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Zuck-Elon Updates, TikTok Worries About Disinformation (lol), CA Clown Car

morning report #9 // SF fakes driverless car data and other predictably insane items out of california, amazon's vegas robotaxi launch, cocaine comeback, and a clown car of clown links

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Jun 29, 2023

Welcome back to the Pirate Wires Morning Report.

THIS ISSUE: TikTok super concerned about disinformation in the US (lol), Elon prepares for his cage match with Zuck, White House announces plan to waste a ton of money, Britain on the brink of a mortgage catastrophe, GLAAD publishes open letter demanding platforms censor discussion of youth gender transition, the greatest performance inside a T-mobile store of all time, and a ton more.

Be sure to subscribe to Pirate Wires on YouTube, where you can watch our weekly podcast, and enjoy today’s newsletter.

Finally, have a great 4th of July… or, as we refer to it around the office, Mike Solana’s birthday weekend.

BROAD TECH

Silicon Valley execs pen letter to Pentagon urging contracts for tech startups. If the DoD doesn’t start doing more business with the tech industries strongest innovators, tech leaders warn, “our competitors will continue to gain ground on the technological battlefield, and we will squander the advantages that accrue from the freest and most innovative marketplace on earth.” Signers included Anduril, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Palantir. (Financial Times)

House CCP committee urges Blinken to let US-China tech agreement expire. “For the last 44 years, the CCP has taken advantage of American good faith under the U.S.-China science and tech agreement to advance its own military.” As an example of how the CCP has exploited the agreement, the committee notes that: “in 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration organized a project with China’s Meteorological Administration to launch instrumented balloons to study the atmosphere... a few years later, the PRC used similar balloon technology to surveil US military sites on US territory.” Who could have predicted this? (Twitter) (NY Post)

Biden admin mulling new restrictions on AI chip exports to China (WSJ)

Top TikTok lawyer warns employees American media waging disinformation war against company. In response, TikTok will focus on “minimizing the harm caused by disinformation, influence operations and other attempts to manipulate the beliefs of people and communities” by creating a fact-checking website that “disproves frequent false statements and narratives.” (Forbes)

For example: the TikTokers in Montana suing the state for its ban on the app. Turns out, TikTok has been paying their legal fees, and when reporters would press the company on its involvement in the case, it would dodge their questions. (NYT)
TikTok cans its BeReal clone (The Verge)
TikTok drops new parental control features (TechCrunch)

WSJ: Google violates its ad placement promises up to 80 percent of the time. A new report from Adalytics claims that “the company [places] ads in small, muted, automatically-played videos off to the side of a page’s main content, on sites that don’t meet Google’s standards for monetization, among other violations.” Google has rejected the claims. (WSJ)

Supreme Court raises cyberstalking conviction standards. It overturned the conviction of a Colorado man who in 2014 sent a flurry of Facebook messages to musicians. The new legal standard, nationwide: “The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.” (WSJ)

→ More

Google kills off Iris, its AR smart glasses; shifts focus to AR software (Insider)
Amazon-owned Zoox testing driverless taxis in Vegas (Bloomberg); launches AWS AppFabric to help connect SaaS apps (TechCrunch)
Meta rolls out new parental controls for Messenger (WaPo)
WhatsApp Business surpasses 200m monthly active users (The Verge)
Twitter rival Damus, built on Dorsey’s Nostr, will be removed from App Store for allowing users to leave Bitcoin tips; Jack protests (Apple Insider)
Terraform Industries drops blueprints for solar powered natural gas synthesizer (press release)
Microsoft considered buying Sega in 2020 (Axios)
Robinhood lays off seven percent of full time workforce, roughly 150 employees (WSJ)
SF-based software company New Relic lays off 200 employees (SFGate)
The Sims maker offers preview of next-gen graphics (The Verge)
EV startup Lordstown files for bankruptcy, sues Foxconn after deal falls through (WSJ)

