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🏠 X Is Everything. Everything Is X.

🏠 X Is Everything. Everything Is X.

Everything everywhere all at once

Stephen Flanders
October 30, 2023

Gm. It’s Halloween season. Reply and let me know what your costume was/is. Me and my girlfriend did Harry Potter/Hermione (I watched Harry Potter for the first time this year, sue me).

— Stephen Flanders

🏠 TECH

X, X, X

Regardless of your personal opinions on Elon and his first year as Chief Twit, the numbers don’t lie:

Shares are down ~65%.
Usage has plummeted.
As has Ad Spending.

But that tough first year (at least numbers-wise) doesn’t mean Elon is crying uncle. Far from it.

Instead, he’s forging ahead with the goal of turning X into the app that keeps you glued to your phone, computer, or headset. In other words: the everything app.

And we got some details on those plans thanks to a company all hands hosted by Elon and CEO Linda Yaccarino. They want:

Your entire financial life on X by the end of 2024. Who needs a bank account when you have X?
X to be a LinkedIn competitor, which as every freelancer knows is a legitimate use for X.
X to be a fully-fledged dating site.

Considering that X already is used for text communications and now has video and audio calls, if you add in finances, recruiting, dating, and shopping, you pretty much have an everything app.

Which would be pretty damn cool.

But: None of this will be possible if X can’t lure back advertisers.

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

An API for Threads is in the works.
X launched two new subscriptions that will boost your clout.
Apple is releasing a whole bunch of new stuff today.
Starlink is coming to Gaza.

AI

Google committed $2B to Anthropic.
NASA is funding AI lasers that can zap space junk.
Emotion-detecting AI might soon be open-sourced.
DALL-E 3 looks preeetttyyy cool.

SCIENCE

Google can turn ANC earbuds into a heart rate monitor.
Jeff Bezos is showing NASA a new moon lander design.
Speaking of NASA, they have a potentially game-changing antenna design.
A bacteria can enhance its host insect’s fertility.

CRYPTO

Gemini is suing Genesis.
SEC commissioner Hester Pierce doesn’t understand why they are giving LBRY such a hard time. Neither do I.
Arbitrum Orbit is mainnet ready.
Here are some takeaways from the 2023 Geography of Crypto Report.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: Cosmos Innovation, an AI-first company building next-generation perovskite silicon tandem (PST) solar cell technology, raised $19.7 million in total funding.

Stat: $1,000: How much Humane’s AI pin could cost. Are you copping?

Rabbit hole: How To Think Computationally (Stephen Wolfram)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

If you’re ever lacking motivation, just go down a Francis Ngannou rabbit hole. Never fails.

Francis Ngannou’s story is incredible.
This is a man that was homeless on the streets of Paris 11 years ago.
Look at him now.
He became the UFC Heavyweight Champion and he just arguably beat the supposed greatest Heavyweight boxer of all time.
— MMA History Today (@MMAHistoryToday)
Oct 28, 2023