. Pay special attention to the bouncer, because the Cybertruck has something hanging from the tow hook and it's not a caravan. Marques Brownlee made a whopping 40-minute review video.

Tesla Cybertruck towing a Porsche 911 is faster than ... a Porsche 911.

Not everyone is a fan of the Cybertruck, for example, Engadget writes: "Teslaa's Cybertruck is a dystopian, masturbatory fantasy. In Elon's future, the rich should be allowed to dominate (and probably run over) the poor with impunity."

Cute that a Cybertruck gets to 60 miles an hour (100 km/h) in 2.6 seconds, but I am particularly curious to see how this paintless, silver doghouse weighing over three thousand kilos (over 6,000 lbs) behaves on a mountain pass full of hairpins. Or how you park it in reverse in the parking lot of your local supermarket.

Musk chases advertisers off

Reuters puts it beautifully, "Elon Musk is keen to achieve what no business leader has done before, from mass-producing electric cars to developing reusable space rockets. Now he is blazing another trail most chief executives have avoided: the profane insult.." Not only that: gross insult to customers.

Musk said it twice to advertisers who left his social media platform X for complimenting a text with anti-Semitic content: "go fuck yourself. 

Musk felt it necessary to name one such departing advertiser, Disney CEO Bob Iger, unprovoked. Consider the weeks Musk has had behind him: on November 18, SpaceX sent the Starship into space, where it blew up, intentional or not.

The same weekend saw the leadership fiasco at OpenAI, with the fired Sam Altman and the other key players communicating with the outside world almost exclusively through Musk's platform X. That was vindication for Musk, who earlier this year saw Mark Zuckerberg's Threads becoming the fastest-growing social media platform - dying out as quickly as it emerged, but that's for another time.

Due to Musk's unprecedentedly stupid action (his own words) of complimenting anti-Semitic sewer texts, many advertisers withdrew from X and the long term consequences remain to be seen. So Musk headed to Israel, which has been an unpopular midweek destination lately.

The irony of fuck and freedom of speech

Watch the whole item at Fox. Musk looks like captain Jack Sparrow after a rough night. He, probably just back from Israel and suffering from jet lag, looks even whiter than the average Fox viewer, and despite trying to appear masculine in his leather jacket with smutty teddy collar over a too-hot-washed t-shirt, he makes a vulnerable and frustrated impression. Here sits someone trying very hard to look like someone who is not trying very hard.

The whole segment at Fox is an adulation of Musk as a defender of freedom of speech, which was supposedly sorely missed when X was just called Twitter. I think the nice thing is that all five panelists, with that ball room dancing teacher in the middle surrounded by four born again nymphs, don't realize that it's hilarious that they spend minutes talking about freedom of speech, but the term "fuck" used by Musk is bleeped out twice by Fox.

So no viewer knows what Musk actually said. You can guess, but you don't know, because you can't hear it. No one repeats it or comes back to it. I love that discomfort. It's a moment like when a notorious meat eater finds out that the barbecue he's generously serving for his second plate is made of vegan meat.

Musk, willingly or unwillingly, with all his absurd attempts to regulate X on the one hand and then open it up on the other, demonstrates the total insanity of American morality that he himself struggles with as a South African. Anti-Semitism? Bad for business. Saying fuck on TV? Not allowed, but you can then worship him as a champion of Fox's supposedly so desired freedom of speech.

Breakfast TV (h)honest

It reminded me of the time I gave an interview about virtual reality during Web Forum in Dublin for a BBC breakfast program. I made the unforgivable mistake of saying that in the future VR would have all sorts of wonderful applications, from news to film, music and sex. Hey ho ho no jeez Louise, stop, panicked the BBC crew: I had said sex.

That wasn't allowed in a breakfast program. Because it's early in the day, blushing kids just eating their oatmeal, well surely I understood. "Am I allowed to say machine gun or weapon of mass destruction?" I asked. It certainly was allowed. 'Bloody mass murder?' No problem at all. ' How graphically may I describe the Catholic Church's misconduct with young boys?' Um, there were no specific rules for that, so in the end I had a great morning. That the item ever aired shows the editing skill of BBC editors.

Techbros need help

Musk is not the only tech CEO struggling with freedom of speech and regulation of his social media network. I recently wrote about my own struggle with freedom of speech when subscribers to my first company Planet Internet were found to be distributing child pornography. Deciding not to distribute certain messages was easy, but determining where that boundary lay was difficult, not to mention technically complex.

Mark Zuckerberg is in deep trouble now that the Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram in particular) seem to have become popular platforms among pedophiles. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has spent months trying to fix child safety issues on Instagram and Facebook, but is struggling to prevent its own systems from enabling and even promoting a vast network of pedophile accounts.

The Meta algorithms unrestrainedly promote the content the user clicks on, with dire consequences. The U.S. Congress is becoming more alert, and the European Union is also now rightly targeting Meta.

I firmly believe that the limited social gifts of people like Musk and Zuckerberg have led them to think differently, more autonomously, than us simple souls and are therefore capable of achieving more; at the same time, they have limited empathy and genuinely don't understand why the world has trouble with their policies. What makes them great as entrepreneurs keeps them small as human beings.

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Tessa Coates tells in her Instagram Story what happened.
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The UN climate conference COP28 has begun in Dubai, led by Abu Dhabi's oil boss. Before we get cynical, here is the good news that hard work is being done on sustainable aviation. Applause for Virgin Atlantic.

Spotlight 9: crypto week!

Bitcoin toward $40,000 and Ethereum over $2,000, party time in the crypto world.

It was a dull week for investors, unless you dare to get into cryptos because Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to be definitely back!