→ Musk

“I'm extremely impressed with his strength, power, and skill, on the feet and on the ground”: Lex Friedman spars with Elon in preparation for Zuck cage match (Twitter)
Starship completes crucial six-engine static fire test (Twitter); Elon estimates 60% chance next Starship flight gets to orbit (Ars Technica)
Tesla stock drops after Goldman Sachs downgrade (Yahoo Finance)
Tesla’s EV plug to be standardized by key auto industry organization SAE International (The Verge), adopted by Volvo (TechCrunch)
AppleTV uploads entire first episode of its show Silo onto Twitter, tweet gets nearly 40m views after Elon boosts (Twitter)

→ AI

Thomson Reuters buys legal AI startup Casetext, developer of “the first AI legal assistant” for $650m (TechCrunch)
Augmedics, an AR- and AI-based spinal surgery startup raises $82m (TechCrunch)
NoTraffic, an AI-based congestion-reduction startup raises $50m (TechCrunch)
Nvidia teams with cloud service provider Snowflake on generative AI app-building platform (TechCrunch)
DeepMind claims its next chatbot will rival ChatGPT (TechCrunch)
Chinese search leader Baidu claims its LLM Ernie now outcompetes ChatGPT on crucial metrics (Bloomberg)
Can MLB scouts use AI to identify promising prospects? (WSJ)
New York buying supercomputer to study AI-informed finance regulation (Bloomberg)
Alphabet downgraded by financial analyst for moving too fast on AI: company’s “aggressive push to integrate GenAI into core search results could create a near-term air pocket on search ad pricing” (Bloomberg)

→ Crypto

Microstrategy buys additional $347m in BTC, raising its total holdings to a present value of roughly $4.5b (press release)
Founders of bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital potentially on the hook for $1.3b to liquidators (Reuters)
RFK Jr. announces pro-crypto stance (Twitter)
Coinbase celebrates Canadian government “landmark recommendations” on blockchain and crypto (Coinbase)

THE NATION

White House announces $42b to expand high-speed broadband access by 2030. Officially targeting 8.5 million homes, the program will run taxpayers almost $5,000/home, an absolutely great deal for taxpayers, who have shown time and again they love paying 10x the real cost of services when their government is the middleman (Starlink’s setup costs $599 per home). (Reuters h/t @mualphaxi)

Media darling Stacey Plaskett lied about Epstein ties. New reporting by Lee Fang says that Plaskett — a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives who became a liberal media darling after serving as a House manager during Trump’s second impeachment — lied about her years-long fundraising from the late, disgraced, probably (definitely) murdered financier Jeffrey Epstein. According to Fang’s reporting, Plaskett continually solicited Epstein for donations to both her campaign, and the Democratic National Campaign Committee. (Lee Fang)

Justice Department inspector general says negligence in federal prisons gave Jeffrey Epstein the opportunity to commit suicide (WSJ)
???
Literally nobody believes he killed himself

Supreme Court rejects GOP-backed “independent state legislature” theory. The theory, which several of Trump’s allies invoked in the aftermath of the 2020 election while it was still unclear if Trump would formally accept its outcome, holds that state legislatures may set election rules with little oversight from state courts. (NYT)

Democratic lawmakers ask Supreme Court to investigate Clarence Thomas’s relationship with Republican megadonor Harlan Crow (NBC)

→ California

CA Democrats move forward with eight percent gas tax rate hike. On Tuesday, Republicans moved to delay the hike — which will bump the tax from roughly 54 to 58 cents per gallon — citing concerns about household finances in the face of ongoing inflation. Democrats shot the motion down, ensuring the hike will take effect at the start of July. Happy 4th, everyone. (San Joaquin Valley Sun)

