Thu. 12/12 – The “Killer App” For Vision Pro?
Techmeme Ride Home
Brian McCullough
4.7 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
More fallout from the whole Cruise wind-down. What it’s like to use some of the new Gemini 2.0 features. Has Apple, quite belatedly, finally done a feature update that provides the Vision Pro with a “killer app?” An Instagram-like app from China I had never heard of. And one singular, eye-popping datapoint from the CHIPS Act.
Links:
- The end of Cruise is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles (The Verge)
- Gemini 2.0 Flash: An outstanding multi-modal LLM with a sci-fi streaming model (Simon Willison's Blog)
- FCC Opens Entire 6-GHz Band to Very-Low-Power Device Operations (TV Tech)
- The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app (The Verge)
- China’s Instagram-Style Xiaohongshu Crosses $1 Billion in Profit (Bloomberg)
- Harvard Is Releasing a Massive Free AI Training Dataset Funded by OpenAI and Microsoft (Wired)
- US chipmaking boom in doubt after Biden’s defeat (Financial Times)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the TechMeme Right Home for Thursday, December 12th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. More |
| 0:07.8 | Fallout from the whole cruise wind down, what it's like to use some of the new Gemini 2.0 features. |
| 0:13.6 | Has Apple quite belatedly finally done a feature update that provides the Vision Pro with a killer app, |
| 0:19.2 | an Instagram-like app from China I'd never heard of, |
| 0:22.2 | and one singular eye-popping data point about the chips act. Here's what you missed today in the world |
| 0:27.1 | of tech. |
| 0:32.7 | Today is a day of follow-up stories, kind of, and also maybe stories that have bounced out of other |
| 0:38.1 | stories we've been talking about recently. Honda plans to dissolve a self-driving vehicle |
| 0:42.9 | partnership with GM after GM announced plans to exit the Robo Taxi business completely. |
| 0:48.0 | Honda had invested $852 million in Cruise for its part, while Microsoft expects an around $800 million charge in |
| 0:56.8 | Q2 of 2025 because they had acquired a minority stake in Cruz back in January 2021. |
| 1:02.8 | Now, as I said when all this news broke, I wouldn't be surprised to learn eventually that |
| 1:07.1 | there were simple dollars and cents decisions that led to all of this happening, |
| 1:11.1 | the economics inside of GM, I mean. But Andrew J. Hawkins at the Verge takes a stab at a more |
| 1:17.5 | macro theory. In short, he posits that maybe Robotaxies will never provide the scale of profits |
| 1:23.9 | to make it worthwhile for automobile producers to actually be in this business. |
| 1:29.1 | So why not go back to what they do best, which is just selling cars to individuals, |
| 1:34.1 | just cars that are maybe mostly autonomous. |
| 1:38.3 | Quote, Cruz was continuing to rack up huge losses. |
| 1:41.4 | The Robotaxi subsidiary lost a staggering $3.48 billion in |
| 1:45.4 | 2023. Kyle Vote, Cruz's co-founder, and Anam's successor as CEO was under mounting pressure |
| 1:51.9 | to expand the service and bring in more money to help cover the losses. Plus, he was directly |
... |
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