Insane, horrifying: “AB 665 is just an Assembly vote & Newsom's signature away from becoming law & allowing a list of people including a ‘social work intern’ to put a 12-year-old in a ‘residential’ ‘mental health’ ‘shelter’ without telling the parents.” (@Susan_Shelley)
CA Public Utilities Commission accuses SF of data manipulation: “In the 4 Waymo traffic collisions SF cited to prove driverless cars are less safe, 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended, and 1 didn’t even involve any cars touching” (ca.gov h/t @annatonger)
SF blocks 10-unit townhome “after neighbors objected in part because they said the proposed complex would cast too much shadow on an adjacent public recreation center” (SF Chronicle)
According to new poll, 40 percent of Californians considering moving elsewhere, citing growing dissatisfaction with cost of living, among other factors (SFGate)

→ Politics

Miami “Mayor” and presidential hopeful Francis Suarez asks, “what’s a Uyghur?” on radio spot. It’s giving Gary Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” (Twitter)
Following Moms for Liberty’s Hitler quoting scandal (in which the group clearly — if stupidly — framed lefties as Nazis, and lefties in media deceptively framed the insult as a celebration of Hitler), RFK pulls out of its “Joyful Warriors” summit (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Elizabeth Warren attacks Yellen on bank mergers: “Allowing additional bank consolidation would be a dereliction of your responsibilities” (Politico)
- Related on Pirate Wires: Did The Government Start A Global Financial Crisis In An Attempt To Destroy Crypto? (March 2023)
Nikki Haley says Trump “showed moral weakness” in dealings with Chinese President Xi Jinping (The Hill)

→ Economy, Business

Teamsters: Nationwide UPS strike is imminent after walking away from negotiations on Wednesday (@Teamsters)
Real estate YouTuber tweets data suggesting Airbnb’s revenue down nearly 50 percent in cities like Phoenix and Austin, worries about impending housing market crash (Twitter)
Ford electric truck price hikes cause customers to cancel orders (The Verge); plans to lay off at least 1,000 salaried and contracted workers (WSJ)
Walt Disney Co. owned National Geographic Magazine lays off last remaining editorial staff — the 19 writers were notified in April that the terminations were coming (Washington Post)
Bud Light planning to offer beer rebate over Fourth of July amid boycott and falling sales (Newsweek)

→ More

Over $200b may have been stolen from Covid relief programs, according to federal watchdog (for context, we bailed out the airline industry during Covid with $80b) (Reuters)
Almost 8,000 flights delayed or canceled on Monday as storms move through US (CNN)
First US malaria cases diagnosed in over twenty years in Texas and Florida (Reuters)
Migrants from Latin American countries now outnumber homeless New Yorkers in NYC shelters (NBC New York)

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Britain on the brink of mortgage catastrophe. After the Bank of England raised interest rates by 50 basis points in a bid to curb inflation, experts warn 1.2 million households could run out of savings by year’s end, which could lead to widespread defaults. Temporary measures are in place to forestall credit score increases and foreclosures. (CNBC)

Apple warns UK’s Online Safety Bill is a threat to end-to-end encryption. It joins WhatsApp and Signal in opposing a section of the bill that would allow communications regulators to force tech companies to identify and take down child sexual abuse content regardless of whether its communicated publicly or privately. A statement signed by the latter two companies reads: “If implemented as written, [this bill] could empower [communications regulator] Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services — nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.” 😬 (The Verge)

Amazon takes challenge of France’s minimum book delivery fee to top court. France imposed a €3 minimum delivery fee for online book orders in an effort to prop up independent brick-and-mortar bookstores. Amazon is arguing the law is an abuse of state power that hurts consumers by inflating book prices. (Bloomberg)

Japan’s defense ministry tests Starlink. Defense minister Yasukazu Hama confirmed Japan has been testing SpaceX’s satellite communications network since March, telling reporters: “threats are growing, and it’s becoming even more important to improve the resilience of satellite communications, for example by using multiple satellite networks.” (Bloomberg)

Cocaine production at all-time highs, cocaine consumption continuing to grow, UN report shows. “The world is currently experiencing a prolonged surge in both supply and demand of cocaine, which is now being felt across the globe and is likely to spur the development of new markets beyond the traditional confines,” the report said. (Reuters)

CLOWN WORLD

Shocker: viral racism video not what it seems. OnlyFans model Kadia Iman, the heroine who recently fought racism by “reclaiming her moment” in a tussle with an old white lady for the mic at a college graduation ceremony, allegedly also yelled homophobic slurs at gay people, and pissed everyone off in general. “I’m like, just you know, ‘Relax! Relax!’ We’re all telling her to just relax. But she was just very derogatory, very homophobic, nasty — just disrupted everyone in that surrounding area,” one student told the Post. “What they asked us to do is just announce our name — so your first and last name and if you want to say your major. That’s it, because there’s almost 2,000 graduates… They couldn’t say it like she wanted, I guess, to say a whole big spiel like, ‘I’m this, I’m that, I’m graduating.’” The school says Iman’s behavior was “unacceptable,” and is reviewing the incident. (NY Post)

GLAAD publishes open letter demanding platforms censor “content that spreads malicious lies about medically necessary healthcare for trans youth.” The NGO’s letter also demands companies censor anti-trans “hate speech,” including deadnaming. It was signed by over 250 public figures. Of these, GLAAD highlighted Elliot Page, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes, Alok, and, in what appears to be a clear indication of lean times at the organization, Camila Cabello. It remains unclear what “medically necessary” healthcare treatment trans youth are not presently able to access. (Twitter)

Starbucks to issue “clearer guidelines” around Pride decorations as strikes continue. So far seven cafes have closed and others are running with limited service as a result of strikes by workers who claim Starbucks has banned Pride decorations at its stores. Starbucks has already said that workers can put up Pride decorations. (WSJ)

Starbucks files labor complaint against union, calls claims of ban on Pride decorations “a deliberate misrepresentation” and part of a “smear campaign”
In response, the Union has called Starbucks’ filing a “public relations stunt” and filed its own labor complaint. Lmfao. (CNBC)
We are living in unfathomably idiotic times.

It’s (not actually?) happening, and it’s good. NBC tweeted that the “We’re coming for your children” chant heard at a NYC pride event last week “has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists.” It’s been Community Noted (“we’re coming for your children” has not, in fact, been used “for years,” the note said), but Note is intermittently disappearing from tweet as of this writing. (Twitter)

Right-Wing Hell: Normal guy falsely accused of being an agent provocateur six days after college graduation. Right wing nuts are doubling down after falsely accusing a recent UC Riverside graduate of being a federal agent who infiltrated the far-right Patriot Front at a Pride event in Oregon City, OR. The visibly bewildered young man, Ben Brody, released a video clarifying he was not a member of the group, said he had never been to a pride protest in Oregon City, and that he was with friends in Riverside at the time. He added that he and his family have been subjected to non-stop harassment, and offered to clear up any further confusion. (Twitter) (Daily Mail)

UCLA students allegedly block candidate from getting hired because he mildly critiqued DEI on some podcast episodes. Their four-page letter alleges that Dr. Yoel Inbar, who was in the running for a tenured faculty position at the university’s psych department, expressed skepticism that DEI statements have much value, among other concerns. Signed by 25+ people who included pronouns with their signatures, but failed to include a proper land acknowledgment (outrageous), Inbar suspects he didn’t get the job as a result. (@JohnDSailer)

Woman (either insane or the greatest performance artist of all time) goes to T-Mobile for an iPhone with dog, claims to be federal agent, holds up passport as proof, insults every race. Best quote: The Armenians are down. Anyone worried about Putin? Because this is his pussy *taps crotch with passport*. It’s the whites and the Latins. Anybody got a problem with that? Chuy’s up, Caitlin’s done. Her dog is a Great Dane. Is he allowed to shit all over my house? Who shit in the street of I.M.T.? That snitch Caitlin. I got the water from Mexico. It’s Calexico. You don’t like it? Go where you wanna go. I run with the Russians. (Twitter)

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